Cloudy Thinking

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch claims “Google is getting out of hand.” Maybe he’s right, or maybe Mike needs a vacation. My gut says appropriate rest and relaxation will help him regain perspective, and return to a productive life.

To put it less politely, Mr. TechCrunch needs to get a clue. He has started frothing at the mouth. That’s so wrong for a wealthy, influential Silicon Valley mover and shaker.

Since Mike’s a lawyer, let’s bring him before the Court of Blog Opinion. The charge? Talking smack.

Exhibit 1. Google to add Albums to Picasa! And I Need to Vent.

Mike starts:

Google-love is getting out of hand. In fact, Google is getting out of hand.

Your Honor, the prosecution agrees that Google love is pandemic. But it’s a fallacy to claim that implies Google is getting out of hand.

Yes, Google has launched more new products than Mr. Arrington thinks are optimal. In his world, Google should have stopped after they launched Google Search, and maybe Goggle Mail.

Exhibit 2:

What drives this kind of blind enthusiasm? When is the last time Google released a product that really changed our lives? For me, it was (and is) their core search engine. I grant that Google Maps pushed the envelope and forced the other big Internet guys to improve their own offerings (but today Microsoft and Yahoo are both significantly better than Google). And I do appreciate the POP access to Gmail (this was the one thing that converted me from hotmail for personal email). Everything since has been, well, somewhat under whelming.

Mr. Arrington is all nervous and fidgety simply because Google has released Google Spreadsheet.

Exhibit 3:

… while Google released a very nice Ajax spreadsheet today, they didn’t exactly change the world.

Your Honor, observe Mike’s flawed logic. Nowhere in their press release did Google claim that their spreadsheet would change the world.

Exhibit 4:

Now we are ending the day with a post by Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped - one of his readers noticed that Picasa, which Google acquired in mid-2004, will soon be adding albums (yes, albums) to their suite of photo products. Philipp describes Picasa thusly: “Picasa is Google’s desktop photo management software – something like Yahoo’s Flickr, except it’s not on the web.” Yeah, it’s just like Flickr, except without tagging, sharing, commenting and, of course, it isn’t a web service.

Mike is lathered up because somebody implied that Picassa was a web service when we all know Picassa is a VERY nice desktop application that competes with Adobe Photoshop Elements

[tease]

Adobe describes Elements thusly:

Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 4.0 software combines power and simplicity to help you do it all. Edit and enhance your photos by fixing common flaws instantly or using advanced options for more control. Keep every photo at your fingertips. And show off your creativity in entertaining slide shows, photo mail, web galleries, and countless other ways.

Your Honor, Mike Arrington is very smart. He knows full well that Adobe sells Photoshop Elements for $90 a pop, and that Google provides Picasa for ZERO dollars. The fact that Picasa is not a web service is irrelevant. It’s a powerful FREE image editor, that now also has a photo album capability.

In closing, we the people ask the court to find Michael Arrington guilty of hubris in the first degree. The appropriate punishment it to remand him to the care of his travel agency who shall be instructed to book him on an around the world cruise on a ship that does not have Internet access.

Mr. Arrington shall be instructed to read books, listen to music and in general relax and chill out.

To date, Mike has shown himself to be a creative, smart and highly productive member of society. It is incumbent on the state that we not idly stand by and let him waste his considerable talents blathering about Google going too fast and releasing too many web services as well as improving FREE software, e.g. Picasa.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 7th, 2006 at 6:34 pm and is filed under Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.