Good-bye, Google (Part I)

Last week Google announced they would be personalizing everyone’s searches regardless of whether they were logged in or not. I’m not a privacy nut, but this just seems wrong to me. I know, you can opt-out of the service, but how many people even know their searches are being personalized are are internet savvy enough do it? (Almost anyone who reads this blog probably is, but that’s not to say you’re the average internet user.)

Google news of late has gotten me thinking about search engines and what they’re supposed to do. As I mulled it over, I realized I’m not really interested in which web pages tell me what I want to know, I’m interested in what I want to know. Google only gives specific answers if you ask for something Google Calculator knows how to deal with. (Additionally, I often have the problem that a lot of results Google gives me are irrelevant to my search–many times I cannot even find my search terms on the page using the browser’s Find functionality.)

At the same time, I am starting to be concerned about putting all my eggs in one basket: Google Search, Gmail, Google Reader, Google Maps, the list goes on. Earlier this year, Google broke the internet (which could happen to any search engine) and accidentally shared Google Documents with contacts users hadn’t given permission to access (which could have happened to any online text editing service). Incidents like this are subtle reminders to me that it may not be a good idea to put too much trust in a powerful company.

A testamonial about interviewing for Google changed my perspective on the Mountain View company. The number of questions the interviewers asked that focused solely on advertising revenues (2 out of 4) made me associate Google less with internet services and more with advertising companies like Lamar. It struck me that they’re less interested in providing great products and more interested in providing products that increase their ad revenues, which, while perfectly fine, makes them seem lame.

It hasn’t taken long for me to start relate to articles like this one which question whether Google is friend or foe, and articles like this one and this one sparked my interest in Bing, which I’d played with when it premiered but didn’t find much different from Google. As the second article points out, Bing is starting to provide answers where it can rather than mere links, a tactic Google might avoid, since its business strategy is so wound around advertising revenues. It might not be a good business decision to start giving the answers rather than driving traffic to sites with the answers. While Bing makes its money from advertising, it’s backed by Microsoft, which has a pretty good source of revenue through other means; Google doesn’t.

Those are the high points of my case against Google, the points that have convinced me to start looking at alternatives. I’ve abandoned Google Search (which I’ll discuss in Part II of this post), and my experience with Google Wave lasted all of a week: it sounds cool, and it looks cool, and I want it to be cool, but it’s just not. I’m sticking with GMail and Google Reader for the moment, but when I start a new job in a couple weeks and no longer have wireless during the day, being able to access my RSS feeds on my iPod Touch will be much less important, and I’ll probably switch to a desktop aggregator. In the meantime, GMail is awesome, but I do hope a Google Glitch doesn’t start showing my emails in Google Search results, and if I find a good alternative, I’ll have to seriously consider making the change to it (if you have any suggestions, let me know in the comments).

For a rundown of alternatives to Google Search, jump to Part II of this post.