After months of telling us that the death of igoogle was imminent, google has finally presented us with what we are going to get now. The users have not been allowed a chance to complain. Why? Probably because we are users, not customers. The customers are the ones who buy the advertising space on the right. If we have nothing to sell, we are just users.
What's wrong with the new regime? Well, it's for people who use google+. I looked at google+ when it started. I still have an account. It is dormant, just like my facebook and twitter accounts are dormant. If I want to talk to someone, I don't shout my news from the rooftops, I write a personal email. Watch it, folks. The next thing google will kill is email.
Now, why do I need a new url? I have an email address. It is sufficient. But the email I received this morning infers otherwise. That email was very frustrating. I had a cataract operation a week ago. Since then I have been enjoying using my computer without glasses for the first time in 15 years. But I could barely read that email. I had to use ctrl+ and ctrl+ doesn't work with images. I am only writing this here because there was no facility to reply to the email. Google have made it quite plain that they know best.
If google staff would stop drinking the coffee in their beautiful offices and think about the people that walk by in the street outside, perhaps they would find that the world is not made up of themselves--20 and 30-somethings with superior intellects, but many older people who have put a toe into the world of new technology but are not interested in going for a 20-mile swim or even in several laps of the local swimming pool. Our physical difficulties and our lack of initial education in things technological make us second class citizens in your world.
Another thing. Some of us want anonymity. It goes with all the security precautions we are constantly being told we must adopt when using computers. So why do you suggest that our new url (which we may not want) should be google.com/+[our.name]? Why should we put our address in our profile? And why on earth should we tell the world what high school we went to? If we have lived 50 or more years since we attended high school it is insignificant and, possibly, something we might not wish to remember.
Well, folks, I have been interrupted in what I was planning to do on the computer this morning. I don't know who, if anyone, will read this, but I thought I would put it into the ether just the same.
Bye now
