Christ, What an Asshole

June 4, 2009 3:26 PM

Google Introduces Google Showcase."Discover new and interesting gadgets and themes as you browse iGoogle homepages created by world-renowned celebrities and thought leaders. Like what you see? Add stuff to your own homepage with just a click." Deepak Chopra. Ashton Kutcher. The Donald.
posted by LarryC (47 comments total)

Is this the dumbest Google initiative so far?
posted by LarryC at 3:27 PM on June 4 [1 favorite has favorites]

Who even uses igoogle? And why would they want Deepak Chopra on it?

Google is releasing too much nonsense lately.

Also, The "Author, The 4-Hour Workweek", one of the creators of Guitar Hero, Shawn Fanning and Seth Godin? Seriously?
posted by delmoi at 3:32 PM on June 4 [2 favorites has favorites]

Aside from the question of whether one would even want to use this, the little comments next to each gadget in the A La Carte section read like they're automatically generated. If I were Deepak Chopra, I'd be a bit concerned if Google implied that I ever said (regarding the NY Times) something as inane as: "I spend a lot of time in NY and find this publication helpful."
posted by doubleozaphod at 3:36 PM on June 4 [1 favorite has favorites]

world-renowned celebrities and thought leaders... Ashton Kutcher. The Donald.

I see what you did there.
posted by quin at 3:36 PM on June 4 [3 favorites has favorites]

I have always wanted to know what celebrities' Excite homepages looked like!
posted by m0nm0n at 3:36 PM on June 4 [1 favorite has favorites]

You know, I really hate your-favorite-[whatever]-sucks sniping, but that list has nobody whose interests and thoughts intrigue me in the slightest. I don't care that they have people I'm not interested in. But I'm surprised they couldn't find at least one person I am interested in.

They're marketing to my evil alternate universe self, the one who's worn a goatee since he was old enough to shave.
posted by ardgedee at 3:37 PM on June 4

Deepak Chopra? I thought Google employees were meant to be smart.
posted by chorltonmeateater at 3:37 PM on June 4

Jesus tapdancing christ on crutches, this is... awful. Do people really give this much of a shit about celebrities?
posted by dunkadunc at 3:38 PM on June 4

Google blue celebrity vomit
posted by 2sheets at 3:39 PM on June 4

Wow, look at all the TED wannabees (or usedtobees, as the case may be).
posted by doctor_negative at 3:41 PM on June 4

I use iGoogle, mainly just to get a quick glance at new Cracked and BBC News articles. No, really.

This does suck though. I installed the Kutcher one and in my attempts to remove it I ended up installing it several more times, one tab on top of the other. That wasn't nice to my decade old computer, Kutcher sure loves his lame web shit.
posted by Science! at 3:42 PM on June 4

So, how does this compare in terms of stupid to Kanye's blog?
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 3:47 PM on June 4

Man, what gack. Google is now dead to me.

*runs off to check multiple Gmail accounts, update monthly expense spreadsheets on Google Docs, and chats with wife on the Google Talk for Blackberry client*
posted by Burhanistan at 3:52 PM on June 4 [2 favorites has favorites]

Ryan Seacrest:
I'm your host for all things music.
I'm also your host for all things entertainment!
One more! I'm your host of American Idol.
I'm always on top of viral videos!

Yeah, this was pretty much my reaction too.
posted by permafrost at 3:57 PM on June 4 [1 favorite has favorites]

heh. Now Google can be just like Windows Live Spaces! EXCITEMENTS!
posted by Artw at 3:57 PM on June 4

Google's obviously jealous that they weren't around for the big "home page" boom of 1996.
posted by I EAT TAPAS at 3:59 PM on June 4 [2 favorites has favorites]

Hah, this reminds me of Uplister (circa 2000/2001), who had playlists from people, including people you might know (also: Madonna and Moby might have posted a playlist or two). Market plans: unknown. But at least some hungry college students got a giant box of fortune cookies with custom Uplister fortunes, as well as t-shirts and coasters.

Google: the next dot-com boom?
posted by filthy light thief at 4:01 PM on June 4

I have used iGoogle for years as a personal start page. It's always made it easy to dump RSS feeds from my preferred news sources into an assemblage of boxes. It's certainly the first web app I recall ever offering drag-and-drop, too, which you could use to rearrange your boxes. The "gadgets" library has a few gems in it, though mostly I use it to create a big quilt of my favorite RSS feeds. Nice to have Gmail and GCal well integrated.

