Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Googlefasting

An image of Chris’ webcam... was that in a moment where he desperately needed Google?

Chris Pirillo is trying to spend two weeks (originally just one week) without using any of Google’s many services. Here’s his account of this digital adventure:

• The Mission Statement. “I’ve been growing increasingly concerned over how Google is starting to do more... and the world is just letting it do more without asking questions (because most users trust the brand blindly). Google is everywhere. I want it to be everywhere, but I also don’t want it to be everywhere – because that’s very scary.”
• Day 1. “Still can’t figure out how to work MSN Search. The results are just... not relevant. I must be doing something wrong.”
• Day 1.5. “The most frustrating part about this exorcism exercise is in knowing what it is I’m looking for and not being able to find it. Especially when I know that Google has it somewhere in the top ten.”
• Day 2. “Starting to realize I have an emotional attachment to Google – a somewhat unhealthy co-dependency thing. It’s not that the other search engines don’t work, it’s just that I’ve been treated so well by Google’s search for so long that I’m comparing... my old girlfriend to my new girlfriend.”
• Day 3. “Needed to find “Seattle Influencers” and was suprised by the #1 result on Yahoo!.”
• Day 4. “About the only thing I might have done remotely close to searching was firing up MSN’s Virtual Earth Mobile application (well worth getting if you have a Windows Mobile device).”
• Day 5. “There is (seriously) no peer restaurant recommendation engine out there. I wanna know what my friends have to say about these local food joints – or their friends. Why can’t anybody do this?”

[Via Steve Rubel.]

Googlefasting by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (12)

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