iGoogle personalises personal pages on other people's behalf Google has angered some of its personalised homepage users by running tests of an apparently unpopular experimental layout, and refusing to let them opt out or tell them how long the tests will last. The firm announced the trials on its "Personalising Google" group pages on 8 July. To date, there are 579 overwhelmingly …
I've had it for a while now and it has meant I've stopped using iGoogle as my home page. They layout is ruined, it takes longer to load and they've expanded certain boxes without the option to shrink them and made other smaller without the opportunity to make them larger.
Add to that their "feedback" form offers no way of commenting on the new layout, only iGoogle in general, you can't even say "i prefer the old one and I want it back".
I've got this revamped look on one of my accounts, and because of my wide screen monitor it looks really good, but those without screen real estate will be very annoyed (as would I be on my non-widescreen monitor 'puter).
It does have usability bugs though, and it's pretty slow to change tabs, which is annoying.
I still can't understand why they haven't included an opt-in/opt-out though - exactly what data are they trying to gather - the most negative statement about Google on it's discussion forums ever?
Matt
This post has been deleted by its author
I haven't been presented with the new layout yet, but they would have a hard time making the Gmail widget worse. When I click on an email, I want to read it and then decide what to do with it (usually delete). But it doesn't open Gmail proper if I do that - it just gives me an entirely pointless preview screen of the email, and if I want to delete or move it, I have to go back to iGoogle and click on the Gmail header.
Why can't it just open the email in Gmail when I click on it? It wouldn't take any longer.
Why do all big corporations like Google and MS (etc) think they can just ignore their customers?
Well, because they can, the reason being that we are stupid, lazy, can't be bothered to change, love our free stuff too much.
If you don't like it, just stop using it for heaven's sake!
Paris, because she hasn't got a clue either.
Glad to know that I'm not the only one whose carefully crafted Ebay search string now returns incredible quantities of crap I Do Not Want.
I wonder if there's a natural corporate life cycle to online enterprises. Someone with brains gets a good idea and implements it. Eventually, it becomes so successful that the bean counters and marketing flacks horn in on it and start to make changes that no user ever asked for, actively thrusting such changes down hapless throats, whereupon the original user base leaves and the cycle begins somewhere else.
Yes there is a natural life cycle to all businesses. It can get sort of complex but the three stages can be thought of as Sunrise, Plateau, and Sunset. The 'plateau' stage is where the bean counters and marking guys get involved. This makes their current customer base leave, then the company enters the 'sunset' phase where everyone bemoans the good old days but knows that the business is doomed.
P.S. There are lots of different terms for the sunrise/sunset stuff - I just like these cause it's easy to remember.
in the results on how many none google-chosen-'testers' hits they take just off the publication of the reverse of the solution.. copy/paste>set to value to 1 and have a look.. yes/no descision with a stay or revert result coming out in the wash..
the negative feeling that's powering the meme-thingy's propagation on the interwebs is as motive as any positve opinion, possibly more-so.. bad news travels fast as they say..
bets that google are watching the stats as we type?
or do we think they're just numpties?
the thumb should give you a clue on my choice of end-state with regards the iggoggle mod
Both of these two Frisco Cereal Bowl (Fruits, Nuts n Flakes) area Big Liberal (read Socialists or Fascists) have grown WAY TOO BIG for their britches. Whether it's arrogant A-hole Jobs and his Apple Dictatorship that the Apple Kool Aid Drinkers Zig Hiel to every 4 month ever-more expensive Gadget release (bugs n all) which chokes off individual freedom of ownership (especially the iPhony) as Apple decides what YOU can put on something YOU bought; or the fools at Google that truly believe that they rule the world just because they are the CURRENT defacto search engine (remember Alta Vista's dominance? Then AOL's?, Where are they now?)
I'd say here that Yahoo's new home page is an alternative, but the morons at Yahoo have also fu@ked up their once fast loading "my.yahoo" home page with the pathetically slow loading Java based piece of shit that it is now .... and we my.yahoo users weren't give any choice either. Then there's the Yahoo advantage of letting every ONE in FOUR obvious pieces of Spam through for those $1.95 Rolex knock-off and buy See Alice Here emails. Who works over at Yahoo SPAM control? 5 year orld?
Why would anyone want all this other junk on their google page? When I go to google I just want somewhere to type my search text. I don't want all this other junk cluttering up the page and taking longer to load. Am I missing something?
