Don’t Be Evil huh?

I actually lost respect for Google a long time ago.

Back when I worked at TCCWCBN (The Career College Which Can’t Be Named) we spent about 300k a month on Google Adwords. Back then, that was more than almost every online retailer was spending with Google. We’re talking like, 8 years ago, when Google Adwords wasn’t very well known, before Google went public, back when Gmail wasn’t even a glimmer in some dork engineers eye.

And Google was cool back then. They were very focused on helping their clients achieve great results. They made engineers available to talk to clients, and had my team up to visit the ‘Googleplex’ in Mountain View a total of 5 times. I remember being picked up in a limo from the airport in San Jose for christs sakes.

Google is evil - gevil.com

Then things changed. First, management teams on our accounts lasted a year or less and then were out. Either those folks quit Google, or they got moved around someplace else even despite our request to keep our client team intact. The support got more shoddy, even though our spend never went down.

That is roughly around the time i stopped being in love with Google. The attention they gave us was definitely nice, but then their product started to fall into decline.

When you look at Google now, its easy to see that ‘search’ isn’t at the forefront of their company any longer. Google phones? Google TV’s? Google operating systems and browsers? Google’s version of WebMD?

I find it particularly despicable (and evil) that Google had a seat on Apple’s board, then backstabbed Apple, took their ideas, and are now competing with Apple. It is one thing, of course, to decide that hey, we are going to do our own thing. Its another to set up a conference in which you go out there, literally copy everything Apple has been working on for the past 5 or 6 years (phones, browsers, tablet, television) then proceed to slam the same people you’re copying.

I don’t give a shit about Google. Yeah, they drive a lot of traffic to web sites and yes, Adwords is the easiest way to buy your way onto search results. As for their products beyond search? They mostly suck ass. Gmaps and Gmail are good, but simple, applications. I can’t think of anything else that Google does that has been very successful. They can’t take credit for YouTube as it was always successful. Google Wave was a complete piece of shit. No one uses Google Talk. Their social networking projects are abortions. Google apps are second rate. Android is complete trash compared to the iPhone OS. Google TV? It is a Apple TV retread. Who is going to sit on their couch with a keyboard and “search” for shows. TV is difficult? Are you fucking retarded, TV is the easiest its ever been to use.

Fuck Google. Seriously. This is enough to make me want to use Bing.