Oh Google, what am I going to do with you?
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First they forced me to associate my (very rarely used) YouTube account to a Google Account. Since I didn't want to associate it with my "generally on" account, the one I use and keep open for Gmail and Reader, I now find myself having to switch accounts whenever I want to use YouTube while signed into Gmail. Fortunately I nearly sign into YouTube, so... whatever.
Then they started periodically nagging me to give them my phone number. Which I won't do.
Now, within the time span of one week, they:
1. Reordered the links in the top navigational bar, putting the "Reader" link, the only one I use, one click away. I'm not the only one being terribly annoyed by this.
2. When opening a video on YouTube, they informed me that I was now logged in with my currently active Google Account, whether I like it or not.
3. Last night, I was signing out of Gmail before I turned off the computer when I remembered I'd better send myself an email before I forgot a certain URL. When signing in again, they asked — ney demanded — my birthdate. Unlike when asking me for my phone number, there was no "skip this" link. I was sleepy so I complied, though now I'm hoping I won't regret it.
Apparently some people are saying they did this because they were forced to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act? How about mentioning this then, instead of saying it was for tailoring content in your services to my age, whatever that means? (I forgot to take a screenshot at the time, unfortunately)
I gave my real birthdate. Seems like some people got locked out because they gave a fake date that made them underage. But that's their problem.
Now I'm thinking about creating a separate browser profile just for Gmail use, and never be signed into a Google account when browsing elsewhere. This "creeping normalcy" is starting to make me feel uneasy.
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@Zecc said:
I now find myself having to switch accounts whenever I want to use YouTube while signed into Gmail.
Is this of any use (I note they don't mention YouTube)? Noticed it yesterday and haven't looked at it myself since I only have one account.
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This page doesn't mention YouTube either.
In any case, this doesn't solve the problem that they are breaking the isolation between Gmail and YouTube for no good reason.
Why shouldn't I be able to sign in or out of one service without automatically and unavoidably being signed in or out of all the others?
Oh well, I may be overreacting, but I don't remember ever agreeing to letting them collect my YouTube viewing history.
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I agree. I closed my YouTube account, some of which had over 100k views, in disgust at their total disregard for privacy, giving a damn about their users or friggin' COMMON SENSE. I don't need a gmail account, I never have, so why do you force one on me now? Fuck off. Since they bought YouTube the same things have been going on over there, constant redesigns for no discernable reason and constantly moving the most used buttons behind dropdown menus for no discernable reason and rollovers. God, they love rollovers. If I hadn't quit then I would have done so when SFDebris was shut down because YouTube just bends over at the slightest whipser of the big boys without even LOOKING to see if it falls under fair use or not.
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Whenever dealing with Google, there's a single theme that re-appears over and over again: they're geniuses at understanding technology, and retards at understanding people.
@Zecc said:
1. Reordered the links in the top navigational bar, putting the "Reader" link, the only one I use, one click away. I'm not the only one being terribly annoyed by this.
They did that once in January (the second thread talking about it is the January thread), and the @gmail Twitter account quickly said it was "an accident". Riiight. A generous me would say it was an A/B test, but since Google has shown very little understanding of the concept of "test changes before making them" (and everybody seemed to have the same problem), I think they just made the change then were surprised at the number of complaints.
This time, the @gmail Twitter account has been utterly, 100% silent on the matter for the last few days. (They did post one fluff tweet, but that's all.) Which makes me think this time it's permanent and "fuck you, customers". A bit more searching and I come across... this post, which reads basically "fuck you, customers."
@Zecc said:
3. Last night, I was signing out of Gmail before I turned off the computer when I remembered I'd better send myself an email before I forgot a certain URL. When signing in again, they asked — ney demanded — my birthdate. Unlike when asking me for my phone number, there was no "skip this" link. I was sleepy so I complied, though now I'm hoping I won't regret it.
... oh course posting this I just think you're fucking paranoid as hell.
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@Zecc said:
In any case, this doesn't solve the problem that they are breaking the isolation between Gmail and YouTube for no good reason.
Haha, they connected Gmail-created Google Accounts to Google+ Google Accounts, also. Doesn't sound too bad? Oh wait, Gmail and Google+ have completely different acceptable naming rules, which Google+ being much stricter.
