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.

There were three things I saw or heard of this week that on first “glance” I was skeptical of.

The first was Project Natal from Microsoft. Anything Microsoft does these days makes me skeptical. I wrote a blog this week for work on Bing, Microsoft’s new “decision engine” and why we didn’t need it. After a few days of playing with it, my mind hasn’t changed. Bing is like Mahalo on steroids, but at the end of the day, it is still like Mahalo.

The premise of Natal, a new video game controller for the XBOX 360 is essentially that of the Wii’s controller — an interface that lowers the barrier to entry for people who are initimidated holding a joystiq. Now, I am not sure I have ever met the folks who these controllers are designed for, but none the less, Natal basically turns your body into a control mechanism for playing a game. It does it by using some cameras. I was skeptical, but the truth is that Natal is pretty damned cool. Some of the technical demos showing off the way it works will blow you away. I especially like the one with Milo, a computer generated boy who can read your facial expressions and act accordingly.

I’d never wave my arms to “fake fight” with a computer game but, the applications for Natal are pretty much limitless.

Next up was Google Wave. For a long time I’ve been saying Google just needs to focus on search. Then I saw Google Wave and realized that, yes, the folks working for the big G are pretty smart. Wave is basically email “reinvented” for today. It has a lot in common with a Wiki and an Instant Messenger client, while maintaining some of the traditional functions of email. Its really hard to explain, so watch the tech demo of Google Wave to get a much better idea. Really excited about it coming out!

The final bit of erased skepticism came from an agency web site that a coworker of mine posted to our internal work Twitter. This web site is done completely in video, and uses clickable hotspots to navigate. The video I saw was hosted in You Tube, but my guess is that it would work anywhere. One thing I hadn’t considered about this site was just how portable it was. You could basically load it on a Flash drive if you wanted, since it is just a video essentially. The agency in question was Boone Oakley out of North Carolina. Bravo guys!