I have an admission; I love Google.
I was an early adopter (from Yahoo!) and even snagged a beta GMail account when they first announced it. Over the years, I've come to expect Google's arrogance and their overzealous contextual ads displayed everywhere from my private emails to my RSS feed.
I've also come to assume that if their servers go down, that there isn’t anyone I can call, email or Tweet at to complain that they're screwing up my productivity.
But one thing I didn't expect is that there would be so many areas of Google that are seemingly disconnected from one another.
Take Google Chrome for example. It’s innovative, simple and stable, and something that was a breath of fresh air in an already crowded market. But where is its leading cross-browser plugin, Google toolbar? Nowhere?
So I now have 800 bookmarks that I don't have access to. I can't give a quick glance on any site to tell if I have an appointment, or a new mail, or translate a word by hovering over the word, unless I switch back to FireFox.
Then there's Google Talk, it's unobtrusive, simple to use, doesn't eat up your CPU or memory and does exactly what it says on the tin. And the best bit. If you're not on your usual PC, you can use it inside Gmail. But why oh why, if you want to talk to more than one person at once (Group Chat) you have no choice but to use the version in GMail?
And then there's Tasks. Every major calendar application has the ability to manage tasks, it’s not hard, it’s an appointment that rolls on until it’s marked complete (sometimes with a few extra features).
So why did it take Google so long to even get Tasks into GMail? Not even where it should be, they later included it in Google Calendar. But the main kicker, is that it doesn't sync with your mobile phone (even though Mail, Contacts & Calendar do).
Sometimes you do have to ask yourself, is this making it easier for me or by using a Google application, am I restricting what I can do with my information?
Image via Planet Chiropractic