Friday, May 1, 2009

Being a Canary in Google's Coal Mine

I have a number of friends who either won't use Google's tools or resist doing so on the basis that Google is becoming the one-stop-shop for all of the personal data on everyone's lives. My friends aren't the only ones that have concerns, either. I appreciate the concern, but I also think that Google is doing a good job at aggregation and that's not something we should disincentivize. Instead, the thing to do is to have some people really dive into Google's services and find out where that leads them.

I've signed up for:
  • Blogger (this blog)
  • Gmail
  • Google Docs
  • Google Reader
  • Google Apps (my ajs.com domain)
  • AdSense
  • AdWords
  • Google Health
  • Google Calendar
  • Webmaster Tools
  • Analytics
  • iGoogle
And probably some others that I'm failing to think of. The point being that I've taken the plunge and I'm using these services on a daily basis. Google is part of my life now. I'll continue to update this blog from time to time, not as a booster, but as a canary... hopefully one of many. Feel free to check back from time to time and see how it's going.

I'm also working on some tools for combining Google's services in useful ways. My first experiment is a tool that will create a new blog, using the comments that I put on shared articles on Google reader. I'll update here about that as it becomes available.

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