An Open Letter to Google re: the "Fictionality" of Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine

Dear Goo,

Can we call you that, Google? You seem like the type of innovative multinational IT-based corporation who is playful, easygoing and enjoys a good nickname. We're writing to you because over the weekend you made a horrible mistake, Goo. You suspended Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine's Google+ accounts because you believed them to be "fictional" characters. We find your lack of faith disturbing.

You can’t just arbitrarily decide to cancel a REAL PERSON’S social networking page without even telling them about it or giving them an opportunity to defend themselves first. That's not fair. It’s not like blowing up a planet, after all. 

You know Goo, for some reason a lot of people (like TIME Magazine) have called Darth Vader "fictional", despite the fact that he's been in SIX BIOGRAPHICAL MOVIES AND A TELEVISION SHOW, plus countless books, comics and video games. You can find replicas of him in almost EVERY TOY STORE ON EARTH. Does that really sound like a "fictional" character to you?

What does it even mean to be "fictional" in this day and age of carefully constructed public personas, plastic surgery and media manipulation? Don't we all choose to represent ourselves in different ways to those around us, changing chameleon-like to suit our context? Do any of us really even know the "real" us? Do you know the real Gyougle, Goo? Aren't we all just "fictional" characters in the end? As Shakespeare once said, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."

What happened to you, Goo? Who hurt you? Did you unexpectedly have your heart broken by a really Hot Young Lady Search Engine who left you for a more brooding, buffer, Bad Boy Search Engine in Search Engine High School, thus making it difficult for you to trust others? Because we'll be honest, you seem to be constantly searching for something. Something you won't find by tearing down the happiness of others, just to make them as miserable as you feel.

Should they just LIE and change their names to Dan Vader and Eugene Palpatine instead (as suggested by Scott Oldfield)? Is that what you want? Do you really want to create an online culture based on lies, where people regularly pretend to be somebody they're not? What a horrible world that would be to live in.

Maybe it's discrimination. Maybe you don't want Darth Vader and the Emperor to have an account on your precious little social network just because your slogan is "Don't be evil" and they're "evil wizards" who "took over the Galaxy" and "murdered" millions of people. Because if you're going to use "evil" as the basis for your decisions, then we can probably all agree that you'd better start by cancelling Dane Cook's account first.

On that note, how is it that the FRIGGING Hogwarts Sorting Hat, SEVERAL Lord Voldemorts AND Chewbacca still have their Google+ Profiles? Answer us that, Google. Oh, that's right, you can't, because you're a corporation. Did you know that makes YOU a fictional entity of sorts too? No, you probably don't, because you don't even have a brain or a mouth.

Or could it be that you have something against Sith Lords? Is that it, Google? We thought people had moved beyond religious discrimination in this day and age, except against the Jedi, which is totally acceptable. Doesn't your informal corporate culture extend to people who enjoy wearing a plush velour robe to work and who have different belief systems to your own that involve frying the very occasional subordinate with Force lightning? For shame, Goo. For shame. Is that really the Google we've bonded with and come to think of as a good, nay GREAT, friend during the countless hours we've spent searching the web for funny videos of people hurting themselves? Of course it's not. Don't be that search engine, Goo

Perhaps it's just that your recent affiliation with Androids has led you to be prejudiced against cyborgs. Don't get us wrong, androids have their place. Usually that place is poncing about in a black and gold unitard and wanting to become human. But can't you see that cyborgs are people too, Google? Well, mostly human. Okay, AT LEAST 42% human.

Finally, if you can't find it in your cybernetic heart to be swayed by the infallible logic and wild accusations contained above, then we're afraid we're going to have to bring out the big gun: litigation. We hate to bring up the whole copyright issue but the truth is, you owe a LOT of your success to us. Clearly the idea for Google+'s "Circles" comes from Darth Vader's classic line, "The circle is complete." 

 

Does this "Circle" look familiar to you, Google?

And don't even get us started on Google Chrome...

 

So finally, Google, remember that the Force surrounds us, binds us, and can also be used to Force choke us from great distances if we get on the wrong people's bad side. Isn't it funny that "Google" even sounds a LOT like "Gurgle", the last thing most people say when they're being lovingly throat hugged from across the room by a caring Sith Lord? What a strange coincidence that is, right Gurgle Google? Haha. Ahaha. Oh, we have such fun together, don't we Goo?

We trust this will help you make the right decision and restore Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine's Google+ accounts immediately. Otherwise you might find your planet becoming "fictional" by the weekend.

Warmest regards,

The Death Star PR Team.

What exactly has Google+ stolen from Facebook?

