This whole blog started with my rants about “the evil empire”.  That was just over two months ago now so how’s it gone?

My switch away from GMail has come as a great relief, the new Hotmail is much better and in the last few days I’ve had the latest upgrade rolled-out to me by Microsoft which has made it even better still.  I also like using Windows Live search, though I never really got to grips with Cuil.  I don’t have an interest in Google’s web browser, Chrome, though if you run internet applications a lot (which I don’t) I can see definite speed advantages.  This however will become diluted over the next few years as Microsoft and Mozilla build the same functionality into their own browsers.  It will also take that long for web applications to become good enough for the general public to want to use them on a day to day basis, instead of desktop applications.

After a great deal of hunting however I’m sad to admit that I’ve not found any services as good as Google image search or Google Earth.  After two months of searching I can conclusively say that, so far as I am concerned, these two services are the currently the best of their kind available and, in the case of Google Earth, the only service of its kind available!

How do I feel about Google now?  I still see their company slogan “don’t be evil” as a joke.  This is the company that turned over information to the Chinese government that identified people who are probably now incarcerated for wanting nothing more than freedom of information, and that’s just a single example.  I still deeply despise what this company is doing in many ways but have come to terms with the fact that that in two ways, though thankfully only two ways, I’m going to be locked in for a while yet.

This is leaving Google… signing off.