Google “downgraded” the Google Play store. There used to be a feature where you could leave a review/comment for apps you downloaded. I have my Android phone linked to my gmail account, so they can tell if I downloaded the app.
However, they added a new “feature”. You need a Google+ account to write a review. I’m not creating a Google+ account for a review. My gmail account is good enough.
Actually, Google+ has a “no pseudonyms” rule. If I create a Google+ account with the name “FSK”, they could revoke my whole gmail account for breaking the rules!
Instead of leaving my review on Google Play, I went directly to the developer’s website and left my comment there.
Why must everyone make you create an account, in order to use the full features of their website?
Beware of the Google Clowns.
I strongly recommend you read the following article about Google and Infospace.
http://www.benedelman.org/news/010510-1.html
The Google Clowns wrote web search and they are to be congratulated over here. From my narrow range of searches, I think bing.com is producing better search results now.
But after that they seem to have given up. They purchased Android from another company.
Their Chrome web browser is based on many Open Source modules including that from WebKit and the original browser Konqueror. Konqueror was available long before Google came along and everyone acknowledges Konqueror is a fast web browser. I find it wholly unpalatable that Google boasts about the speed of Chrome, when in the same space do not acknowledge the contributations of the Konqueror team that originally produced a fast web browser that ulitmately Google Chrome uses some of.
Yes, I live in a city that has big posters of Google advertising how fast and efficient Chrome is. Yet, Konqueror is not mentioned. There is a word for this.
StreetView was again bought in by Google.
Google boast about how their interview process selects for smart people, yet these clowns buy in all their new stuff.
It seems your precious Google bozos, have messed up their use of Open Source modules given Kent Frederic’s comment on the following web page.
http://www.catonmat.net/blog/code-reuse-in-google-chrome-browser/
Google have copied multiple Open Source modules in such a bad way that bug fixes and enhancements will be propagated back and forth between Chrome (which uses them) and the original Open Source modules.
This is pillaging Open Source without contributing anything back.
I heard that at least Apple does try to contribute back.
Android is based on Linux. Chrome is based on Open Source modules.
I fear the Google clownery will subtract support and attention from Linux and other Open Source efforts.
Sorry, “bug fixes and enhancements will be propagated” should read “bug fixes and enhancements NOT will be propagated “
I don’t know why you keep writing “your precious Google bozos”. I don’t work for Google. Except for their search engine cash cow, none of their products make any money. I moved from Blogger and Google Analytics because it was such a POS. With Linode+Wordpress, I get much more customization options than available on Blogger, such as my “Best Of FSK” script/page. With Piwik, I get much better data than with Google Analytics.
I did interview for a job twice at Google. The second time, the intelligence of the interviewers was much lower than the first time. The second time, one of the interviewers was clearly incompetent. It was an algorithms question. There’s an obvious O(nlogn) solution, but being an interview question, there’s a clever O(n) solution. I couldn’t see it, and when I asked the interviewer, he couldn’t explain the correct algorithm to me.
I was unfairly banned from Google AdSense, and no longer use it. I was considering writing a Firefox extension that randomly clicked on ads, just to ruin Google’s advertising system.
The worse interview I had was at Microsloth in Denmark.
As I had to travel overseas and answer many pre-interview questions and whitboard sessions, the whole interview process easily occupied 4 days of my time in total.
I had multiple face-to-face interviews spread over two days.
I had one interview with the group’s manager. I got every single one of his questions correct.
Then he asked me one final question. I said the correct answer and had virtually written the correct answer on the whiteboard.
The manager then said he was in a hurry and had to interview someone else.
He re-phrased my correct answer and the interview ended there.
After 2 -3 more interviews that day, the recruiter said I didn’t get the job as I had answered the final question to the manager incorrectly.
This was a lie at the worse. At best the manager couldn’t be bothered to listen to my answer or was looking for an exact word answer to his answer.
If they have rejected me for a truthful reason it would have been OK.
But what the manager did was shitty to say the least.
I did tell the recruiter at the time that I had got the correct answer.
But it is fishy. Why jump to reject someone on the very last answer in the interview when every single question was answered correctly beforehand?
