It’s with mixed feelings that I’m starting my departure from Google services. My basic reasons are listed below: As a consumer, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that they’re an advertising company first and foremost. Their administrative interfaces are arbitrarily located, named, and designed. There’s no common design, no common location for management, and no consistency in experience. I don’t…
Decide What You Care About, and Map The Incentives
If you’re not paying for it, you’re the product not the customer. I’ve seen variations of this quote many times and I think it’s a crucial point when comparing how good companies are at something. Three areas I care about when considering whether to use a company are: Security Privacy Design And the most common entities I’m comparing…
More Google Failure
I am livid with Google right now. I’m currently dealing with two massively frustrating issues with their services. I am somehow unable to use Google Hangouts. I am perfectly signed into Google+. I’ve never disabled the service, which I’d have zero idea how to do, by the way, and yet I get the message above when I click…
Another Google Service Mystery
I wrote recently about how Google Services are often disorganized and non-intuitive.
This is Why Google+ Failed
Many thought Google+ was going to curbstomp Facebook. I took one look at the interface and knew it had limited life. Google just doesn’t get how to build a compelling interface for most of its products. Here’s a great example: Hangouts.
Why I Dislike Google Services
People often ask me why I’m so down on Android, and I’ve got a great example for you. I use a Google service called Pagespeed, which is basically their CDN for speeding up websites. It’s quite excellent, like many Google services. The problem is in how it’s managed. For years I’ve been using one particular portal, shown below.
Android Still Doesn’t Get It
I was at Best Buy recently, and wanted to check out the latest Galaxy S5 from Samsung. The hardware seemed pretty legit. Screen looked great. So I decided to check out the Internet. This is on a demo phone in the middle of Best Buy, you understand.
Android Isn’t Competing with Apple
This picture exemplifies why I use Apple instead of Google for my mobile platform. It reminds me of a single point—Google is an ad company. Apple is not. Apple is a lifestyle company. They obsess over how their products look and feel. They debate and stress and act snotty over the smallest detail, and take their pride and…
Media = AppleTV, Netflix, and AirPlay
I’m a bit impressed right now with that media experience I’m getting with Apple. To be clear, it’s like 20% of what it should be, but damn, that’s pretty good. AirPlay is way better than it sounds when someone describes it. When I sit at home and play music I play it to one of my monitors, to…
The Reason Google is Terrified of Facebook
Image from achievedstrategies.com Most who follow the tech industry know that Google and Facebook are in the throes of mutual combat, but few seem to see the strategic reason that Google is so deathly afraid of Facebook. Google is Google, right? They’re invincible! Who could possibly threaten them in search, right? Well, that’s missing the point. Google’s problem…
The Simple Economic Reason I Prefer Apple to Google
The iOS/Apple vs. Android/Google debate has been explored for years by thousands of people. We know the arguments and they’re rather boring at this point. Preference is preference, and if you like something and it works for you, that’s pretty much all that matters. But there’s one point in the conversation that seems obvious once you hear it…
Do a Google Search for ‘ip’ and Get Your IP Address
Millions of us know the trick of getting our public IP address. Most go to ipchicken or the site aptly called “whatismyip”. Well, Google just made all that unnecessary. You can now just search for ‘ip’ (yes, two letters) and it’ll return your public IP at the top of the page. Note that if you’re using Chrome that…
Summarized Differences Between iPhone and Android
This is an attempt to show the differences–not without bias, but without hate. Functionality The iPhone focuses on doing a few things in a very polished way, while Google stresses being able to do as many things as possible. As I mentioned when the iPhone launched, the iPhone will focus on how relatively few features are implemented, not…
Searching Google Bookmarks from Chrome’s Omnibox
When Google first launched Google Bookmarks a few years back I immediately stopped using del.icio.us and migrated everything to it. It was a controversial move at the time, as Delicious was so well established while Google was just throwing services at the ceiling to see what stuck. But it paid off. It is now possible to search all…
The iPhone vs. Google Phones
The image below is my attempt to capture how the iPhone 4 makes me feel about Google’s phone offerings. It’s not that Google phone’s aren’t awesome…they clearly are…my groin just doesn’t ache for one like it does the new iPhone. That’s the result of focusing on design vs. features, which I’ve been saying all along. My point, which…
Chrome About to Overtake IE on My Site
In the short time that Chrome has been around, it’s already about to overtake Internet Explorer on this website. The graph below is for the month of April so far: I knew it, by the way. 😉 Oh, and I’m back to using Chromium (so I have the no-http:// behavior now) so I’ll be posting some tips for…
Google Voice on a Verizon Android?
