View Single Post
Old 08-10-2011, 02:08 PM   #1
glatt
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Arlington, VA
Posts: 27,717
Not sure about Google

I've been a fan of Google for quite a while now. Their products, and the products they have acquired, have been excellent.

Email is email, but Google does a good job with theirs. Google Earth, which I think they bought from somebody else, is outstanding. The traffic feature for Google Maps is revolutionary. Sketch-up is excellent, but again I think they bought that one. I don't use Google docs, but I know people who love 'em. I'm not going to list all the stuff they do, but even though some of it is *meh*, most of them are outstanding.

But last week, Google had me pissed off and my daughter in tears. It's because of Google+. I signed up for Google+ and have been trying it out. It's fine. Basically, it's a non-Facebook Facebook. I thought it would be neat to invite my kids to Google+. I didn't want them getting active with friends and stuff, but I thought it would be a safe way for them to do stuff online with just the extended family, and I would keep a close eye on them.

Google doesn't have the age restrictions listed anywhere obvious. But I figured if my 12 y.o. daughter wasn't old enough, they would just say "Nope. Sorry. You're too young." So she got to the page where it asks for your d.o.b., and she asked me what to put down. I told her to tell the truth, because I figured this was going to be her real account and one day it would look weird if she's all grown up and her age is off. So she told the truth, and Google said she was too young to have a Google account. Not a Google+ account, a Google account. They shut down her Gmail account! This is an account I signed her up for when she was a baby. She uses it to email everyone. It's her real name. Not unicornfan2000 or any crap like that. This was going to be her account through adulthood, and she was going to be one of the few in her generation who were early enough to snag their real name in Gmail.

So she was devastated and just started sobbing. She had lots email addresses for friends who had moved away, and no easy way to get them back. She saw her social connections being cut. She's already at an emotional age, and this just completely pushed her over the edge. I was frantically looking at the options, and they said that *if* it was a mistake and we entered the wrong birth date, all we had to do was fax a copy of her birth certificate to Google to prove she is an adult. Also, she could enter her credit card number to prove she was an adult, and they would charge like 50 cents to her card. I figured my credit card wouldn't work, because the name wouldn't match, and I wasn't about to go forging her birth certificate to get her email back. I was furious at Google. The FUCKERS! So my wife came up to see what all the ruckus was about. She figured, it couldn't hurt to enter her own credit card info, so she did. Google charged her like 50 cents, and my daughter's Gmail account was turned back on. Even though the names didn't match. All they cared about was that a kid could get their hands on a credit card.

So that's what turned me against Google. Even though it turned out OK in the end, why did they have to put us though that?

An then yesterday, my wife updated Firefox, and the Google bar, which was already crippled in the last version of FF, was removed entirely. Google won't support it any more. This multibillion dollar company apparently can't find the resources to support their toolbar any more. I assume they are trying to push Firefox users to Chrome. That's something right out of Apple's or Sony's playbook.

Don't be evil. Bullshit. You make my daughter cry, and I'm going to harden my heart against you.
glatt is offline   Reply With Quote