Until 5 minutes ago I had never heard of igoogle. What's the point of it? I have bookmarks to take me where I want to go when I want to go there.
Then again I'm one of those people who can't see why desktop search is such a big deal. I know where I filed my stuff so I don't need to search for it.
I can kind of see where they're going with it, and I don't think the actual aim is a bad idea, it's more flexible and potentially has some uses.
However,
1) It won't work for most users. In the long run, and with a lot of work, it could end up working about as well as the Lotus Notes email interface (which, after some significant improvements in v8, is as pretty as the "evil" part of the cast of "the hills have eyes"), but it still won't work for most of us.
2) Inflicting trials on people without their consent is bad
3) Not letting people opt out after you've totally screwed their pages without warning is <bad words> dumb
4) Most of us don't like it, and their refusal to acknowledge the overwhelmingly negative response is a step in the wrong direction.
<sigh> Can we have our old google back please? You know, the one that "just worked"?
Paris, because you need the best eye-candy possible after seeing the new google
TANSTAAFL folks. Google are in the business of collecting data and using those who use their services as free beta testers. If you don't like it, switch to (or create) something over which YOU have control, and stop bending over and letting the evil (no we're not, yes you are) troll shaft you.
Paris, because she also knows how to get a good shafting from evil trolls.
That I've seen a company so blatantly considering their users as guinea-pigs.
"Put this one in the labyrinth"
"This one seems more intelligent than average, test him"
"We should dissect this one... What? We can't? You sure?"
"Oooh good, they found out about the Javascript code, we can go to the next test phase"
"Let's yank their chain again"
Paris, because she's yanking my chain...
...do you really trust anything to the ad-man?
These are the sort of people that change "Marathons" to "Snikers", "Opal Fruits" to "Startbursts" for no good reason.
They are in the business to screw money out of you, nothing else. They really don't give a toss about you if they can a few more $'s out of you. It's an advertising agency, not some sort of world saviour.
Well I've got a Yahoo email account and I've never had a single piece of spam..
Sounds like you've been signing up to some dodgy websites..
Any My Yahoo loads fast here, almost as fast as the normal Yahoo UK & Ireland homepage.
Maybe you need to change your internet browser? (I'm using Opera)
You were using a free service provided by Google. Quite enjoying it, presumably, if it's so upsetting now it's changed. But now Google are trying a new format out and boo hoo you don't like it so much. And they aren't responding to 500 seperate pissy complaints. How dare they not spend hundreds of dollars of manpower appeasing a bunch of ungrateful twats?
It reminds me of ... every other time a free service was tweaked only to piss off 500 ungrateful twats who complained and were ignored.
You provide the service, you set the rules. Internet programming's not that hard. Off you go.
Did the manual upgrade trick, and I've seen this UI approach elsewhere before....
A knee-jerk reaction would be "urggh!", but the ability to quickly give a widget a workable amount of real estate is a functional, genuine usability boon. So use it as intended and will probably find it's better.
(Alien icon, because any technology sufficiently advanced seems like magic! :-)
Basically all this f*cking whinging is down to the fact that stupid people learn a system, and when it changes they feel out of their depth - the familiarity has been removed, and as they don't understand the underlying concepts, and they can't follow their internal breadcrumbs to get to where they want to be. Just engage your brain. And if you still hate / can't use / just despise change that much, vote with your feet, but stop complaining.
I got 'chosen' a while back, I e-mailed, read the forums etc. to turn it off, but in the end, it made me setup a netvibes account, and that is now my home page instead of iGoogle.
The sidebar took up too much space, the rss views were overly expanded, I couldn't set the links in feeds to open in seperate tabs, only in it's weird viewer thing.
It used to all fit on one screen, now you have to scroll down two or so pages to see what you used to see on one. Netvibes after changing some of it's default settings, has solved all this for me.
Gogole really didn't understand what they were doing here. I have iGoogle set up as my home page and configured as my RSS aggregator. It was incredibly annoying to _not_ be able to open a link by clicking on it (although I see that's changed now). Have Google completely lost the plot, redirecting me to another Google page instead of what I obviously wanted? I don't care for the waste of on-screen real estate either, and the survey that didn't allow you to comment on the new layout was a complete joke.
Like everyone else, thanks to Dan Mullen. If they try imposing it again I'll be off. It'[s not as if I really _need_ Google after all.
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