Now don't get me wrong I'm not a Google hater; after all back in the days when we all happily trawled through Altavista (the supreme search engine at the time) Google was like a free gift to spods everywhere. A fresh new look and a fresh new indexing technique all at the power of our fingertips. We could now quickly and easily find what we wanted in the rapidly growing collection of unsorted paperwork which was the Internet.

So what went wrong with this great new search engine?

Nothing went wrong as such; sure the search engine isn't as effective as it used to be but then the Internet is more cut-throat than it was back in the 90's. With every man and their dog trying to force their way onto Googles coveted first page is it really any wonder that the engine is not as effective? As it stands Google is still one of the better search engines around even if its only because nobody else gets a chance; but hey thats a subject for another blog...

What went wrong is Google has changed. What was once a couple of PhD students working from their garage is now a huge multi-million dollar empire employing thousands of people and unfortunately some of those people are in marketing departments.

And here lies the problem...

Wherever there are big companies their are marketing departments and wherever there are marketing departments (especially in technology companies) there are usually disasters. Is that overly harsh? Maybe, maybe not but sometimes it just seems like thats the way...

In any new clever technology company before you get the marketing departments you just have the geeks. The geeks are quite happy to have some piece of software they have written loved by many, sure they'd like to be rich as well but most of them are content enough if they can afford pizza and that new 30" TFT they wanted.

Unfortunatley the companies then get big, they get share holders, accountants and marketing departments; people all out to make a quick buck from what was a nice little applet that some guy wrote in his loft. They sit down and try to think of as many ways as possible to force people to pay more and more money for the same product even to the point of destroying its functionality practically beyond usability. Who do you think it was inside Microsoft that decided Windows Vista should be released in half a million different versions all broken in their own little way? It wasn't the guy that sat there coding the IP stack I can assure you.

Google's marketing strategies

Now we are onto what this blog is all about... I recently bought a Dell PC, it came preinstalled with Google Desktop and Google Toolbar. I didn't ask to have those items of software preinstalled but they were, hey thats life. Once upon a time I would have left the toolbar on but these days both IE and Firefox have search boxes built in so as far as I am concerned they are redundant. Anyway two uninstalls later and they are gone, job done.

Next step, I need to install Flash...uh oh whats this?

OK now I am confused, if the Google Toolbar is not required why are you trying to dupe me into installing it? We've established that I don't want it and even if I did I'm perfectly capable of downloading it and installing it myself (I'm sure Google could help me find it after all) so what exactly is the purpose of this?

Anyway one untick and an install later and its back to business; next step Java. Yeah I know, horrible stuff but we all have to install it at some point or another so lets head off to Suns website.

Here we go again...

Conclusion

This is just three of many instances of having Googles products thrust upon me I have come across recently and its actually starting to annoy. Especially as these things consistently default to installing. Is it really any wonder that when I go to help out less experienced people out with their home PC's they have so many toolbars installed you can barely see the browser window?

This does pose another question, why is it Google are willing to go to such lengths to have you install their toolbar? What is it they so desperately need that this toolbar does? With my trust in them balancing on the edge as it is this doesn't help their case much, at least with me. As it stands I'm off to search the Internet with Ask and find out what other people think of all this...

Posted by Daniel: 21:28, Wed 12th Sep 2007