Shame on these dishonest clowns!
> I was considering writing a Firefox extension that randomly clicked on
> ads, just to ruin Google’s advertising system.
I really strongly suggest you read the web page given below.
http://www.benedelman.org/news/010510-1.html
You will find the clown’s clownware advertising system is already up the spout.
It is hard to break something already broken. Perhaps you would end up fixing the ClownWare.
Pay-per-click is an inherently defective advertising model.
1. It leads to arguments, over what’s a valid click or not.
2. It rewards spammers, because only stupid people will click on a spam link.
When Adwords was new the cost per click was between $0.05 to $0.15.
It was easy to Google Adwords campaigns to be profitable as you would get a reasonable amount of traffic from them for a decent price.
Remember even if you have a good shareware or trialware software product you will only get 1 – 5 sales for every 100 downloads of your product. This is pretty much a fundamental of the industry.
That is why it is important for the cost per click to be relatively low.
But the Google Clowns have lots of bellies to feed now. They need money for big posters and television commericals advertising “their” Google Chrome web browser (developed from Open Source and Konqueror source code).
The Google Clowns need money to buy in StreetView and Android, which they give away free.
Clicks on Adwords can cost 60 cents to 5 dollars now. It is just too expensive.
It is no longer sensible.
The Google Clowns are sucking the blood out of the Internet.
Unfortunately they have a monopoly. It is erode only slowly at best.
They will make life difficult for people for years to come either due to incompetence or having to make up for their own software incompetence and thirst for buying software developed outside their company.
The Internet needs an index / search and Google provides this. It has almost a monopoly on search. I would advise people to start switching over to bing.com or other search providers. Their monopoly is unhealthy.
Although Google has done good work on web search, Google is becoming more like a parasite every day feeding off the people doing real work provided useful content and software on the Internet.
Google makes its money from advertisers.
There is an inherent conflict of interest. If Google provides a good natural search and advertisers with profitable, well liked products rank highly within natural search results, the Google clowns cannot make a profit.
Google will make most money when advertisers (or anyone with a product to sell) rank poorly in natural search results, so they are forced to buy advertising from them (with a monopoloy).
In my niche, I’ve seen many competitors start off advertising with Google Adwords and then stop after a few months when they realize Google sucks off so much of their money they can’t make a profit. So they even give up, rack up prices or fall back on natural search results.
I’ve had a dominant product for most of the time head-and-shoulders above all competition and so have been able to afford Google clown Adwords.
But Google squeeze me. The clowns have increased the price per click well above the rate of inflation and I can’t see how these prices are determined by competition.
As an example the price per click has increased 3 – 5 fold in the space of 5 years.
I could afford these high click prices as I had good natural search results where the bulk of my sales came from. But the Google clown is squeezing me again. My natural search results dropped dramatically and for no valid reason.
In my niche, poor quality forums rank highly but all the websites with software products are ranked much lower.
The Google Clowns squeeze and squeeze. Their clicks are almost double the price as on bing.com and download sites.
Think about moving to bing.com. Do it before the Google clowns come for your business and start to squeeze you.
Where is your blog post about your interview experience at Google ClownLand and how you felt the baby clowns there were declining in quality?
Damn. I’ve said so much and I just need one thing to make it useful.
1) Try not to use Google Adwords. This monster must be starved of cash. Use download.com or bing.com
2) If you must use Google Adwords, don’t use automatic bidding. Set manual maximum prices for clicks.
3) I personally don’t advertise on the display network, but this is my personal preference. I got burned once and Google refused to acknowledge what went on. This was years ago when things were different, but my whole daily budget for advertising all went at the start of the day. Fishy.
No G+ for me, but Google has so much excellent stuff. However they are getting as control freak-ish as Apple and that is hard to put up with. They also have a way of discontinuing services I like to use, and perhaps it is time to look at a telephone system other than Android.
Unfortunately, Maemo/Meego phones aren’t available on Verizon. I’ve been seriously considering that.
That’s one reason I’m reluctant to invest time in learning Android programming. A few years from now, there’s going to be something better that blows Android away.
I also was disappointed that Google discontinued Google Reader.