Why 2009 Was The Year I Broke Down And Sold My Soul To Google

I am somewhat obsessive compulsive. I spend a lot of time researching things that I am interested in. It may be an upcoming electronics purchase, or perhaps I just discovered Malaysian food and now I am methodically visiting all the Malaysian restaurants within driving distance to determine who has the best Char Kway Teow. It is something that usually maddens my spouse, but on the odd occasion gets me a pat on the head for being a genius.

My obsession with operating systems and GUIs has been going on for about 16 years now. I suppose I am no different with software than I am anything else, and a great deal of time goes into deciding which software I use for a given task.

I have been using a Mac at home since early 2002. I have felt that the apps I use on the Mac are superior to their equivalents on the Windows and various unix platforms running X. Better in function, better in form, just better. In the case of my mail client, this is the same mail client I’ve been using since 1997. I have tried other programs over the years, but nothing has supplanted it on my desktop.

Until recently that is.

In 2009 I abandoned the email, calendar, and feed reader applications I’ve been using and started using Google’s web apps.

Why would someone who values good design, simplicity, visual elegance, and good performance switch from using local apps to web applications? Especially when I have always been one for taking functionality out of the web browser and reducing it to the bare function of being simply a web browser?

Because my need for synchronization finally outweighed my need to be a software connoisseur.

Nobody uses just a single computer anymore. I use so many computers during the course of the week, and I never know which of those computers I’ll be using ahead of time. I was spending 30 minutes at the end of my work week catching my home workstation up with everything I had already read during the week on other computers.

It started with utilizing the Google integration my Mac apps already featured. That integration wasn’t perfect though, and ultimately I ended up using Fluid to make local apps out of my commonly used Google services.

The result? The four email accounts I use daily get handled through GMail. All of my feeds are in Google Reader. My work and personal calendars are in Google Calendar. No matter what computer, laptop, smartphone, etc I use to access my stuff, it’s the same across platforms and my information is always in sync.

Elegant? Google’s web apps are good. I’ll stop short at calling their design sophisticated. It isn’t. However, some sacrifice is necessary to embrace what they offer: access to your important info that requires only a web browser, and the end of worrying about synchronization.

As more and more of us embrace this idea software designers will implement better Google integration in their apps. I am sure I will go back to using local apps for this stuff, but only when they function as good as the web based versions. I only just switched to OpenOffice.org from MS Office in 2009. Now I am seriously considering moving everything to Google Docs.

So how many of you already gone through this revelation and moved your email, calendars and feeds to the cloud? Am I late to the party or is the benefit of doing so something that is becoming apparent to all of us right now?

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