Google's debut of its Instant "predictive search" product last week rubbed some people the wrong way. Not the product itself, which fills in search results as you type queries and is both cool and just a bit scary -- but the attitude behind it.
In a blog post titled "Why is Google so condescending?" ITworld's Mike Elgan spanks Google for talking down to us mere mortals.
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Google's Gabriel Stricker, director of Global Communications and Public Affairs, opened the Google Instant launch this week. And he was incredibly condescending to the audience.
He said that the reason Google holds events like this one was that "we hear from a lot of you that with the kind of breakneck pace of innovation that we go through at Google, it's nice for us to kind of let you catch your breath." He went on to tell the audience that they would "hear from our Search rocket scientists in a second who will hold your hand through the latest and greatest of what we're up to."
So Google is so awesome that the company has to pause so the rest of the world can catch its breath? And we're all so stupid that Google geniuses have to "hold our hands" as they explain things?
For some reason, possibly his unabashed love of all things Google, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington can't quite take Elgan's complaints at face value:
Mike Elgan criticizes Google for being condescending in a recent column on one of the dead tree IT rags...
...this looks to me like an example of media mass manipulation I wrote about recently. At first blush, knowing how the whole press game works, Elgan is pissed off at Google for something or other and wrote this post.