Fallout? Poor ZombieBoy22 says "eh, what the hell, I'll try Google+", signs in to Google+ with his existing ZombieBoy22 account. Google then disables his account, both Gmail and Google+ for breaking the Google+ naming rules-- even though his name was well within the Gmail naming rules! (They've since "fixed" this, but a half-assed way. Now if you change your Gmail name, your Google+ name doesn't chance and vice-versa.) (Of course that's not even getting into the huge issue of how fucking retarded the policy is in the first place, or how you're allow to flaut the rules if you have enough fans on the service or a personal friend at Google...)
It's seriously like the entire company is run by a 14-year-old MUD administrator.
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It would be an interesting world where we all paid fair and square for all the online sites and services we make use of. The universal expectation that all content on the Internet must be free is at least partially responsible for all these problems, as the money has to come from somewhere.
It's one thing running a low-traffic personal homepage for free, but when you consider how many servers Facebook need to run their system, that's when it starts coming down to the dilemma of pay, or have the advertisers pay on your behalf while watching and scrutinising your every move. And then sites have to do whatever brings in more revenue via the advertisers.
The Internet has gone from zero to abundant predicaments in only a few years. I can only hope that it all comes to its senses before it spirals out of control. The wretched mess of pretending that HTML can imitate your native GUI is only the surface.
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About a year ago I created a video, put it on YouTube and posted a link on a forum that I frequented at that time. Somebody decided they wanted to be a prick and made a copyright complaint to YouTube and the video was removed. I went through the process of filing a counter-claim since the video was 100% original content and the copyright complaint was completely bogus. When there was no response I sent an email complaining about the problem, and shortly aftter that my YouTube account was suspended along witht he GMial account that was linked to it. I eventually was able to jump through some hoops and get the GMail account back but I have never gotten a response about the YouTube account.@blakeyrat said:
Fallout? Poor ZombieBoy22 says "eh, what the hell, I'll try Google+", signs in to Google+ with his existing ZombieBoy22 account. Google then disables his account, both Gmail and Google+ for breaking the Google+ naming rules--
@blakeyrat said:(Of course that's not even getting into the huge issue of how fucking retarded the policy is in the first place, or how you're allow to flaut the rules if you have enough fans on the service or a personal friend at Google...)
The head of Google+ is Vic Gundrotta, who was born in India and his real name is not Vic, it is Vivek. In the ultimate ironic hypocricy, the person demanding that you must use your real name is using a phoney name.
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@El_Heffe said:
The head of Google+ is Vic Gundrotta, who was born in India and his real name is not Vic, it is Vivek. In the ultimate ironic hypocricy, the person demanding that you must use your real name is using a phoney name.
Yeah seriously.
Now that they've divorced the Google+ naming rules from the Gmail naming rules, the only issue I really have with the system is how inconsistently its applied. I would never consider using Google+ at this point.
(Not that I use social networking at all, anyway. I only have a Facebook account because I need one to test products I'm working on. I originally only had a Twitter accounts, because one of the recommendations of using their API is to follow the @twitterapi account, although I have to admit I enjoy Twitter a lot now.)
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@El_Heffe said:
About a year ago I created a video, put it on YouTube and posted a link on a forum that I frequented at that time. Somebody decided they wanted to be a prick and made a copyright complaint to YouTube and the video was removed. I went through the process of filing a counter-claim since the video was 100% original content and the copyright complaint was completely bogus. When there was no response I sent an email complaining about the problem, and shortly aftter that my YouTube account was suspended along witht he GMial account that was linked to it. I eventually was able to jump through some hoops and get the GMail account back but I have never gotten a response about the YouTube account.
Indeed, it's sad that they just do not want to know. I picture they get flooded with people who do not understand but even so. What're we all using now? I hate Vimeo, it streams slowly and refuses to seek anywhere it hasn't streamed yet. Blip and Dailymotion are pretty good though the latter is pretty low-fi.
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@blakeyrat said:
@El_Heffe said:
Oddly, given Google's compulsion to control all possible data, I'd think they'd encourage us to freely associate all our aliases. Even in the real world, I have two names. One that shows up on my legal documents and that I use with certain, more formal contacts (or places where using my alias would cause name duplication) and an alias that I use because it's got fewer syllables and makes me sound like a badass instead of a geek. Google only wants people to be able to associate with me by one of those names for some incomprehensible reason.The head of Google+ is Vic Gundrotta, who was born in India and his real name is not Vic, it is Vivek. In the ultimate ironic hypocricy, the person demanding that you must use your real name is using a phoney name.
