Multitudinous Google Gripes and Grievances
Danny Sullivan’s post on Search Engine Watch today outlines the twenty-five things he hates about Google. Among the action items in his open letter: Stop opening products to everyone when you can’t handle the traffic, build RSS feeds into searches, offer linked lists of referrer hits in Google Analytics, and provide easier access to the various Google tools. He’s also downright tired of Google being trumpeted in the media as the “Marcia Brady of search” when there are so many Jans that deserve our attention.
Though the tone of Danny’s post is somewhat humorous, he is serious and he makes several excellent points. He points out a few bugs in Google’s GMail service that many users have been complaining about for a long time. The same goes with his observations about the AdSense program becoming watered down and less effective.
Google is a fine example of a company that’s displaying some very public growing pains. They are bursting with ideas and they throw everything against the wall to see what sticks. They are innovative, headstrong, and more than a little daring, but that’s what makes them successful.
Best of luck to Danny and his crusade. Personally, I’d like to see Google built better translation tools for Japanese pages that actually allow us to draw some context from the generated English text. But I’m not going to build my own list just yet…
