Slashdot: YouTube Passes Yahoo As #2 Search Engine 

This is truly sad: Yahoo is slowly disappearing in the mists of insignificance. I have always loved Yahoo - and it’s (too) many free services were often far ahead of anyone else (including Google’s great free stuff).

Yahoo for example had free eMail and Calendar - and a  great Desktop Synching Tool long before GMail was even on the drawing board. The same is true for Yahoo Groups in comparison to Google Groups.

But Yahoo has also the strange talent of fucking itself up.

The interfaces were often overdone - and there was always too much advertising as well. And there was always a serious lack of “cooleness” and “buzz” surrounding Yahoo’s tools.

It’s now just a matter of time before they die, since all desperate attempts to fix itself haven’t helped.

This is just a preview - you can watch the whole interview here.

It is an illusion that there is such a thing as privacy on the Internet, since everything is based on “labeled” data packets that have your address on it.

And most people give away their privacy by shamelessly sharing and providing big companies (not just the Google) with personal information.

How can you force companies to protect your privacy if you don’t do it yourself?

Google gives the Blogosphere a new toys - and the techworld goes bonkers. Calm down people, it’s just a browser.

I’ll admit: it’s nice, clean and works as advertised. Sure it’s minimalism is very appealing - especially when you have propped up your Firefox browser with a gazillion plug-ins.

Dangers ahead

I am just afraid that more companies will build their browser - which mostly serves their web sites and web applications better. Google’s Chrome is supposed to run it’s services like GMail especially fast (I didn’t notice any difference). Microsoft does the same with it Windows Update Website. Opera and Firefox are truely neutral, can’t say anything about Safari, because I never use it.

I don’t want to be forced to use a different browser for different websites.

A look at the Features

Speed. Not really that faster than Firefox. I don’t notice any difference by using it.

Crash Protection. Maybe I have once a year a web page that hangs up on me. So not really needed. And I don’t need another Task Manager (like the Windows one) for web applications. It’s  a nerd feature.

Interface. Nice and clean. Well done Google.

Memory Usage. A bit less then FF again, but not much less. FF uses more memory, because it offers the plug-ins more “hooks” to work with.

Adaptibility. You hardly can change anything in the browser. So you hardly can adapt it to your style of web surfing.

Plug-ins. You can expand the bloody Chrome thing. As much as it simplicity as appealing - for daily usage I need several plug-ins to be a happy surfer. For example: Google is obviously very interested that you see all advertising it throws at you  - it’s their business. But I prefer my websites advertising free.

Bookmarking. Very easy to make bookmarks, but there are no extra tools to manage them. For example I have over 4.500 bookmarks - just dumping them in a list with no serious organizational tools like in Firefox it would be  a nightmare. I am sure Google will improve that, but for now it’s a definitive show stopper for me.

Who should use it?

If you are a casual Internet User you should stick to Internet Explorer. Such users are usually overstrained by any browser, so stick to the one you kinda know.

For more pleasure and a more customized surfing experience there is only one choice: Firefox.

Update: One more thing that’s a showstopper for me: no mouse gestures!

Remember: You don’t your mail on GMail - you are only allowed to access it for free when Google wants you to.

So always keep local copies of your email (by using Outlook or any other normal eMail program to access your Gmail account) - AND get an additional eMail account somewhere else as a backup too.

Never trust just ONE provider.

Google founder Larry Page married last weekend. All the best to him and his lovely wife.

The company itself made a big PR coup by joining to War on Climate Change by developing alternative energy sources, especially for it’s global power hungry server farms.

Good thing that the wedding was total eco disaster: flying in all the guests with private jets to a small island, using huge amounts of electricity to keep the party and the drinks cooled.

Nice work Mister and Misses Google. I guess working on climate change and changing your lifestyle applies only to the little people?

So much about the famous company motto "Do no evil"?! It just proves that most rich people preach modesty to the rest of us, while they indulge the glorious wasteful lifestyle in privacy.