This is going to be a quickie. A vent of sorts to all that is bubbling within me.

What exactly has Google+ stolen from Facebook?

• the concept of friends? And family? That too from Facebook? Really? Because Facebook never really understood the difference between the two, like ever. Google+ apparently does.
• the concept of sharing? Right. I did that with food in my kinder-garden.
• the concept of photos and tagging? *YAWN*

The more serious ones.

• notifications? At first glance it's exactly like the Facebook thing. But a second glance, and whoa. There's the Google ingenuity staring at you in the face. What Facebook first brought into social networking - the notifications thingy ... it has remained the exact same thing to date. Excepting a few minor changes like clubbing multiple notifications into one, and positioning it from right to left, Facebook has never really improved on it. What Google has done is transform it  into something so much more awesome. You can access it from any Google service, and can even do mini-Google+ ing in the small window that pops up. Also, Facebook had three irritating notifications for friend requests, messages and general notifications. Google+ has just one.
• the 'like' as +1 ? Facebook's 'Like' evolved from a means to say "i approve of this status or photo" to simple sharing all across the web. You liked a page on the internet. That got shared on your Facebook feed. That is just simple sharing. Google Reader, StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit ... had all been there, done that. And did Mark Zuckerberg really think that he would have a copyright over a simple English word like ... 'like' ?
• tagging? Letting a person know that he's been mentioned somewhere? Wasn't it Facebook who stole the exact same thing from Twitter in the first place? Where was the hue and cry of "not original" then?

bonus : What exactly has Google+ stolen from Twitter?

I personally love Twitter. But yes, what is there to steal from it? The concept of followers? Hullo. Jesus Christ and the Buddha have had their followers. So have a thousand people before them. The concept of "following" is too old to actually be considered plagiarism from the 2000s. Nothing new there!

What has Google+ not stolen from Facebook?

This could go on for ages. 

• The epic Google chat : that's like a slap on the face of Facebook chat.
• Circles == sheer awesomeness. Because every person whom you know is not necessarily your friend.
• Hangouts. This is the sheeez. \m/
• Missing Facebook events? Check the top bar -> Google Calender ftw!
• Document sharing? Google Docs ftw!
• Videos? YouTube ftw! 

Isn't this like utter pwnage already? Wait there's more.

• Photo Albums : Picasa ftw!
• Mail : GMail ftw!
• Google Reader for RSS -- ftw!

last but not the least :

Google Search FTW!

I mean. HOW is Google+ still a Facebook copy?

--

Well, one thing that Google has actually copied is possibly this.

Because, that's essentially what Google+ is.

Legen-waitforit-dary.

Google vs Facebook : the definitive battle for internet dominance

My blog is definitely not the place on the internet where you would want  to read a commentary on the biggest battle that is being fought on this planet right now. But my fascination with the internet in general and social media in particular compels me to write down my views on the same.

So, Google versus Facebook it is. At first one glance one wonders what sense it makes to pitch the biggest search engine against the most successful social networking site, but you'll see. Hold your horses.

Enter Google.

Since 1998, Google's sole mission has been to organize all the information on this planet and make it more usable. Clearly it has succeeded in the most awesome manner. Starting off as a meek search engine being bayed by far superior rivals, its journey to the pinnacle of internet dominance has been a tale of sheer brilliance, innovation and in-your-face ethics, and till the mid-late 2000s Google enjoyed its pride of place as the numero uno on the web. But then, all happy tales have the irritating worm dangling from the end, which somehow manages to eat its way through and spoil the tale in its entirety.

For Google's fairy tale, that worm was Facebook.

Facebook started off as an ambitious project by a couple of college students to hit on their college girls. Well, I won't bore you with the details of Mark Zuckerberg's story here. But Facemash (as it was known back then) soon became Facebook, transcended the walls of Harvard University and spread like a pandemic. The be-all and end-all was that Facebook's increasing popularity gave the folks at Google more than just cold feet and broken finger nails. And things just kept getting worse. In July 2010, Facebook was reported to have 500 million users worldwide. A bit of math leads to the mind blowing stat that 500 million -- that's a twelfth of entire humanity. Of course, that was a year back, so it's a lot more today.


Let us now analyse some of the important aspects of this epic battle.

The naked truth first, which is simply put, Google sucks at social networking.
Or at least, has thoroughly sucked till date. Google championed the web. But its attempt at social networking never took off in the right direction. The glimmer of hope that was Orkut remained confined, largely to India and Brazil. The much-hyped Google Wave, despite its shizz with HTML 5, remained an obscurity and died an equally obscure death. Google Buzz lumbers on, but has been plagued by privacy issues since its birth and ... let's face it, it's basically a place where Google employees bite each other and grumble about Facebook.

