Well that didn't work out the way I was hoping.
Some of you probably noticed that I no longer have obnoxious and sometimes hilariously misdirected ads flanking these blog posts. I will miss the days of mentioning centaurs and yielding ads for horse vitamins. This was not a matter of my choosing, however. Google AdSense accused my blog of "invalid click activity" and pried my earnings-to-date from my icy Reynaud's-numbed fingers. And there went my meager stand-in for employment. I appealed, they denied my appeal, and that was that. I'm sure nothing I could say would mean a thing to the monolith that is Google.
I was very angry about this, and considered switching to Bing for all my searching needs, just to spite Google. But then I realized that, for me, at least, the internet pretty much IS Google, and vice versa. I would have to change my email address, move my blog to Wordpress...lose access to the convenience of GoogleDocs. Ugh. I don't even want to think about how much work that would be (because...I have so many other important things to do?).
Well, they say when god shuts one door, he leaves you a Molotov cocktail to hurl through the window. That gasoline-soaked-rag-in-a-bottle fell into my lap in the form of Jewgle. Yes, Google for Jews. I heard about it on NPR (because NPR gets me). I though, HA, I'll show you, Google, I'll take my search queries to the chosen people. So I typed jewgle.com into my browser. Nothing happened. Much to my chagrin, I had to Google "Jewgle." The irony of the situation was not lost on me (I'm not a schmuck). If you're wondering, it's jewgle.org.
I was ready to start searching for pictures of unicorns and baby animals the kosher way. I was so stoked. For about the time it took for the page to load. Then my enthusiasm flagged. The cursor appeared on the right side of the search box. I started typing 'unicorn' and my keystrokes appeared in Hebrew. Fail. Epic fails for all the girls and boys.
My fight isn't over yet, though. As Yahweh is my witness, I am henceforth a Bing user when it comes to internet searching. Until I forget and Google something by force of habit. I am far too lazy to fully realize my vendettas. I'm sure I'll still Google from time to time, but I'm NOT going to be happy about it. Dammit.
I just can't get used to Bing, but apparently 10 out of 15 users who switched from Google to Bing stayed with Bing.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea where I got that stat, or if I made it up, but I feel like I need to switch to be one of the cool kids
Ha ha! I love the irony of you having to Google Jewgle. Google are a terrible company to deal with - they are the most faceless and hard to contact company in the world I think. Sorry about losing your earnings :-(
ReplyDeleteThanks for the commiseration, folks. Google makes some really great products and services, but they're a little too much like the Wizard of Oz, but with a titanium-reinforced curtain separating us peons from the people pulling all the strings. So Bing it is, for now anyway.
ReplyDeleteI'm starting to feel for Google what I have felt for Verizon for a long time...that they are an evil empire and need to be destroyed (or at least be given a good bitch-slapping). I'm with you on this one!
ReplyDeleteYea, and it's so disappointing because Google is always all "don't be evil." They make you want to believe it's all puppies and rainbows. Sadly, it took this experience to put into perspective some of the qualms people have about the Google Books project. Maybe it's not a good idea to let a faceless monolith control so much information? Perhaps?
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