Folks, mighty Google is showing cracks. I don’t know if others have noticed. First, friends who have tried to use their CALENDAR feature have complained it doesn’t work. It has messed their Outlook settings, deals with time zones badly and in a few cases has resulted in missed appointments and meetings.
Then, today, I first-hand experienced what I call the Right to be Stupid with respect to another Google product - Google Maps. When it launched, Google maps was inspiring. Using AJAX technology they showed how to drag and move objects on a Web page. In terms of clarity, precision and overall utility, Google Maps still rocks. It is #1 by a wide margin. But then, on closer examination, I noticed all names are in local language. Try looking up places in Russia. Unless you can read the language you can’t tell where Moscow is.
Doesn’t take a Rocket Scientist to know something isn’t right with this picture, err, map. While promoting the local language it is entirely compromising the educational value from maps. If you work for Google and you’re still not convinced, read on: Khaali peeli some fokut engineer ne mess up kar dala. Sergey, sale k o mar ke bhaga aur map ko ya to english me kar de ya language ka option de de, samjha boss? Kapish? Samajhne wale samajh gaye, jo na samjhe woh anadi. I think the moral of the story is, Google Maps should either list English names, or, give language options so user can decide which language to display.
Until then, I am forced to say - yeh duniya, hey mapfil, mere kaam ki naheen!