My Google addiction, Nymwars, and "Don't be Evil"

Well if you haven't heard by now, Google is embroiled in something called "nymwars". It has to do with pseudonym usage on their Plus service. You have to use your given name on your birth certificate. Many people prefer using a pseudonym on the net, for various reasons. Unique identifier, anonymity, political, whatever. I'm fine with that. But lately, I've had the gnawing feeling that Google has been just a bit over-aggressive in their dealings with the public in general. So I decided to fence-sit, and see how the nymwars has been playing out.

The pseudonym camp has made some very persuasive arguments. To the point that I was ready to undo my habits with the big G. NOT as easy as it sounds. Google has made internet life really comfy for me. I use Chrome. I entertain myself with YouTube. iGoogle is my homepage. Etc, etc, etc. Many of you can relate. So I tried an experiment last night. I un-pinned my Chrome from the win7 taskbar, and set up IE9 as the default browser again. That was the easy part.

Favorites. Bookmarks. Ugh. Why can't there be a standard that everybody can agree to, yet? You don't realize how much time you spend in a particular browser until you look for links. About a year ago I tried a few third party apps that "manage all bookmarks and favorites from all your installed browsers". Again, ugh. I finally had to export everything to Delicious.com in self defense. So at least I know I can retrieve them if I lose something. But after the export/import to/from Delicious, I now have umpteen hundreds of duplicates in IE9 I still need to finish sorting out. I know the default is to save everything, but can't there be some kind of feature that IDs dupes and does self weeding?

Next was the browsing experience itself. Chrome=fast. IE9=fast-ish. The way to disable all the security warnings is to go into internet options and slog through the settings. Just not worth it. Chrome catches most of it in the background. So this morning after one last hopeful browsing session with IE9, I backslid and opened up Chrome.

And, yes, to be as fair as possible, I have used Firefox in the past. Opera, Crazybrowser, Safari, and many others. Chrome just has a "feels right" to me. As other browsers come (and go) I'll probably try them as well. But I've gotten off on a tangent here. Back to the original commentary.

There are going to be people that will give up using anything Google, out of the principle that they dropped the "Don't be Evil" ball. And I applaud those people. Those are the folks that will keep the internet, and life online in general, open and free, and keep the governments and corporations at bay. Not all wars are fought with projectile weapons of mass destruction. God bless you folks.

But I'm a Google junkie now. There, I've said it. I drank the cool-aid. I got comfy in their bed. I took their cookies, and greedily gobbled them up, panting for more. Larry, Sergey, and Eric all know my name, my life, and my darkest secrets, and sell them to the ones willing to pay for that info. I'll gladly admit that yeah. big G did drop the "evil" ball. But you know what? That ball gets passed around in a wonderful game of Hot Potato. A few years ago, Microsoft had it. And occasionally Apple is caught red-handed. So until I feel that I need to find something that is even better than Google to fit my personal tastes, I'm gonna stay in bed with Google.

Are there any more cookies to nibble on?.....