Yeah seriously.
Now that they've divorced the Google+ naming rules from the Gmail naming rules, the only issue I really have with the system is how inconsistently its applied. I would never consider using Google+ at this point.
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@nexekho said:
@El_Heffe said:
The most annoying part is that my GMail account is still linked to the old suspended Youtube account. So I have to make sure I am logged out of the GMail account before attempting to sign in to Youtube, otherwise I get an error page containing this wonderful sentence:About a year ago I created a video, put it on YouTube and posted a link on a forum that I frequented at that time. Somebody decided they wanted to be a prick and made a copyright complaint to YouTube and the video was removed. I went through the process of filing a counter-claim since the video was 100% original content and the copyright complaint was completely bogus. When there was no response I sent an email complaining about the problem, and shortly aftter that my YouTube account was suspended along witht he GMial account that was linked to it. I eventually was able to jump through some hoops and get the GMail account back but I have never gotten a response about the YouTube account.
Indeed, it's sad that they just do not want to know. I picture they get flooded with people who do not understand but even so. What're we all using now? I hate Vimeo, it streams slowly and refuses to seek anywhere it hasn't streamed yet. Blip and Dailymotion are pretty good though the latter is pretty low-fi.
Your access to this Google product has been suspended because of a <font color="#FF0000">perceived</font> violation of either the Google Terms of Service or product-specific Terms of Service.
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I swear Google is just trying as hard as they can to come off as the most evil corporation on the planet. I'd rather give my information to Umbrella.
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@blakeyrat said:
@Zecc said:
Just because I'm being paranoid it doesn't mean they should be able to force me into giving them relatively-private information without resistance.3. Last night, I was signing out of Gmail before I turned off the computer when I remembered I'd better send myself an email before I forgot a certain URL. When signing in again, they asked — ney demanded — my birthdate. Unlike when asking me for my phone number, there was no "skip this" link. I was sleepy so I complied, though now I'm hoping I won't regret it.
... oh course posting this I just think you're fucking paranoid as hell.
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@Zecc said:
@blakeyrat said:
@Zecc said:
3. Last night, I was signing out of Gmail before I turned off the computer when I remembered I'd better send myself an email before I forgot a certain URL. When signing in again, they asked — ney demanded — my birthdate. Unlike when asking me for my phone number, there was no "skip this" link. I was sleepy so I complied, though now I'm hoping I won't regret it.
... oh course posting this I just think you're fucking paranoid as hell.
Just because I'm being paranoid it doesn't mean they should be able to force me into giving them relatively-private information without resistance.Who's forcing you? You wanted to use their otherwise-free service. You can simply stop using it.
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@boomzilla said:
Who's forcing you? You wanted to use their otherwise-free service. You can simply stop using it.
Where was the "I want to close this account. Let me download all my email and contacts information" option? I seem to have missed it.
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@Zecc said:
@boomzilla said:
Who's forcing you? You wanted to use their otherwise-free service. You can simply stop using it.
Where was the "I want to close this account. Let me download all my email and contacts information" option? I seem to have missed it.That doesn't sound very much like simply stopping.
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@Zecc said:
@boomzilla said:
Who's forcing you? You wanted to use their otherwise-free service. You can simply stop using it.
Where was the "I want to close this account. Let me download all my email and contacts information" option? I seem to have missed it.You do that every day when you run your offline email browser (Thunderbird is the one I use, but any that is capable of downloading email from an IMAP server works) because surely you're not so stupid that you're letting Google hold your data hostage, right? Google could implode tomorrow, and I'd lose at most a day's worth.
At some point you have to take control of your own information. The earlier you do it, the better... you've heard the news stories about people who lost all their email when Gmail fucked up, it's happened more than once. You understand the value of backups in general. Right? Right?
I like to think the people posting here aren't idiots.
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@blakeyrat said:
At some point you have to take control of your own information. The earlier you do it, the better... you've heard the news stories about people who lost all their email when Gmail fucked up, it's happened more than once. You understand the value of backups in general. Right? Right?
