I'm the lead developer at The Onion. When I'm not working I enjoy long moonlit walks along the beach with robots, the history of science and technology, and warm fuzzy kittens.

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A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. —Robert A. Heinlein

Google's Bitch

by Jeffrey Weston, Tue Nov 11 7:30 pm, 2008

Back when I used to do tech support, I was trying hard to get people off of Internet Explorer, there were a couple options even then -- but I kept having this conversation:

- I don't want to use Netscape/Opera/Mozilla, Internet Explorer is perfect.
- And how many other browsers have you used before?
- Well, I haven't used any others, but IE is perfect.

I also had this conversation about word processors (remember them?), and OS's. It was extremely hard to get anyone to look at Linux as a server with MS and Sun around. The conversations always went like:

- I don't want to use another X, this X is perfect.
- And how many other kinds of X have you used?
- Well, I haven't used any others. But this one is perfect.

Google does some things really well, obviously. Which is probably why companies are switching over their mail, their ad serving, some of their web applications, their project management, their collaborative word processing, and their code repositories to Google. What worries me about this is that somewhere down the line, folks are going to forget anything else was possible, that "this one is perfect". It's not going to be now, but maybe years from now, when you realize that you've become Google's bitch. It will be the folks that come after the people who made the decision to switch off of Exchange Server, who have used little else but Google for their mail, search, projects. What frightens me honestly, is the return of old fashioned monoculture, while Google currently feels like little companies grouped together under a brand, there's an unprecedented level of trust in the word 'Google' that gives me shivers.