Catchy title, isn't it? I think so. It has that je ne sais quoi that inspires all sorts of emotional responses. You know, the type of emotional responses whe should reserve for more important worldly matters, but we don't.
Anyways, Google is well and recommended, of course. It's just that this is the end of Google for me. Last night they removed the /ncr page and now I'm forced into all this feature-rich interactive nonsense I didn't ask, I didn't want and I never will, from a web search engine.
I've been weighting all privacy concerns too for a long time already. Google ToS across all their offerings are patently clear in that I have none (as far as Google is concerned. It does protect my privacy from third parties though. Or at least it says it does). The only reason I put up with all this misery for so long, is because there's really no other credible alternative to google out there. But I hadenough.
So between not being able to turn down features I don't want and terms of service I don't agree with, I do what is in my power to do; I cheat from a company that I feel is cheating me:
- I'm keeping my gmail account because it serves its greater purpose of fooling spam away from my pop accounts. It was always its only purpose.
- I'm adopting Scroogle for at least as long as it can survive Google constant attempts to stop 3rd-party wrappers around its search engine. After that I will probably move back to Dogpile (been in and out of it before. But wasn't then so motivated as I am now to give Google the finger).
- I never used any of the remaining Google services, never found a need for them, and never will. So I'm fine there.
- Eventually, I'll stop using Google altogether when alternatives start to show up. The years have told me this is just the beginning of the end. As the number of people complaining about Google keeps increasing and the company distances itself more and more from the early promise, in line with the maxim "nothing lives forever", Google is actually paving the road for alternatives. Much like Altavista and Yahoo inequities eventually paved the way for Google.
And this is my manifesto. Done on a programming forum, of all places.
