Irreconcilable

I told a friend in a real face to face meeting about my plans to move forward without Google and his response was simple.  “It’s creepy enough that they’ve photographed your house!”

Really. Who took this picture? Could this be a violation of Privacy? I am sure to some, this does not constitute a violation of privacy? But nobody asked me! I did NOT optin!

Irreconcilable Differences – They Know Too Much

• Somebody, some agent of Google, stood (of drove) in front of my house, on my street, and took photographs.  What if my kids were playing in the front yard? You see the cars seats.  Is this an advertisement to the gnarley-ones that “We have Kids! Come on by!”  Is it necessary to make the License Plates readable?  Or the bumper stickers??? You know where I live, you know I have kids, you know my Mom’s silver car and her license plate.  Yes we have a minivan.  Great information for door to door marketing.  If you asked me, “Can I take your picture?” I’d be flattered.  I’d say Sure.  But you DIDN’T.  I did not agree, opt in, signup or give permission in any way.  I want to Google to remove this photo. It is creepy.
• Even more creepy is the depth of data they have on the inside.  The difference is that I opted in for that.  Here’s why.  In his early years, Google was quite handsome.  His startup was impressive.  He battled the Blue giants and Monsters armies of softie micros and kicked ASS.  But the relationship has changed.  As he grew into a new type of federal reserve, he lost sight of his roots.  Money does that.  When Google went public on the most silvery shiny badass nitro nuclear rocket ship, stuff started to change. I don’t think Google cares much for me anymore.  They care alot ABOUT me, not FOR me.  Following is a list of data that I have shared with him over the years:

1. All my contacts, and information about who I contact the most.
2. All my most personal, intimate thoughts I have shared with my wife.
3. All my least personal thoughts about everything ranging from box turtle care to methods for dental care.
4. All of my purchases that were confirmed over email. Books, Hats, toenail clippers.  Ughhhh!
5. My favorite RSS feeds
6. Very confidential (top secret) business information as well as practice bubble charts in docs.google
7. Lots of critically important dates in calendar.google.com

• Now, they are getting in tight with Big Energy and Utilities.  They have big plans with big friends like GE.  The only thing I like about GE is their medical equipment division and 30 Rock.  Big utility providers like PG&E, PEPCO, TXU, Reliant, DTE, and many more are teaming with Google to set up fancy monitors on your residential meters to feed energy consumption data to your google account.  A search engine company? OMMFG!!!  They are now going to know about my energy usage.  I wasn’t really concerned about giving up my search terms, or my emails with Google.  But they have simply gone to far.  I often think that Google is gonna suffer the fate of Icarus.  Bing, Yahoo, Wolfram or someone else is gonna play the role of either the Sun or the Ocean on Googles wax/feather wings.  I know, Google has played a significant role in making data access way better than ever possibly imagined 3 years ago.  But the moment they went public, the data-freedom fighters became the institution they fought against.  Now, like Walmart, it is an institution that I want to avoid.
• Let’s just say, that in the early days, the founders were thinking of naming the company “ogle”.  Defined by urban dictionary, Ogle, is to “to look at someone as if ones eyes are about to pop out of ones head.”  Then, just for fun, let’s say that in the early months, the same founders realized the ogle.com was already taken, so they added another “o” to make “oogle”.  Defined by urban dictionary, “Oogles are street rats that don’t have street smarts. They are the ICP kids, the tweekers on bikes, the 15 year olds who runaway cause they think it’s cool, not cause their lives at home weren’t working out.”  Hmmmm.  At the moment they considered “oogle” the founders read urban dictionary and realized the bad idea.  So, they tried a number of other options, like boogle, toogle, soogle, foogle, doogle, roogle, and others.  Nothing was working.  Then the very first Stanford Phd Mathematician finally spoke up.  He was trying earnestly to call attention away from himself by flicking boogers and drawing moustaches on guys in playgirl.  But he finally spoke up.  ”Googol! The 3rd largest known number. Let’s be a big number!” Nobody knew what he was talking about.  Nobody ever really listened to him.  He kinda looked like he was carrying 5 seperate strains of flu and colds, anemic.   Nevertheless, the founders of Googol, liked it, but didn’t know how to spell it.    B-I-N-G-O B-I-N-G-O B-I-N-G-O and Google was it’s name-o.  The point of this ramble, was the unhealthy process by which they derived the name of the company.  SOOOOO?  Why didn’t they choose “Graham’s Number“?   What if we knew of Google as Graham?

To Do List: Divorce Google

In mid Feb 2009, the day after Valentines, when the sugar high went south, I realized that “Google is Out to Get Me“.

4 months later, I am officially declaring my intent to divorce myself (completely, comprehensively, 100%ly) from Google.

Heretoforthwith, I shall refer to the aforementioned company as a STGRB in reference to short term gamma ray bursts. STRGB will be italicized.

Actually, I am not, some readers have told me that they are confused.  In fact, it has sorta confused me.  So I plan to refer to Google as Google.  Just remember, they’re really headed toward a gamma ray burst.

Forthwith from here, I am gonna maintain a to-do list:

1. Cancel google.mail accounts (4-7 of them) … this I am gonna have to do last, but I really want to do it first.
2. Scrub down google mail contacts.  607 contacts over the years.  Only about 100 matter to me.
3. DONE! (and a good way to drive traffic to blog) Announce to friends and family that I have divorced google and I can be reached via other means.
4. Any accounts that use the old google account to verify anything (amazon, fb, wells fargo, etc.) need to get changed.
5. DONE! Remove ALL data, documents, spreadsheets, etc for documents.google.com
6. DONE! Unhook from the reader.google.com
7. DONE! Shut down analytics.google.com
8. DONE! Clear my schedule from calendar.google.com
9. Remove all Google embedded functionality from browsers, open office (not MS) products, wherever they might be
10. Start using other search engines.  Look for the nonames that are gonna be some names maybe someday soon
11. Formally request full, binding, irrevocably legal separation and divorce publicly to Google.
12. {Space reserved to todo}
13. {Space reserved to todo}
14. Hug my kids and pick them up from the laundromat.
15. Be a great husband and not put our kids in dryers.
16. Take my medicine.  Oh Crap.

Oh the places i’ll go to get away from Google.  I am soooooooooooo excited.  I feel like I am kicking a nasty habit.  Getting off the heroine.  Confessing my sins.  To EVERYONE.

Maybe the next blog will explain why.  Or maybe I’ll explain how costly this divorce could be from David’s (& Goliath, duh!) perspective.