Google

Google is the only search engine I use, but it stays just that, a search engine. I don’t write on Google Docs, I don’t prefer Gmail, and I don’t have a “G-cal.” Occasionally the Google suite is forced on me for school. My university email is a gmail, and some assignments MUST be submitted in the Google doc format. Other than that, I do my best to avoid it. I understand this is a wildly unpopular opinion, but I must speak my truth. 

As someone fluent in Microsoft, my skills of manipulating a Word document or Powerpoint don’t translate very well to Google. Why won’t it capitalize my I for me, or supply me with synonyms so I don’t have to use the word manipulating 3 times? And why is the word count gate-kept by Google’s interface? I need that information readily available, especially when writing my little blogs, which are usually around 250 words. I can’t gauge this by looking at the length of my blurbs. While one of my eyes is on the keyboard—because I never took a type class and don’t know where the quotation mark key is—the other eye watches the word count at the bottom left of my screen. 

What confuses me most is the reaction of Google users to my Google evasion. I am shunned as a Microsoft-ie despite my acknowledgement of Google as an apt collaborative productivity app (Google’s words, not mine). I hardly speak ill of Google, but I just have one last thing and then I swear to god I’ll shut up about this forever, even though my anti-Google stance is probably psychologically tied up in my aversion of working in groups, I’ll continue to make writing more inconvenient for myself with Microsoft so Google doesn’t steal all of my blogs and publish them for itself.