Google and Me

Google was the best thing to happen to me as an engineering graduate student. Many of my friends shared the opinion, even if they didn't share my background. I have lot of respect for Matlab too, but gratitude towards Google is unmatched (or was till recently). If I ever had chance to thank anyone for my diplomas, thesis or publications (coming soon I hope), a la Oscar acceptance speech, it would be Google, Dr. Patra (my advisor), god and my labmates, in that order.

But something else happened to me, during my struggle of staying afloat in grad school. I fell in love with Linux. I thought that's the way an operating system ought to be. Not that I know a lot of it, but its fun (most of the times). It was also a great insult in the face of MS Windows, the hatred for which is plainly from being in techie fraternity, nothing personal. Google was also standing in the face of Microsoft, causing itches to the very symbol of capitalism. I thought Linux and Google made a perfect match. I didn't have any strong reasons for the existence of the proposed love affair. I guess we like the nice guys to end up together, and victorious.

I was soon using gmail, google maps, google local search. It worked fine on Mozilla and Firefox, and life seemed wonderful. Then came Google desktop search. It was only made for windows. They promised to release it for other platforms soon. The promise was a consolation. And I reasoned to myself, a that Linux user hardly needs it, we have 'locate', 'find' and 'grep'. But then came, google talk, google earth, google videos etc. Again exclusively for Windows, with similar carrot for other platform users. This time it looks like an apology for lack of competence. I am so disappointed. They actually belongs to the other side. I have lost faith in them.

Alas the reckoning has come too late. I am so addicted to using gmail and other stuff. Even this blog site belongs to them. I will incessantly suffer form guilty conscious of being accomplice to the cahoots, pushing consumerism to greater heights (or depths?). I can replace Windows with Linux, or Intel with AMD, but with what I am going to replace Google? Yahoo are more or less useless. Wikipedia was promising, but they have succumbed to Google too. I think their own search was cool. I wish someone one comes up with something new and better, with whom I can ally in kicking their giant butt.