Google Search Box on the Search Results Page Sucks – Site Search

I noticed this search box on the Google search results page beneath the Amazon.com listing a few weeks ago and thought, cool. Lets see if it gets me past the home page amazon and to the search results page on Amazon.com. It would take me one step closer to what I am looking for on this site if it worked.

But instead it just brought me a list of pages on Amazon while still being in Google’s search results. YUCK! That sucks. I don’t want to stay on Google longer, I want to get to the book/dvd/whatever I am looking for and it’s on Amazon. This added another step in my process and I hate when sites do that for profit. It’s like a big interstitial ad that interrupts your log-in process on Monster or those stupid interstitial on Forbes articles. It is bad usability and bad user experience and people should complain about it so they remove this feature. (and of course don’t use the feature because if they see usage numbers in their stats they will think people like it and keep it)

It doesn’t surprise me that Google would want to keep you on their site longer so they can serve adwords against the results and possibly distract you away from what you originally intended to do or find but what I was surprised about  was that they thought they were better about finding products/pages on amazon than amazon itself. And that is a self centered conceited view to think you know Amazon’s business better than they do and to use that as justification to poach their traffic and users. Ouch.

I think Google also may be looking at this new search box in the search results as a way to get more into vertical search using their main search box as a starting point for picking your vertical and then the second search box to search within the site or specific vertical you choose. Google probably thinks they are prime for this kind of use because they already index everything and just need to figure out a hierarchical interface to display it all and make the difference in level of detail in the results visual. Then they can conquer the world…muhahaha…The only problem with that idea is that I don’t know an real live humans that like or look for vertical search. The sites that create content around a vertical are brands and have a real product that cost money to produce so they aren’t just web companies that crawl, slurp, scrape and steal other people’s original content and display it with advertising along site like Google.

So, overall I give this search box in the search results change a thumbs down, grade F for bad user experience keeping people away from what they want longer while displaying more ads and bad traffic poaching from genuine product sites. Google should remove this feature as it does no one any good and will deteriorate their relationship with real publishing and product sites over time. And if Google thinks they can play hardball and corner companies into accepting this, think again. I am sure there are some legal eagles out there that will be happy to bring this to court.

Fight WalMart Killing America

I am pretty anti-walmart. I never shop there, and the few times I have been there I have been pretty dissapointed in the store. But what is more dissapointing is how they hurt the American Economy by putting small businesses out of business, killing the economy in small towns, underpaying and underinsuring their workers while over working them, and buying the vast majority of their goods from China. I realize now that this is not just a WalMart phenomenon. Even the well liked Target buys a lot from China. So does every store you can think of. If I tried to not buy anything from china, I wouldn’t have anything to buy. I have been looking at labels more and putting stuff back that has the made in China mark on it, but it is hard. Its cheap and affordable and WalMart knows that this is the drug that americans are addicted to; Cheap Stuff. So in favor of our own economy and job in the USA, we should try and buy less form China and reduce the urge to buy lots of stuff. And here is a good site about the walmart fight: http://www.wakeupwalmart.com/ Check it out and sign up on their email list for updates.

AT&T (ATT) Sucks, and here’s why…

I have been a cell phone customer of AT&T (ATT) since the last time it was AT&T Wireless.  bought my first Nokia cell phone in 1999 from them and have been loyal and stayed with them through many name changes and buyouts (Cingular). What makes them suck though, isn’t that their plans cost too much, or that they lock you into 2 year contracts that I don’t like (and renew them without your consent) or that they have crappy customer service. Those things are pretty consistent from all cell phone companies, and no one has any control over it.

What specifically sucks about AT&T wireless is that if you choose to not have web access on your phone you get a pay per use rate. Even if you don’t want any access at all, and specifically request (as I have) to have all web and internet access turned off on your phone. So despite my asking to have the internet access turned off 3 times and being assured that it was, three times, my phone still automatically dials up to check the network for texts (they bundle the internet and text network together on purpose so you can’t have one without the other for revenue purposes) constantly and charges me nine cents each time. Depending on how often my phone is off during a month this amounts to $30-$75.00 in extra “pay per use” charges per month. WHICH IS FUCKING INSANE!! They have been doing this to me for 7 months now and I AM PISSED OFF!!! I can’t get out of the contract, nor can I get them to turn the service off after repeated calls to their call center customer service center. So, I have to have my battery out of my phone when I’m not using it now to avoid these illegal and unauthorized charges. Which means I am basically without a cell phone despite paying them $75.00 per month for my phone plan. (which for 3 phones is the cheapest plan they have, although it’s way way overpriced)

These cell phone companies are rolling in cash to the tune of being able to burn billions on re-branding campaigns every three months and it’s because they abuse the customers like you and me who can’t really afford to not have a phone, and have to pay whatever is in the contract because you can’t afford to get out of that either. They are evil mother fuckers and as soon as I can get out of this contract I’m gone and I will never use their service again.

Updates:

Yet more proof that AT&T Sucks, they are being sued for false advertising…

And more court troubles for AT&T for lying about their coverage… (bad marketers)

And they let the government snoop on you without a warrant…

And now their DSL Sucks too!