I’ve been Googled

by Steve Mathew

It all started innocently (doesn’t it always?).

At first, I let you nibble at my email, admittedly only my non-work email. You know; the emails from mailing lists, website registrations and other dodgy places. You handled it fine - not surprisingly, you’ve been handing lots of data for a while now. No mess, no fuss at all. And you did say free?

Then it had to happen, you wanted more. You wanted to see my photos. All relationships go like this, I thought. OK, just a few, and then some more, eventually you had all my pics. Where’s this to end?

Then one day you offered to take care of my blog. I thought, “Well, it’s only for experimentation, not really core business functionality.” OK, what the hell. Oh, and while you’re at it, won’t you track those updates for me. And email me when anyone mentions my name on the net.

“Hey, wanna dump that expensive and bloated web analytics package you have invested thousands in?” you asked. Damn right, click. Ahh. “Oh, it’s free too”. Oh well, in that case, here all my websites (and my clients’ sites).

OK, so let’s take stock: You have my email (some of it), my blogs, my news, and my website stats. Oh, and when I dumped Messenger, I starting talking with you. But it’s still looking good, even though this relationship is feeling kinda one-sided.

Then one day you tempted me with a calendar, email for my business and even document collaboration. Whoa, steady girl. I like it, but I am feeling hooked. What… did you say 25gigs of space - enough for all my email correspondence going back to 1998? Cool, thanks, I’ll take it - and get one for my whole company while you’re at it. Ahhh, company calendars, instant messaging, sharing of contacts, and a resting place for my 78,543 emails. I like the way you kindly worked over a weekend and slurped them all off my company’s mail server. Monday morning all my colleagues were hooked too - I guess that was your plan, huh? Did you say 99.9% uptime? And that my data is backed up on several continents? Good, that’s what I thought.

OK now, smart-ass, help me with my blogs I read. Ta-da, you say, 47 of your favourites reads all tucked into one warm ‘n fuzzy place. My head’s spinning as I share links with my friends, reading the latest from a coffee shop - without wifi.

I’m starting to feel like a kid in a candy store when I discover my phone can get all this action too.

Now, when am I going to find time for sketching and scribbling notes?

This should be illegal.

For the record, I also use these too: Adsense, Adwords, Books, Earth, Finance, Sites, News