Putin Against Google

You know that a country is not on a good path when its leaders criticize that nasty, mean Internet for spreading the news of popular unrest and political protests. The authoritarian government of Vladimir Putin and his puppet Dmitri Medvedev has decried the role that the Internet played in the recent events in Egypt:

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's deputy blamed Google Inc in an interview published on Tuesday for stirring up trouble in the revolution that ousted Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak. "Look what they have done in Egypt, those highly-placed managers of Google, what manipulations of the energy of the people took place there,"Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin told the Wall Street Journal. Such strong comment from one of Putin's most trusted deputies is a clear signal of growing concern among Russian hardliners about the role of the Internet in the unrest which has swept across the Arab world. . . In contrast to state television, Russia's Internet is remarkably free and the home to often scathing criticism of Putin, President Dmitry Medvedev and the entire Russian elite. Russia has so far resisted placing restrictions on the Internet, but analysts say there are a group of hardliners close to Putin who would like to impose controls similar to China's.

Putin, who made his career in the KGB during the Soviet times persecuting dissidents and working as a spy, cannot fail to hate the freedom to exchange information that the Internet offers. His attacks on Google are easy to understand for anybody familiar with how the majority of the people in Russia use the Internet. The greatest and most popular Russian search engine, www.yandex.ru, doesn't index websites in the same way that Google does (based on their usefulness and degree of popularity.)  Yandex is controlled by certain political and financial groups that make sure, for example, that during elections an independent politician doesn't get his or her name listed in any searches.

One of Putin's main fears is that the Russian people will tire of Yandex's manipulation of information and will switch to Google. For now, this hasn't been happening because the Yandex format is still more familiar to the Russian people. Soon, however, they might start waking up to the idea that a search engine that restricts your access to information isn't worth using.

I'm just afraid that when the Russians finally awaken to Google, we will have already lost the last shreds of net neutrality, and Google will become exactly what Yandex is today: a convenient tool for corrupt politicians and the oligarchs who bought them.

Did Google Images Go Back to Its Original Format?

Or am I going crazy? It seems like Google Images mostly went back to its original format and abandoned the idiotic experiment it undertook last week. If so, it must have happened in response to a huge popular outcry against the silly and cumbersome transformation of the Google Image search engine.

I'm extremely glad that I can go back to using it unimpeded by useless experimentation.

Have the Google People Gone Completely Nuts?

It's so annoying that in order to justify their insanely high salaries, the idiots Google has been hiring like crazy started futzing with what used to be the best search engine around. First, Google Search went to the dogs. The way the page is structured now is simply stupid. The lame search term suggestions the system is trying to give me are beyond useless. All they do is get in the way of my searches. The new Google Search keeps trying to give me stuff I really really don't need, which is very frustrating in urgent searches.

As if that weren't enough, now Google has gone and destroyed Google Images. Now, the page with the search results is horribly cluttered. It's next to impossible to understand what the images are or where they are from. Besides, I have still found no way to place these images into my PowerPoint presentations. (If anybody has found their way around this new bit of Google insanity, please tell me how you do it.) I also have no idea how any of the images can be printed out. Which makes the entire Google Images system completely useless. My students have an assignment to bring pictures of certain type of artwork to class, and now I have no idea how they will manage to do that.

What I don't understand is what's the point of messing with a search engine that managed to become world-famous in its original format? Why destroy such a great thing? To make the competitors happy, or what?

Google used to be the homepage on all my computers but obviously not any more. I hope somebody comes up with a normal, simple, clear-cut search engine and takes all of the millions of people dissatisfied with the new Google away from these losers.

I Figured Out Why the IT Guy Hates Me!

Thanks to one of my favorite blogs, I now know why my IT guy hates me. This is exactly how I do my Google searches. I have noticed that the IT guy would make these choking noises while observing me do stuff on my office computer. So this is the reason, huh? Interesting. . .

I will try the new system tomorrow, though, and see how it works. Maybe I will invite the IT guy over to watch my newfound computer prowess.

If the cartoon is too small and you can't see it, click on it or go here and zoom in.

Google Gone Nuts

I'm sure that everybody has noticed the most unwelcome change to Google that took place recently. You can see the new excessively busy and annoyingly Bing-like design on the right.

I have no idea what prompted Google to mess with the simple and uncluttered design that made them the search engine par excellence all over the world. Why they would want to imitate the not nearly as popular Bing.com is completely beyond me.

Google is my homepage at every single one of my computers. I use Google at least a dozen times a day. So imagine my annoyance when instead of a simple and straightforward search results page I got to stare at this confusing mess. What are these people thinking? If I were into the Bing look, I would simply go to Bing and avoid Google altogether.

Thanks to michaelalanmiller.com, I have discovered a way to go to the normal Google homepage. You can find it here. Now, I have to change the homepage option on all my computers, which will finally save me from having to see the mess created of my beloved Google.