…welcome our new Google overlords. I’m sure I’m the 874,000th person to say that. Hell, I think I’ve said it myself before.
- I adore Gmail.
- Google Calendar is exactly the thing I’ve been procrastinating putting together myself for C & I to coordinate our schedules.
- Their search powers my employer’s site’s search.
- I live by the little box with the G in the upper right corner of Firefox.
- Measure Map is freakishly addictive and informative.
And yet, and yet. I had this same feeling when they bought Measure Map (+ Veen), and I couldn’t quite articulate the unease I felt. I still can’t quite as well as I’d like.
But in the spirit of Kathy Sierra’s recent piece, I’m going to try anyhow.
Essentially, it’s the web version of my uneasiness with Microsoft. I don’t like all of my stuff tied up in one thing, or in anything that’s not quite mine.
OTOH, one reason I like Gmail is the fact that it’s not tied to my hosting, which has been sometimes disastrous.
It’s tied in, too, to my personal desire for independence. I don’t like having to rely on someone else to do something that’s important to me. The only reason I manage to delegate at all, I think, is that I absolutely trust my right-hand guy. (Hey, now that I rearranged our office, he’s actually the guy at my right hand.)
And part of that overall uneasiness about a society in which we, as human beings, don’t own the data that makes up our existence: the companies do. See also: grocery store loyalty cards, credit reports.
I think of my ethereal bits, the emails, blog entries, etc., etc. that I create as parts of myself, as much as my fingers and toes. (Considerably more so than my hair!) Nobody else should own them but me, ultimately.
And underneath both the shiny-new-ness and the usefulness of all these googly things — and the services I use that are part of the yahoo empire as well — is that basic uneasiness about not quite owning myself when I use them.