I installed Google Toolbar in IE8 on Windows Vista.
It took up an entire cpu on a 4 core processor, ballooned IE load time from 1 second to 15 seconds, caused tabs to crash, and just made the entire system sluggish.
And that was after I turned all the toolbar’s options off.
It’s too high of a price to pay for seeing the PR of websites. Thanks, but no thanks Google. It’s now disabled.
Every day I get up, turn my system on and spend a few hours reading the blogs I follow. And every day I read posts hating Microsoft for reasons that can only be explained by a serious misunderstanding of reality.
Here I present you Google Failures of Epic Proportions (a.k.a the other side of the story).
| Original Idea | Google Copy | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | Knol | Fail, no one uses |
| YouTube | Google Video | Buyout, users don’t come |
| Exchange | Wave | Hype, does not deliver |
| Office | Docs | Mediocrity, does not compete |
| Paypal | Checkout | Poor vendor uptake, too many issues |
| Amazon | Google Catalogs | Discontinued |
| DMOZ | Google Directory | Fail |
| Y! Answers | Google Answer | Fail |
| Craigslist | Google Base | Fail |
| Jaiku acquisition | Fail | |
| Live Messenger | GTalk | Fail |
| WolframAlpha | Google Squared | Fail |