So Verizon and Google just announced a strategic partnership. Verizon also stated that they’re embracing openness, which means (among other things) they’re going to allow Google Voice on Android devices on their network. So this solidifies things for me on the mobile device front. At this point I see the comparison like this between iPhone vs. Android: Apple/AT&T…
PageRank for People Rather Than URLs
This is an interesting post about how the concept of PageRank for URLs is becoming dated at best, and obsolete at worst. The idea is that people post in multiple places, and that search engines need to track them across all of them, not just their highly ranked home URL. So basically, the reputation rank would be on…
Aggregating and Displaying Your Discovered Content Using Google’s Feed API
So I finally accomplished something with the site I’ve been wanting to do for a couple of months now–my “Discovered Items” section in the first sidebar is pulling from my own custom discovered feed (created using Yahoo Pipes and Feedburner) rather than from Google Reader’s shared items. This means that instead of only being able to see what…
How to Instantly Download Any YouTube Video in .mp4 Format
Ever watched a really cool video on YouTube only to find out it’s gone when you go to show it to someone? Well, here’s how to avoid that. By installing this bookmarklet you can now instantly start a download, in .mp4 format, of the YouTube video you’re currently watching. 104%, unadulterated win. :: [ Download YouTube Videos to…
Why I Think Google Chrome Will Be Highly Successful
I’m seriously impressed with Google’s newbile browser offering, Chrome. I like the simplicity of its interface, its speed, and most of all how it handles searches. But Chrome still lacks a ton of features (plugins, most importantly), and many believe it’s little more than a half-baked experiment with little chance for success. I disagree, and here’s why: Google…
Google Chrome Has Wicked Quick Searches
One of the reasons people don’t want to leave Firefox for Google’s new Chrome Browser is Firefox’s Quicksearch feature, which allows you to use single character prefixes to search various sites from Firefox’s URL bar. Fortunately, you don’t have to leave this functionality behind if you decide to move to Chrome. In fact, Google actually implements Quicksearches in…
The Simple, Effective Way to Track What’s Said About You on the Internet
You don’t have to be an ego-freak to wonder if others are talking about you online. Egosurfing, i.e. the act of looking yourself up in search engines, is something most regular Internet users have done at least once. It’s very human to want to know if we’re affecting the world we live in. So the old way to…
Google and Big Brother
This isn’t one of those “Google is the NSA” posts. Well, it kind of is. The way the Government ends up with all our shit is not through some massive raid where we hand over all our passwords against our will. The numbers don’t add up. There’d be too many unhappy people — as in “Malotov” unhappy. No,…
Decision 2008: Google Apps vs. Apple’s MobileMe
Apple complicated things yesterday when they released MobileMe. I’m a huge fan of Google services and use Google Apps to host my domain’s email. Plus I use Google Reader, Google Calendar, and a number of other applications of theirs. Until Apple’s announcement I was looking for more integration between iCal and Google Calendar with the new 2.0 software.…
Secrets of Google’s Information Security Team
At RSA this year I caught a talk by a Google executive that discussed what makes Google’s Information Security team so unique. I found the talk quite informative and thought it was worth sharing. It would be great if more companies had this perspective. Everyone on the Security Team is a Programmer Read that again. Every single person…
A GTD Approach to Organizing and Reading Your Feeds
The fundamental problem when managing feeds is input management. Most of us simply have too many feeds to read in a single sitting. How can we be sure we’re reading the right content at the right time? The goal is to avoid the anti-GTD state of not being sure – a state that consumes valuable brain resources and…
A Three-Dimensional Approach to Organizing Your Feeds Using Google Reader
I’m constantly optimizing how I do things, and nowhere is this more important to me than with my feed reader. I happen to use (and highly recommend) Google Reader, and what follows is a multi-tiered approach to classifying and reading your feeds using an often ignored feature of the application. The Problem The fundamental problem is input management.…
How to Migrate Your Custom Domain’s Email to Google (And Maintain Your Addresses)
After over six (6) years of handling my domain’s email through self-built and administered Linux boxes, I just migrated all my email functionality over to Google. This has never been a solid option for me for one primary reason: the mixing of gmail.com with my own domain (danielmiessler.com). Forwarding and changing “reply to” settings has never been that…
Made For AdSense (MFA)
MFA stands for Made For AdSense. It refers to a blog whose content is farmed out to non-professional writers (or scripts). The goal of these sites is not the creation of quality content, but rather the collection of revenue from AdSense or other advertising schemes. One attribute of these sites is often the creation and or organization of…
Google Phone vs. iPhone
Google is releasing a phone soon (possibly Q1 2008). It’s going to run on HTC hardware. It’s going to be sick. This we know. Google vs. Apple. I don’t see anyone else in this game right now. Everyone else will be trying to catch up via imitation. A few points/predictions: The overall web service integration (Google services, obviously)…
7 Essential Firefox Quicksearches
If you’re not yet using Firefox Quicksearches you’re missing out. Quicksearches allow you to search virtually anything directly from the Firefox URL field. Here I just searched for Ron Paul related information on Google. The trick is the first character — in this case “g” — that tells Firefox where to send the query. To set this up…
Searching Your Google Bookmarks From Firefox’s URL Field
I was looking for a bookmark of mine on Google Bookmarks a moment ago and did so in a very primitive way — I went to my bookmarks page and typed my query into the search field. Bad form. Well, it dawned on me that there’s a much better way to do this. After remembering that I use…
Why You Should Encrypt ALL of Your Google Activities [POC]
Everyone loves Google. They want to be everything to everyone, and they’re getting pretty damn good at it. Once you start using their services it gets easier and easier to migrate more of your life to them. But there’s a slight problem. Google, like most other similar services, encrypts login traffic but not your content. So the moment…
Firefox Quicksearches + Google Keywords = Sick Power
Back in 2005 I wrote about how you can use Firefox Quicksearches to vastly reduce your search time. You do this by adding a key-character for searches, such as “g” for Google, and “w” for Wikipedia. Then you just do a ctrl/cmd-L to get to Firefox’s URL bar, and then type: g ron paul …to search for Ron…
How To Search Your Site Using Google From Firefox’s Address Bar (with code)
I’ve recently started searching my site using Google rather than using the built-in WordPress search. That’s nothing new — pretty much everyone knows that if you use site:yourdomain.com in front of a search term, it’ll search only your domain for that term. That’s cool and everything, but it doesn’t get really sick until you combine it with Firefox’s…
Google’s Inevitable Betrayal
Tons of people all over the Internets are shedding all vestiges of sanity over how much information Google has access to. They’re especially rabid over the fact that Google is now archiving all chats. Many view this as proof that the company is heading down a dark path — a path that will eventually lead to them knowing…