Is Google Losing Its Mind

Not long ago I noticed how frustrated I’d become with Google’s search results. I’d been frustrated with Google for some time, but still relied heavily on the search page. Now it dawned on me that the search results had been growing less relevant for quite some time.

The next day I found a couple of people whose opinions I respect wondering about recent moves by Google. About two weeks later, the theme resurfaced. It was clear that others were having the same frustrations. I figured whenever the mood struck, I would post my thoughts.

Then Jeffrey Zeldman posted this gem. His experience was so reminiscent of my experience using Google Apps and YouTube that I thought it was time to get my thoughts in writing.

Irrelevant Search Results

I’ve always thought Google’s concept was flawed. The idea, as I understand it, was to rank pages based on credibility. If I am searching for information on building paper airplanes and there are millions of such pages, the best way to rank them is according to the number of, and credibility of, other pages link to them. The assumption is that if several other human authors of pages about paper airplanes, or pages that are linked to from pages about paper airplanes, have linked to page A, perhaps page A has “earned” some credibility. The idea, in principle, is very solid. The flaw, which many saw from the beginning, is that it can easily be “gamed.”

Since Google has now reigned supreme for years, most people have seen the results of this game. As a matter of fact, Google has implemented at least two strategies over the years to mitigate this problem. In spite of those strategies, Google’s result are still growing .

I still use Google, but not as my first option. First of all, I find myself looking to the StackExchange network, Wikipedia, Quora, and IMDB for much of what I used to Google. When it’s time to do a general Internet search, I find myself using Duck Duck Go, then Bing, then Google. I am happy with the results I get with Duck Duck Go, but I tend to worry I might miss something if I don’t at least check Bing and Google.

Privacy

A while back there was a lot of talk about changes to Google’s privacy policy. I never looked very carefully at this change, and I think Google may have reversed some of those changes, but I’ve never been 100% comfortable with Google’s approach to my privacy.

Other Crap

Recently, Google introduced Search, plus your World. Quite a few people have expressed opinions about this and all the crap with which Google clutters it resultsactually makes the results worse.

My Google Account(s)

This is the dealbreaker for me – and very frustrating. I signed up for Gmail on May 20, 2004. I thought it was fantastic. In January 2008 I discovered that Google offered private label email via Google Apps. It was a no brainer. I immediately set it up for some of my domains and migrated one client from Exchange almost immediately.

Then the integration started. All of my Apps accounts were to become real Google accounts. It all sounded very nice, and I would have the option of managing them separately or setting up multiple sign on, but neither option would prevent the real problems to come.

The first of the issues was trying to use multiple sign on for more than two Google accounts. It seemed to work well for me if I only had two accounts, but adding a third creating all sorts of oddities – inexplicably jumping from one account to the other and being logged off unexpectedly.

Then Google+ was introduced. I joined back in July and I thought it looked like a great service. I know some don’t like it and others think it’s the greatest community the Internet has ever seen. I don’t like that I had to use my gmail.com address (instead of my main email address which is a Google account), but otherwise it is a better than average experience.

Since Google+ now allows Apps accounts to sign up, things have broken terribly. I have a habit of opening G+ posts I want to read later in another browser tab. Unfortunately, if I am logged in to more than just my gmail.com account the new pages sometimes open in the other tab but G+ thinks I don’t have an account because it is treating me as though I am logged in as the other user – because I am. This doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does it makes G+ unusable for me.

If you think that’s nuts, you should read about all the fun I’ve had with YouTube.