» God Google is a Woman

Today I realised that Google is female. It no longer smells like a teenage-geeky-male-grown-in-to-a-beardy-thirty-something-male.
Here is a summary of the conversation I've just had with Google:

» The Google Community is Gone

Further to last week's post about Google having dumped me. I find myself begrudging using them to search now. There was some pride, or sense of community, in using Google and receiving traffic from them. But now ... I deliberately don't click the ads and simply type in the displayed web address instead.
It may sound petty ... like not forwarding your ex's mail after she's left you without explanation ... but it really does make me fell better.

» Jade Goody Syndrome makes me want new features on Google

I'd like a little input box in my Google account that let's me list phrases I never want to see results for.
With so many people who have died of cervical cancer that actually deserve monetary rewards for their life's work to that point - Jade Goody isn't even on the scale and it annoys me that every time I see her name she's probably earned another few pence.

» Google Trends just for the Trendy

Saw Google Trends hot list today. Majority of the popular searches are people. Majority of the people have names I've never heard of. I panicked for a second that I was going to turn out to be one of those un-cool dads that know nothing about what the "hip kids of today" are in to.
Then I looked up some of the people on that list. There's a reason I've never heard of them - they are only popular because they are popular.

» Googlepedia

Does Google pay Wikipedia any money? Will they one day own Wikipedia?
Nearly every search today has had a Wikipedia entry in the top three results ... and that's for commercial terms too!

» I can't see my house from up here

There seems to be a 50 mile exclusion zone around my house. Whenever I log into Google maps to view the satellite view of my town it's never there. Just clouds and blurry green.
Go 50 miles south, and you can zoom right up to car identification level. Go 50 miles west and you can get to individual house level. Go near my town and you can't even pinpoint a field.

» I don't really feel sorry for "mom & pop" stores

After a night of my wife screaming at her computer because Google kept returning US stores for her Google.co.uk web search - I decided to have a quick look today.
Jump on any webmaster forum and at any one time you'll see half a dozen threads from people complaining that "ebay, amazon and search scraper junk are ranking above me … Google is rubbish!"

» What’s in a name?

I’ve searched other people’s names many times before. It’s often a waste of time. One thing no regular search engine is good at is helping you find out information about someone.
Having typed in my own name, there was only one listing out of the first 50 that had anything to do with me … and I’m probably the only one that knows the article was about me - or something I had written anyway.

» Hello world!

I’ve been using the web as a consumer and as part of my profession for nine years now. I remember the first time I heard about Google. I was having a computer customer built by a teacher at a local university and on picking it up he said "There’s this new search engine called Google. A million times better than anything else!"
I’ve been using it ever since and for both personal and professional reasons I wish I had kept a diary of everything I’ve been through with Google. The single most important business "relationship" throughout my nine year career.