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Google's Insular Nature
stockpicker_dude_78 writes "Robert Cringley has written a thought-provoking article on Google's insular nature, and compares them to the similar environment at Microsoft." From the article: "Google is secretive. This started as a deliberate marketing mystique, but endures today more as a really annoying company habit. Google folks don't understand why the rest of us have a problem with this, but then Google folks aren't like you and me. The result of this secrecy and Google's 'almighty algorithm' mentality is that the company makes changes -- and mistakes -- without informing its customers or even doing all that much to correct the problems."
It seems like a trivial thing, but it makes a difference and it highlights Google's attitude. Google has a toolbar thingie that you can install in various browsers. It decides that certain fields -- "Name", "E-mail address", etc. -- should be a pale yellow colour. When I've gone to some trouble to coordinate my work with what the design team wants and what various browsers are capable of, I really, really object to having Google randomly decide to break everything and screw everything up and make me use a confusing and inappropriate { !important } CSS declaration to make the page render as it should. I complained. It is, apparently, a feature.