I don't usually have information I can't leave without in email. In any case, I now and then run getmail through IMAP. I believe I'm going to run it more frequently from now on.I like to think the people posting here aren't idiots.
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Oh no! Google could implode and I could lose all my personal e-mail!... which is not very important!
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@Sutherlands said:
Oh no! Google could implode and I could lose all my personal e-mail!... which is not very important!
Really? Like family photos, doctor's appointments, personal business, etc...
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I'm annoyed by even the small things that Google does, like the black bar on top of the search pages and GMail. I wish they would make that optional or something.
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@Master Chief said:
No, no, and no. Guess I'll have to start storing those in e-mail from now on?@Sutherlands said:
Oh no! Google could implode and I could lose all my personal e-mail!... which is not very important!
Really? Like family photos, doctor's appointments, personal business, etc...
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@Master Chief said:
@Sutherlands said:
Oh no! Google could implode and I could lose all my personal e-mail!... which is not very important!
Really? Like family photos, doctor's appointments, personal business, etc...
... pictures of dhromed's ass, etc
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@serguey123 said:
I keep those on my phone, so that they're always with me.@Master Chief said:
@Sutherlands said:
Oh no! Google could implode and I could lose all my personal e-mail!... which is not very important!
Really? Like family photos, doctor's appointments, personal business, etc...
... pictures of dhromed's ass, etc
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@Sutherlands said:
@serguey123 said:
I keep those on my phone, so that they're always with me.@Master Chief said:
@Sutherlands said:
Oh no! Google could implode and I could lose all my personal e-mail!... which is not very important!
Really? Like family photos, doctor's appointments, personal business, etc...
... pictures of dhromed's ass, etc
Best reason to buy a cellphone so far, portable goodiness, if I ever buy one, I might get one with a big, great screen to bask in it's glory
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@serguey123 said:
@Sutherlands said:
@serguey123 said:
I keep those on my phone, so that they're always with me.... pictures of dhromed's ass, etc
Best reason to buy a cellphone so far, portable goodiness, if I ever buy one, I might get one with a big, great screen to bask in it's glory
Do they make a screen big enough for that?
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@dohpaz42 said:
@serguey123 said:
Do they make a screen big enough for that?@Sutherlands said:
@serguey123 said:
I keep those on my phone, so that they're always with me.... pictures of dhromed's ass, etc
Best reason to buy a cellphone so far, portable goodiness, if I ever buy one, I might get one with a big, great screen to bask in it's glory
One can dream
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Since we're on the subject... how did this thing about dhromed start? (Links to threads without pictures preferred, kthxbye)
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@nexekho said:
@El_Heffe said:
About a year ago I created a video, put it on YouTube and posted a link on a forum that I frequented at that time. Somebody decided they wanted to be a prick and made a copyright complaint to YouTube and the video was removed. I went through the process of filing a counter-claim since the video was 100% original content and the copyright complaint was completely bogus. When there was no response I sent an email complaining about the problem, and shortly aftter that my YouTube account was suspended along witht he GMial account that was linked to it. I eventually was able to jump through some hoops and get the GMail account back but I have never gotten a response about the YouTube account.
Indeed, it's sad that they just do not want to know. I picture they get flooded with people who do not understand but even so. What're we all using now? I hate Vimeo, it streams slowly and refuses to seek anywhere it hasn't streamed yet. Blip and Dailymotion are pretty good though the latter is pretty low-fi.
Dailymotion is ok now that they fixed the searching (seriously, it used to be so terrible I used the Google site: operator to search it). Forcing YouTube to tie in with a Google account was so dumb; I wonder if there are any stats on how many Gmail accounts were created right around that time and then completely neglected (I can count at least one).
@Master Chief said:
I swear Google is just trying as hard as they can to come off as the
most evil corporation on the planet. I'd rather give my information to
Umbrella.Small probability of turning into a superhuman, high probability of turning into a horrible monster and having your face shot off by S.T.A.R.S. agents, exceptionally tiny probability of Milla Jovovich. Yeah, that's better than needing a Google account for YouTube.
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@Justice said:
Small probability of turning into a superhuman, high probability of turning into a horrible monster and having your face shot off by S.T.A.R.S. agents, exceptionally tiny probability of Milla Jovovich. Yeah, that's better than needing a Google account for YouTube.
Horrible monster greatly outweigh the other two, though.