Google's diversification meant that it had multiple arenas to fight multiple rivals. All well established, at that. There is Mozilla and Microsoft gnawing at the Chrome browser. There is Microsoft again, trying to outwit the Chrome OS with it's cloud based Azure. Lastly and more importantly, there is Apple's ubiquitous iOS locked in a death-match with Android.

The aforementioned however are not as much as Facebook's brilliance as they are Google's failings. As for the former, there are a couple.

Facebook's tiny red notification button, for one, was an important feature never seen on any social networking website before. Insignificant as it might seem, that was one factor that set Facebook apart. The user logging in, would naturally be lured by the red blotch on the top, and soon, he would be swimming around in a sea of notifications. It acted like a vortex, sucking the user into Facebook, redefining social networking. Orkut seemed staid after this.

Facebook's 'like' button, however, was the first definitive nail on Google's coffin. Maybe it's a bit too harsh to use that metaphor now, but it essentially was that clarion bell that sounded one fine morning that resulted in hundreds of Googlers all over the world scurrying to work overtime. The like button was an extraordinarily unassuming yet shrewd business move. Within weeks of its introduction every page in the internet, every blog, every brand, and every product of every brand had it's own 'like' page. Virtually every link on the web could now be 'like'd, and the internet thus transformed into a web of 'like's knit together by Facebook, and a certain Mr Zuckerberg leering from atop.

enter Facebook's next big venture, Facebook Mail, and to be frank, it did not turn the world upside down and was light years away from being the GMail killer that Zuckerberg had envisaged. It was a neat feature agreed, that incorporated messages and chat history in simple easy-to-look-up conversations, but it hardly does anything to rival Google's superbly successful GMail.

and enter Google's +1. Remember the Googlers scurrying to work overtime to combat Facebook's cunning 'like' button? After a lot of brainstorming they come up with something exactly similar to a 'like' button but with a supremely lame name. And presto, the +1 button is born. It is easy to see why they couldn't keep the name 'like' -- Zuckerberg would have personally disemboweled Larry Page over copyright infringement in that case. And verbs similar to 'like' are hard to come by, thanks to linguistic limitations. So +1 it was, and +1 it still is. It works exactly like a 'like' button, as you can see in this blog. You like a link, and instead of 'like'ing it on Facebook you '+1'it. Lame ass? Very.


The Question of Originality. But will it help? As it stands of now, the +1 button has exactly the same functionality as a 'like' button. Also, how many people will actually navigate to your Google profile to see what all you have '+1'd ? Quite unlike the teeming millions of Facebook admirers who will pounce upon any link that you have 'like'd that appears in their news feed?

All of the awesome innovation that Google is synonymous with seems to have hit the rocks here, and in a depressingly sad manner, if you ask me.

The important thing in the internet is, unless it is ground breaking, it never really catches on. GMail is a fine example. In spite of having some remarkable features that sets it apart from Windows Live or Yahoo! the fact that it came late in the email business is sorely responsible for its astonishingly low number of users as opposed to Windows Live or Yahoo!.

And so it is, with the '+1' button. I really don't think that Google's brainchild can match wits with Facebook's 'like' gambit here.

The final question remains. Is Google scared?
There is absolutely no doubt that Facebook's advances have shaken Google. Last November, Google announced that it would block automatic import of contacts from Google into Facebook. Coming from Google, a firm that stands for an open web and a motto that states " do no evil" this is surprising. Which goes on to prove that Google is getting cold feet, albeit, a wee bit. But does it matter to them anymore?


... finally enter, the awesome Google Inc.
And that is where Google's awesomeness kicks in. The dominance of the web, which was Google's primary ambition (and is the subject matter of this post) has indeed been threatened by Facebook. But it is imperative to understand, that in the age of the IT, when priorities change within years, web-dominance today is not just about having control over the websites that you visit and bringing the whole internet under one superpower. That might have been the case five years back, but now, with the advent of cloud computing, 4G and web TVs et al, web dominance is a hell lot more than knitting a web of 'like's between websites. And in this new scenario, social networking websites are, but a very trivial component.

Not surprisingly, Facebook has no identity here. Google on the other hand, has an arsenal of weapons to deploy and make the most of these changing demands, and yes, they are the Android, the Chrome OS and the Google TV.

For in the new web, its a different world out there. One that bodes exceedingly well for Google.

Because, as it always has been; Google = Awesome. And so shall it remain.