"When I tell you something is dangerous, I mean it. And, I never forget the Victims"
T.J. Hooker
"Everyone can master a Grief but he who has it”
William Shakespeare
”I had given him a life not worth living, but I had also given him an iron will to live. This was a common combination on the planet Earth”
Kurt Vonnegut about his character, Kilgore Trout.

Friday, January 8, 2016

Google does the unthinkable- a rant


Pinterest grabbed this without attribution.


In an apparent attempt to completely jam our heads into its mold, Google has gone a bit far.  In mid January they are going to make it impossible to have a follower in friends connect who does not have a google account.
It's all Google or nothing which, to me, is a major pain.  Followers and following are a big thing in blogging, as they say in their blurb about the changes, but that doesn't mean they plan to make it easier.  I guess it all comes down to visible market share, and the price of stock.  I wish they'd just kept their hands off of Blogspot.com  in the first place.

Here's a partial blurb from Google:
"As part of this plan, starting the week of January 11, we’ll remove the ability for people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other OpenId providers to sign in to Google Friend Connect and follow blogs. At the same time, we’ll remove non-Google Account profiles so you may see a decrease in your blog follower count.


We encourage you to tell affected readers (perhaps via a blog post), that if they use a non-Google Account to follow your blog, they need to sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow your blog. With a Google Account, they’ll get blogs added to their Reading List, making it easier for them to see the latest posts and activity of the blogs they follow.

We know how important followers are to all bloggers, but we believe this change will improve the experience for both you and your readers."


Of course I'm angry.   I really wish we all could bite them on the leg. Or perhaps, in the case of Google, on a tentacle!

2 comments:

  1. It's hard to imagine that this company's credo once was "Don't do anything evil." IMHO, that is exactly where they've gone. I've gotten wary of them in the past, but the recently issued new terms and conditions for the search engine, that you now HAVE to accept in order to Google anything, have made me ban them from my computers and my life. I'm even considering no longer communicating with people that have gmail accounts, as those mails get scanned as well.

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    1. What you say is, sadly, true. I've been watching what they've been doing, too, and not liking it. I do have another blog at another space, and I'm thinking about all of this, too. Frankly, right now, I don't know what to do. After watching things change from blogspot to total Google for 12 years, I may just use that other one and stick to my knitting.

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I’m going through some stuff but I will peek in now and then and will be back when it’s over..