Google Notebook, GMail, Google Calender - I use all of these daily. I have two videos on Google Video (one and two). I love Picasa, perhaps the best photo management tool ever written. AdSense provides the ads on my blog. Still, I've never been impressed with the flagship product, Google Toolbar.
A new tool was released this weekend, Browser Sync. This sounded very cool, even though I don't have much of a need at the moment. I do know of others who will find this very useful, if you want to keep your work browser in sync with home this is perfect. Bookmarks, cookies, and history are all synced - even open windows and tabs. While looking at this, I took a look at the toolbar again and some other extensions from Google.
The toolbar has added a few features I want. Spellcheck is better than the last time I checked, and the RSS subscribe button works with more than just Google - BlogLines (my reader), Newsgator, My Yahoo, FireFox Live Bookmarks, and Pluck are all supported. Gmail can be configured to handle mailto: links. I also downloaded Web Comments and Send to Phone - Web Comments I found annoying and removed, but Send to Phone provides a handy button in my browser to send someone a text message. Very nice, typing out a message on a phone one risks a stubbed thumb.
Last, Google Toolbar doesn't require the toolbar. This is very important to me, I don't like toolbars at all. They eat away my screen space leaving only a port view of the website. The buttons on Google Toolbar can be dragged to and from any other toolbar in FireFox. Once I decided what I wanted to keep, the toolbar was switched off.
Google, if you're reading this I still need a service to replace Flickr. And I don't like your RSS News Reader's interface. If you want my soul, you'll have to address those first.
Update: Not even a week later I get this email:
Dear Picasa user,
Today, we're excited to announce that we've begun testing a new
feature for Picasa called "Picasa Web Albums."
Google heard me!
Posted By Mike On Sunday, June 11, 2006
Filed under google blog |
Comments (2)
Gabriel.
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Tuesday, June 13, 2006
8:58:56 PM
Google is fine as a browser, and their extra toys are cute, google maps is amazing, but I'm not comfortable using any of their tools that collect data about me. Gmail doesn't delete your mail. Ever. Even if you purge it, it's still there, ready to be used against you in a court of law.
And don't give me the "what're you doing wrong" argument. That's the same argument against giving personal freedoms and privacy.
That being the case and policy of GMail I can't imagine they, as data gatherers, throw *anything* away. Including the web searches I do (tracked by IP) on their homepage, the bookmarks I save through their plugin, the documents I create using their new spreadsheet...
All data is theirs to do with as they please. Google is Big Brother with a profit margin.
heheh
Mike
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Tuesday, June 13, 2006
10:10:18 PM
I don't disagree, I've even blogged against Google desktop for keeping an index of your hard drive on their servers. Right now the NSA is in court for phone tapping without a warrant and from facts leaked on the case it goes beyond that to the NSA having direct access into AT&T's database. Yahoo has given the Chinese government names and email accounts of reporters in China that are jailed for life because they wrote against the government's oppression. Our government is trying to force companies to keep all data in case they want it later.
With Google, I don't mind so much. My email will always be on someone else's server. I don't have any more trust for Google than AT&T, but in Google's case I'm getting a service I like for free, or at the cost of providing them information. Most of this I want shared anyway (notebook, bookmarks, photos).
To Google's credit, the government came to them for search history of one week without personal identify information and a random 1 Mil URLs so they can see the effect of COPA. They fought it in court and only had to give them 50K random URLs. Then again, if they never had the data in the first place, they wouldn't of had to fight anything.
(this comment spell checked and editied for content by google)
