Why I Love Google

Source

So, it was pointed out recently that I have an apparent "fan boy" lean towards Google.  I'll admit, I bring up Google a lot when talking about tech, and the latest trends.  Over the long haul since the day I first opened my Gmail (and before that when they were my exclusive go to for searches) I've found their products easily integrated into my day-to-day life. 

What's great is that from one email address I have so many services and options to choose, or not to choose, from.  This means that I'm not constantly creating logins for everything, which cuts down on time logging into to services that I use regularly.  This of course means that while I'm checking my email, calendar, and even blogging (yes, Blogger is part of Google!) all that time I save by logging in once is time that can now be given to productivity - getting things done!

But is that all there is for my existence on Google's servers?  There's actually quite a long list of available services to Google users.

Gmail, Contacts, Blogger, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Drive, Hangouts, Keep, Voice, YouTube, Sites, Groups, Maps, Photos, Play Music, Messages for Web, and Arts & Culture

The above list - I'm sure - is just a sliver of what's available from Google if you have a gmail.  Much more if you're a business or educational facility that uses GSuite.

Best of all the services I use on a daily basis is the Google Assistant.  Saying the hot phrase "Hey Google," followed by a command such as, "what's on my agenda today?" or "what time does Starbucks close?" yields results that make it easy to find the information you need.  Apple's Siri (yes I have an iPod and tested Siri for myself) just doesn't compare.

The focus of every product from Google is productivity.  This proved especially helpful during my time in academia.  Saving something to my Google Drive proved useful for backup if I needed to pull something up on campus and didn't have time to open my laptop and plug in my USB drive.  Best of all, since my professors required projects/assignments to be submitted in *.docx, *.xlsx, or *.pptx (MS Office formats), I could use Google Docs to

• Collaborate on a group project without needing to fish through emails looking for the current version of whatever you're working on
• Comment and suggest edits to existing projects
• Use the Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps on my phone and tablet to edit assignments and projects when away from my laptop
• Save projects as MS Office, *pdf, *.epub, or any other format you need!

That last bit really came handy as professors required MS Office formats.  I mean, really came in handy.

Google Keep has always been handy as a way to have a shopping list.  Best part is that as you're shopping you can check off what you put in your cart and it'll cross it out and move it down so you know what's left to get.  This is especially handy with to-do lists and other times you need to keep track of things and mark off when done.  My wife and I keep a shared grocery list that we add to as things get low and when it comes time to shop we both have the same list so either of us can shop and keep updated on what we need.

I could go on with every service I've used, how I've used it, and how it actually helps me, but we would be here all day.  I guess looking back over what I've written here it seems that I may be slightly fanatic about Google.  You know what?  I'm completely cool with that!  Some people may not even like Google, and may even have an absurd idea that Google is some sort of Skynet or the Matrix or the one of the omens of the apocalypse, but that's just infantile paranoia and a conspiracy fantasy.

Why I'm Going to Miss Google Plus

UPDATE (02-06-2019):  It would seem that due to another discovered security breach Google will be closing down Google+ for consumers by April 2019.

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In case most of you haven't heard, Google is shuttering it's social network Google Plus (Google+, G+).  This is sad news to the many of us who use the service to network with like minded individuals and explore the latest in cutting edge science and technology discussions.

This news fell very hard on me, since I have spent many years networking with colleagues and others in my academic field and beyond.

But that wasn't the greatest thing about G+.  If you compared G+ to other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, the differences couldn't be more obvious.

Twitter, for the most part, is filled with the most random of postings.  It's sort of, at least to me, a platform for ranting about what's wrong in life with the appropriate "hashtag".  Of course public debate, passive aggressive "arguing", and people shooting down opinions also exist.  But if you're like me--and don't have many followers--then for the most part your twitter feed is pretty tame, aside from the occasional drama that may spill over.

Facebook has become a cesspool of negativity and politically drawn battle lines.  It's an opinionated war zone that seems much more like a scene from news coverage of the Iraq War than the place I once remembered; a place where the parade of drunken pictures from the previous night's festivities began sometime around Sunday afternoon and continued into the early hours of Monday.  By and large I've noticed that most of my friends and I don't really use Facebook that often except to use its chat feature (because not everyone uses Google!).  A few friends are still there though and sharing memes and what not, but even still, the social landscape of Facebook has changed.  Facebook now resembles an vast desert, like the planet Naboo from Star Wars, than the lush forest it once was.

Google+ was anything but; and is to this day the least politically fueled social network.  Just going onto my feed exposed me (based on what and who I followed) to the latest trends in science and technology.  What I always saw was people helping other people, sharing some awesome picture of a sunset while they were traveling, or posting some update about this or that scientific study.  Politics?  I'm most certain they existed (I'm not naive!), however because I was never following anything strictly political, and even my groups were always Meteorology and other STEM related, I never saw anything promoting this or that politician.

Now, what prompted Google to decide to shutter G+ was because allegedly there was a data breach that while Google fixed the issue did fail to advise the issue to the 500k users who were potentially affected.  That and Google claims that the social network just isn't used enough.  From my perspective this is just a drop in the bucket compared to the pervasive infractions against personal privacy that Facebook has not only committed and attempted to cover up, but has also tried to rope Google, Apple, Amazon, and any other tech company into the fiasco.  Sometimes I wonder how there are still millions of people on Facebook (then I remember my friends and I using their chat client and not willing to move elsewhere. D'oh.)

I think the greatest reason why I will continue to greatly appreciate G+ until I can no longer gain access around August 2019, and miss it after it's gone, is because at very least I could log on to a social network and just be me.  More than that I knew that logging on to G+ would leave me intellectually edified and in the know of those things that I actually cared about and wanted to know about.  It was nice knowing that I could access a social network where people were generally positive and were genuine (well, except for some of the bots, but those were rare).  But I suppose that wasn't good enough for Google.  In a way, I hope that perhaps something will come along to change Google's mind.

Just an idea: If you have a Google account and activate your Google Plus profile and begin sharing (if you haven't).  Maybe if Google sees a massive influx of users someone might think to themselves, maybe there's life still in her that's worth saving.