The Column

Motto: Okay Google... what's your goal here? Intro This post is going to be an expansion on something I wrote about in Column #354 . It will (hopefully) complete the series of posts I've written lately about productivity software, Google, Getting Things Done, and all that.  Specifically today I'm writing about Google products, and my growing disillusionment with them. This post will be thorough, longer than most, and generally more well put together. Setting the Googley Stage I'll caveat this up front by saying they are great on the whole, most of my quibbles are just that, quibbles, and that I have them because I'm a power user. I am in deep with Google. Google Products I Still Use Google Search Gmail YouTube Chrome ChromeOS Chromecast Chrome Remote Desktop Google Assistant Google Home Google Photos Google Maps Google Drive Google One Google News Google Sheets Google Docs Google Slides Google Drawings Google Forms Google Keep Google ...

Motto: Google is God There's a Google product you should know about; it's called Google Takeout . It  is not a food service, so don't get excited. Don't make the same joke that literally 5 people I've told about this have made. Google Takeout is a service that allows you to take out  your data from Google - in theory so that you could go to some other service and keep your data. In reality, it's probably best just for seeing an aggregate list of everything they have of yours and about you. I requested an archive of everything they had associated with my account, leaving out Google Drive (because I have 500GB+ in the cloud & don't need them to send me my own files back to me) . Then I spent a week's worth of free time going through it all & taking 5 full pages of notes about what I found. This post is primarily the contents of those notes. Now, before we get into that. I am pro-Google. I use or have used almost every one of their publ...

Motto: Oh Boo-Hoo I've been first-world struggling lately. Five and one-third years ago I wrote a Column about technological ecosystems. This is that table, updated for today: See those green highlights? That's what I'm using nowadays. Do you know how frustrating it is to have an iPhone and not use Safari, MacOS, Apple Maps, Airplay, iTunes, Apple Music, and Siri (I use Siri in some situations because I have to)? Using an iPhone, a Windows Desktop, and mostly Google services is not what you want to do. See the Top 5 for more whining. Somewhat related: It's crazy to me that I can't tell my Google Home what word(s) I want to say to get its attention. I'm not living in the future until I can say "Hey Jarvis", or "Okay Computer", or "Yo Black Mirror" when I want to know what temperature it will be today. Google's forcing the "Okay Google" or "Hey Google" to be the wakeword has literally interject...