April 2012 marks 10 years of my erratic blogging, 17 1/2 years of being active on the Web, 24 years of being a USENET participant, and 28 1/2 years of having an E-mail address.
WHEW!
WHEW!
For over 10 years, Google was the best search site. It still is, but its other features are increasingly hard to use.
There I was, trying to give feedback about a company on Google places. I was logged into my Google account, I wrote up my comment, and this odd little box popped up:
Set your appearance to start rating
With little graphics the type of which you'd see on early '80s video games.
My options were "Get started" or "Cancel your rating."
On the one hand, I really wanted to rate a local business.
On the other hand, I really have no interest in "Getting started" with some sort of bizarre little Google Places account.
On of the options should have been "Rate."
Google always likes to say "Do no evil" or "Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful."
I believed that for a long time, but I'm not so sure these days. Increasingly, Google seems to only look for ways to monetize every bit of information anyone many be willing to share without listening to any user feedback.
Maybe I'm just an old computer user and tired. I don't object to change. And I understand that companies need to make money. I've had Google ads on my sites for many years, and that basically pays for my ISP account. But once I'm logged into one Google account, Google should not demand for me to create another account just to rate a local business. I can see where people might want the option to create another account for such ratings, but it should not be required.
