My love/hate relationship with Google
Perhaps "hate" is a strong word, but the frustrations I sometimes experience with something I "love" can sometimes keep me up at night. Yeah, I'm that passionate about Google. It's not blind Google-love. It's true love. Let me tell you a little about our relationship.
It was love at first sight. I had never seen such a clean, simple layout for a search engine before. They called it Google. I would tell all my friends about it... possibly even annoyed them with it. At the time, I was the new media director for NuLife Entertainment (a concert and club promotion and marketing company, now a record label) and I was tasked with coming up with new creative ideas for marketing and social integration both internally and externally. Google, was the first thing I introduced to the staff. Some of them called it "Goggle," but no matter; Because , they too saw the value in its simplicity and efficiency for getting information. I used to tell them, "If Google can't find it, it doesn't exist."
Eventually, everyone knew about Google and it was no longer my discovery. It became a celebrity and I felt like I was standing on the sidelines at the "red carpet." It also became verb. Part of the lexicon. To "Google" something meant something. My love was growing. It then added other features like maps and I broke it off with both Yahoo! and Mapquest (which kept leading to a dead end... sometimes literally.)
I remember Leo Laporte on ZDTV talking about this much buzzed about (foreshadowing?) free email called Gmail. I thought the name was silly, but I wanted an invitation so badly. After all, everything stopped when "Call for Help" and "Screen Savers" came on (just ask my then-girlfriend, now-wife, Marivel) and I was Google's first love! I deserved an invite. When the invite finally came, I was positive I wanted to marry Google. And so I fully committed myself to it, dumping my first web-based email account, Hotmail (besides, little did I know that Hotmail would soon cheat on me with MSN and things would never be the same again.)
It was a marriage made in heaven. Over the years our love continued, but not without some compromises. Yes, it was great that I can now have a great spam filter, never-before-seen threading of emails, accurate directions, and many, many more functions all in one account. But something didn't feel right. Google was growing up faster than I was. I tried to keep up. I signed up for AdSense, AdWords, Google Reader, Google Analytics, Google Profile... heck, I even let Google handle my domain's emails and showed everyone else how to do the same (at this point I wasn't concerned about exclusivity.) I jumped on board with Google Voice... it literally had a hold on me.
Recently, however, I've become disillusioned, because of its last two additions - Google Wave (I want to love it, but don't know how) and now, Google Buzz (which seems to be just that.) It felt like an abusive relationship; I did everything to avoid getting a Google slap or, worse, being dumped by Google altogether. But when I recently changed my Google profile, only to learn that by doing so I can no longer access my Waves, it became apparent that I was headed for heartbreak. When I signed into Youtube, only to be forced to sign in with my Google/gmail account, I felt like I was being manipulated. Nonetheless, I was hopeful at first, because I truly wanted to believe that this was the first step to consolidation. But it wasn't. And when I signed up for Buzz, and it created yet another Google profile for me (the one I was trying to get initially but it refused to let me use - AnthonyMendez) I knew it was now giving me the run around.
I still have my AnthonyVO.com email with Google Apps, but some services require I sign in with my gmail account instead. I can't move from one service to the other without having to separately log in to that service. It's giving me a headache.
Why, Google? Why? I want to continue to love you, but you keep shutting me out!
Heartbroken,
Anthony Mendez
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