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@Master Chief said:
@Justice said:
Small probability of turning into a superhuman, high probability of turning into a horrible monster and having your face shot off by S.T.A.R.S. agents, exceptionally tiny probability of Milla Jovovich. Yeah, that's better than needing a Google account for YouTube.
Horrible monster greatly outweigh the other two, though.
That depends on the values you attach to each outcome. It's like the lottery: normally it's a lousy bet, but when the pot gets large enough it makes sense to play.
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@Sutherlands said:
Since we're on the subject... how did this thing about dhromed start? (Links to threads without pictures preferred, kthxbye)
dhromed is fan of Assasin Creed but he shortened it to AssCreed, later Ass, and like everything on this forum, it got twisted beyond recognition, but dhromed ass has been an interesting theme of disscussion since the beginning, I don't think that there are a lot of lude pics remaining so whatever search the broken search in this forum lets you do, you can view them safely, despite morbius post's.
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@serguey123 said:
dhromed is fan of Assasin Creed but he shortened it to AssCreed, later Ass, and like everything on this forum, it got twisted beyond recognition, but dhromed ass has been an interesting theme of disscussion since the beginning
It started wayyy before that, when morbs and pesto were still around. It may have started with me routinely putting the word dick in my tags.
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@dhromed said:
@serguey123 said:
dhromed is fan of Assasin Creed but he shortened it to AssCreed, later Ass, and like everything on this forum, it got twisted beyond recognition, but dhromed ass has been an interesting theme of disscussion since the beginning
It started wayyy before that, when morbs and pesto were still around. It may have started with me routinely putting the word dick in my tags.
I was talking about why I do it, I know the topic has been around for some time as per my bolded statement.
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@serguey123 said:
@dhromed said:
@serguey123 said:
dhromed is fan of Assasin Creed but he shortened it to AssCreed, later Ass, and like everything on this forum, it got twisted beyond recognition, but dhromed ass has been an interesting theme of disscussion since the beginning
It started wayyy before that, when morbs and pesto were still around. It may have started with me routinely putting the word dick in my tags.
I was talking about why I do it, I know the topic has been around for some time as per my bolded statement.
I see.
In any case, I'm not putting my dick in Google+.
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There was also something about you having a detachable glass penis, wasn't there?
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@Zecc said:
There was also something about you having a detachable glass penis, wasn't there?
Hm, I seem to remember something of the sort.
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@Zecc said:
There was also something about you having a detachable glass penis, wasn't there?
And using it, at least according to morbs
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I suppose the pills really worked, because I really don't remember a thing, and four days was enough to clear up any residual hurt!
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@dhromed said:
In any case, I'm not putting my dick in Google+.
You can *do* that?! I tried once, but it got stuck when the CD-ROM drive closed on its own... And I don't need to tell you that it got really awkward when my parents came home. I don't think the believed me when I told them I was fixing the computer...
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@C-Octothorpe said:
I don't think the believed me when I told them I was fixing the computer...
I don't either, at leat the computer was not lonely anymore, but eh, we all do stupid things anyways, I remember using a blanket to muffle the sound of a modem, instead of doing the sensible stuff like muting it
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@TheCPUWizard said:
@dhromed said:
@serguey123 said:
ATL0muting it
YOU COULD DO THAT?Mine was a tenor.
Get it? Because he said "ATL0" but I misread it as "alto" and we're talking about something making sound. Get it? Like a singer can be an alto or a tenor or a baritone? So it's like I misread it as "alto" and then said my modem wasn't as high pitched, it was like a "tenor". It's funny.
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@blakeyrat said:
@TheCPUWizard said:
@dhromed said:
@serguey123 said:
ATL0muting it
YOU COULD DO THAT?Mine was a tenor.
Mine was a landlord.
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@blakeyrat said:
@TheCPUWizard said:
Mine was only a fiver, second-hand.@dhromed said:
@serguey123 said:
ATL0muting it
YOU COULD DO THAT?Mine was a tenor.
@blakeyrat said:
Get it? Because he said "ATL0" but I misread it as "alto" and we're talking about something making sound. Get it? Like a singer can be an alto or a tenor or a baritone? So it's like I misread it as "alto" and then said my modem wasn't as high pitched, it was like a "tenor". It's funny.
I'm not sure I like the tenor of your argument.
