I'd like a consult for a Googlectomy, please!

While my coffee is still brewing, i do the equivalent of warming up the car.  I go to my laptop and start up my search engines so when my cuppa joe is done, I'll be all ready to rock.  The keyboard is waxed and i'm ready to surf.

Normally, Google is my friend.  Sometimes the letters are decorative to let me know if i scroll over them that it's a special day.  Google sweetly brings me good things in the morning in a gentle sort of way.  Today it turned on me.

Google, oh Google!  What did i do to deserve this?  I come to you for almost everything, like a faithful old friend, and then, before i've had a decent absorption level of caffeine in the morning, you assault my eyes with some preposterous new background!  And what's worse, you expect me to be pleased with this?  You're so convinced i'll be pleased with this that you hide the method to change the background, but don't even give me the option to turn the blasted thing back the way it was.  That's mighty arrogant thinking, there, Google.  Talk about user-antagonistic!

In the past, if we wanted to change something, we could log onto Google Labs and see what was being offered.  Not so this time.  Oh no.  This time it was forced down our throats with a Google's way or the highway attitude that makes me not want it even if i did find a background i liked.  Not cool, guys.  What the hell were you thinking.

And oh, let me tell you, am i ever not alone on this one.  Google has gotten so much negative reader feedback i'm surprised it hasn't crashed even their servers.  People are screaming at them to get this thing off their screens.  They're accusing Google of Bing-Envy.  They're asking when Google turned into Yahoo.  They're furious that there's no opt-out option. Well, there were two comments out of the hundreds of thousands that thought it was kinda cute.  I suspect they were written by an employee's mother and girlfriend.

One comment made to me by a similarly outraged friend was this: "Google may have done more for other search engines in 10 short hours than they have been able to do for themselves in 10 years!"  No kidding, huh?


One broad went so far as to post the Twitter addy for one of the VP's so everyone could tweet complaints to the management immediately.  I suspect that woman is on an alternate device at this moment ordering a new phone because hers exploded.

The moral of the story, Google, Dearest, is that it's not always easier to get forgiveness than permission.  The people have tweeted.

Lily Robertson can be reached at canopicjargon@gmail.com where there's a lovely background she was able to choose deliberately and can turn off at will.  Oh yes, and also on Facebook.