This article is for entertainment purposes only; facts and opinions included may be partly or entirely fictional.
Unless you were stuck in a mine, you must have heard about Google+. I was one of the few that managed to get invited to the “limited field trial”, as Google calls it. I was quite excited about it, as I was growing tired of Facebook, with its “One Type of Friend Fits All” approach. Now you may have heard good things about Google+, but after just 5 horrible days, I don’t agree anymore.
Day 1: The friendly import
As you know, Google is all about personalization – silently filtering stuff. I should have seen it coming when I used the “Import friends from other social networks” feature, but it just looked so, well, friendly. I had over 500 friends on various networks, but after the import, 20% of them were suddenly gone. Only after a while I noticed the small warning that mentioned, “Some friends might have been dumped. Don’t worry about it.” So apparently, Google+ didn’t approve of my current girlfriend, my best friend, and my neighbors. Indeed, a very limited trial.
Day 2: A little notification won’t hurt
Google+ just loves to send notifications to let you know what friends are doing, and the other way around. The creepy part is that “user input is optional”, as Google puts it. Somehow Google+ just knows what everyone is doing and isn’t too shy to let everyone know. That’s how I learned my new girlfriend was cheating on me with my new best friend. On the other side, my friends found out how I won $2000 by cheating at our poker nights. At the end of the day, I either dumped or got dumped by 25% of my network.
Day 3: It’s the autopilot, stupid
After the stress of the first two days, I took a day off to recover, but I wish I didn’t. Google+ has an “autopilot” feature, that assumes your identity while you’re offline and lets people now what you’re doing on vacation. Oh yes, Google+ knows what you’re doing offline. If I only had been aware of that, I would never have gone to my favorite Disney-themed strip club. Thanks Google, that’s another 10% of my friends down the drain.
Day 4: Lost in translation
As you know Google+ also has a videochat feature, Hangout. It fully integrates with Google Translate, so you can talk with anyone, even if you don’t speak their language. I thought this would work to my advantage, so I planned to finally make a move with all the cute girls I met online but could never talk to. Man, I felt like I was on a hidden camera show. Google Translate totally screwed up on me, telling the girls with a robotic voice “Your clothes are interfering with my natural urges”, “Darling, let me erupt my vulcano in your fjord” and “All your breast are belong to me”. Thanks Google, that’s how another 15% of my friends dumped me.
Day 5: The Facebook Factor
As was to be expected, Facebook doesn’t like people jumping on the Google+ bandwagon, but I didn’t expect they would utilize artificial intelligence to take revenge. When Facebook noticed I had become active on Google+, I suddenly found out it had been sending messages to my left-over friends – yep, the ones that Google+ didn’t let me import – describing vividly how intimate I was with a female goat. Well, it comes as no surprise that the last 20% of my friends dumped me as well after that.
Yes, it has been quite a week for me. In my next article, I’ll let you know how I resuscitated my online reputation with another wonderful Google tool, Me on the web.
Reproduced from http://technorati.com/technology/article/how-google-totally-ruined-my-social/