Monday, December 15, 2008

Don't be evil

...is, of course, Google's motto (a nice stark contrast to Microsoft's "Include just enough bugs in everything that they'll be sure to buy next year's version").

But over the past couple weeks, I've had a couple of Google-related incidents which were perhaps not evil per se, but certainly worrying.

First off, GMail. As far back as I can remember, my GMail account has had a VERY healthy and thriving spam folder (often between 150-200 messages). Currently, that number sits at...seven.

Now, I'm not complaining about the lack of spam. Rather, I'm starting to wonder if GMail has been reprogrammed to block some spam from reaching my account at all. And although I've never had a real message accidentally sent to spam, I still like the idea of being able to see everything, just in case.

Secondly, I've been using Google Toolbar for a few years now, and one of my favourite features of it is the pop-up blocker. Right now, the toolbar is telling me that it has blocked 615 pop-ups since it was installed (I suspect the real number is much higher).

Yet lately, it's been behaving much more aggressively - among the things it's blocked have been the Blogger "upload picture" window, links I've right click+"open in new window"ed, and links I've clicked on in GMail messages!

It's one thing to have an effective pop-up blocker, it's quite another for it to suddenly stop recognizing situations where I probably do want the pop-up.

So like I said, Google's not exactly being evil...but they're a little closer to that line than they were a month ago.

--Ryan

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