Decius wrote:
] Wow, this "Google is Evil" meme is really starting to gain
] traction! It kind of reminds me of that time when everyone
] suddenly decided that Micheal Jackson wasn't cool anymore.
] Next thing we heard from the guy, he was having sex with a
] monkey!

I clearly remember when I determined that Jackson wasn't cool. It was when my family got our first VCR. When my dad bought it, he bought two tapes, the making of Thriller and the Disney cartoon version of Sleepy Hallow. So, both those got played a fair amount in the early days of the VCR.. At least, untill some blank tapes for recording uses were procured.. But anyway, the making of Thriller. Somewhere in that timespan, I decided that I hated Jackson. I'm not sure what it was that did it, maybe it was the fact that Michael Jackson SUCKS, and even as a kid I could see that once I got enough exposure to him sucking and being lame. I think a large part of it, was that I've always been someone that listens to alot of music, and most of what I saw having to do with Michael Jackson wasn't music, but image and dancing and flashy shit I didn't really care about.

On the other side of the coin, when I was a little kid I liked Twisted Sister.. Flashy.. Image.. etc.. All present in full force. So who knows. I'm not ashamed of that though.. Infact, I met Dee Snyder and his son recently. I didn't have a gag reaction, infact I made a point of saying Hi to him and saying I was a big fan as a kid. Now, if I saw Michael Jackson, I would have pointed at him, laughed, and said something crude. That is, right after I finished laughing at the hordes of very lame fans of his that would surely be present..

What people get into has always puzzled me. A friend of mine recently made the observation that Great White, the kings of lame ass 80's metal, had a packed house with 300 people present at the fireball show.. And we had seen Frank Black, who I think is awesome, at the Stone Pony a month earlier and there were only 50 hard core fans there.. There is something about this that just confuses the hell out of me.

] Its been a long time since Wired Magazine started a successful
] Meme. I thought we all decided that Wired was evil back when
] they put Push Technology on the cover. I thought we all said
] we were going to stop reading Wired. Right!? I think you guys
] are all a bunch of closet Wired readers! Um, well, actually I
] guess I would have had to have read Wired in order to know
] that they started this meme, so I guess I'll just shut up
] about that.

I read Wired.. I read lots of things. But thats besides the point.. Did Wired start the meme, or did Wired pick up on a meme that was already happening.

I don't think Wired is responsible for this, I think Google is responsible for this. It was likely unavoidable and going to happen at one point or another anyway. Anti-Google stuff has been brewing for quite awhile. When you are the big boy, you have a harder time keeping people's trust.

] So, Google... I mean, the thing is, like, Google has *60*
] PHDs! **60** The computer science department at Georgia Tech
] doesn't have *60* PHDs! What the hell do these people DO??
] Yeah, Google works really well, and its really hard to scale
] something like to that level, and I respect that and so on and
] so forth, but *60* PHDs. It just doesn't seem like Google has
] changed all that much while I've been using it. It doesn't
] take a PHD to load DMOZ data into your website! If I had 60
] PHDs for as long as Google has had them I'd have
] revolutionized the entire computing industry by now!

I'll tell you.. If I had $100 million in profits, not a company I worked for, but _me_.. I would have 60 PHDs too.. And 80 lawyers.. All required to carry chainsaws with them at all times. They would be my army.. Them and the Azimo's. They would follow me all over the place. We would fuck shit up.

Its simple. I would need the PHDs for the maintaince and development of the Azimo Army's evil codebase, and I would need the lawyers to keep the opposition tied up untill it was to late.

I would get more done then Google.

] To be fair to Google, I use their news agent every day. That
] is new. And its hard. And they don't make any money off of it.
] They are aggregating all the news content for me and they are
] doing it for free. Its hard to be a jerk to someone who does
] something like that for you.

I _love_ Google News. I was using Google News regularly when it was still the mostly unformated list linked off the labs page. I use it all the time. It rocks. I'm pretty sure that its something like that Google is planning to do with blogs.

] OK, so am I going to stop using Google? I don't know. To be
] honest with you, I really didn't want to stop listening to
] Micheal Jackson. I liked Micheal Jackson. But I didn't have a
] choice. Any kid caught listening to Micheal Jackson in 1987
] was better off dead. I had to stop. I just wasn't cool anymore
] and my friends just weren't going to have any of it. Maybe it
] will be the same way with Google. Maybe I'll have to rename my
] Google toolbar link to "Altavista" and hope nobody clicks on
] it. Maybe I'll have to become a closet Googler.

For me, its not really an anti-Google thing, as much as its a "cover all bases" thing. Right now, I'm not anti-Google or anything like that.. But I also can't ignore how dependent I am on Google anymore. If one day, Google does something that _really_ pisses me off, and I decide I'm not going to use them anymore, I don't want that to be a major life decision that changes the way I work.

I'm integrating other search engines into my normal usage patterns.. Making an effort to not use just Google. So far, its not really taking any effort. In my case, the bookmark on my toolbar that was Google, is now a folder with links to several search engines. I pick a different one every time.

] Of course, maybe Google will take Pyra and turn it into
] MemeStreams, but better then anything we've produced. Maybe
] MemeStreams will fade into obscurity. Maybe when I explain it
] to people they'll say "Oh, its basically another Bloogle." And
] I'll really want to kill them. Then I'll stop using Google.
] Because it will just piss me off. I'll bet thats what Dave
] Winer is feeling.

Yea.

RE: Google is Evvile