Beats www.google.com. Hell, all that page can do is search the web. It is pretty stupid to showcase celebrity gadget picks as a marketing technique, but hey, here we are talking about it.
posted by scarabic at 4:07 PM on June 4

What a load of useless, confusing, widget-y, Keith Urban endorsed crap.
posted by fire&wings at 4:08 PM on June 4

Does Ashton Kutcher do anything besides be Ashton Kutcher for a consideration anymore?
posted by mph at 4:21 PM on June 4 [1 favorite has favorites]

I just got a good chuckle when I realized I found my way here via the "MetaFilter" box on my iGoogle page.
posted by scarabic at 4:26 PM on June 4

So, Chopra is a PC, and now he's a Google too. Way to hedge your bets, Deepak.
posted by qvantamon at 4:29 PM on June 4

hey look, its shawn fanning! remember him?!
posted by Mach5 at 4:31 PM on June 4

no, I don't.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 4:35 PM on June 4

also, i'm surprised vint cerf uses igoogle. i figured he'd be telnetting to 80 and handcrafting POST's.
posted by Mach5 at 4:35 PM on June 4 [2 favorites has favorites]

thought leaders

Excuse me, I think I need to get some new business cards printed up...
posted by blenderfish at 4:54 PM on June 4

Is this the dumbest Google initiative so far?

It's obviously best of the web. Someone posted it to Metafilter.
posted by eyeballkid at 4:55 PM on June 4

First, I carefully examined the headshots, and Christ, What An Asshole does not appear. Would that s/he did. Second, I use iGoogle and quite like it. But Goog + CEWEBRITY = stooooopid.


Seth Godin? Christ.
posted by mwhybark at 5:08 PM on June 4 [1 favorite has favorites]

i'm surprised vint cerf uses igoogle

Well, I'm not sure any of these people necessarily _use_ igoogle (hardly a requirement for something like this). However, Vint Cerf does _work_ at Google.
posted by wildcrdj at 5:24 PM on June 4

I don't get it. By the looks of it I don't want to. I set ig for the news RSS a while back. I hardly ever look at it now.
posted by Nauip at 5:26 PM on June 4

I have an iGoogle tab dedicated to the RSS tables of contents of professional journals I'm interested in. My other tabs are for sites where going to visit is a significant component of the experience (like) MeFi, or which update sporadically--I cluster these thematically.

I lurve my iGoogle.
posted by Decimask at 6:00 PM on June 4

Google is clearly suffering from Twitter-celeb-envy.
posted by Slothrup at 6:03 PM on June 4 [1 favorite has favorites]

I had never heard of Seth Godin until the Susan Hires a Boss thread, and now he's here too. Is he something you'd have to be a "thought leader" to know about?
posted by brundlefly at 6:17 PM on June 4

Yeah, file this under "There's too much talk of Twitter which might affect our ridiculously high stock valuation so we'd better increase the stream of new product announcements to keep us in the press which will hopefully keep everyone else thinking we're worth 18 hundred million times more than other companies."
posted by mediareport at 6:25 PM on June 4

Quit puking on the iGoogle celebrity endorsement gimmick. Me thinks these showcases are not for people who already use iGoogle.

Setting up iGoogle to work the way you want it to takes time. Now they have entire pre-made combos for the uninitiated. Think: "Hey! That Depak guy! I read his books! I bet his homepage set-up would be like mine!" Etc. Etc.

Google doesn't need to appease the savy users for market shares. If they wanted, they probably could've asked that guy who wrote Getting Things Done to make a sample iGoogle page. The motive for who they chose instead was probably linked who they want to see coming to their website.

There's a whole below the water-line-iceburg of internet users who still have the default ie start page as their homepage. I bet these are the same people who never heard of Twitter until Rick Sanchez , Kutcher or Oprah. These are the same people Google is targeting.
posted by phyrewerx at 6:42 PM on June 4 [1 favorite has favorites]

Seth Godin? Christ.

You put those thought leaders in the wrong order.

Actually, I would love to see a page full of random Jesus snippets like:

I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword.
O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.
And that time when there were only one set of footprints? You were acting like a real asshole, so I didn't want to be seen with you.
posted by Sidhedevil at 6:47 PM on June 4 [1 favorite has favorites]

While Chopra has his own blog as a widget on his own iGoogle page, I shall continue to vomit on the iGoogle celebrity endorsement gimmick thankyouverymuch.
posted by pyrex at 6:49 PM on June 4

I once saw Seth Godin eat a live bug off a watermelon at a Westchester Stop & Shop.

Is that what's required to be featured on a Googly page of celeries?
posted by dbiedny at 7:02 PM on June 4

Wait, is it April Fools' Day again already?
posted by aught at 7:23 PM on June 4

Impressive work from people with high GPAs from some of the top schools around, supposedly.
posted by raysmj at 7:41 PM on June 4

Yeah, this is pretty lame. I doubt most of these people use their purported pages on a regular basis, if at all.

Fortunately, all is forgiven with the introduction of this incredibly cool navigation tool for Street View.
posted by Rhaomi at 9:00 PM on June 4

Which is cooler, following Ashton Kutcher on Twitter or using his iGoogle theme?
posted by andoatnp at 5:30 AM on June 5

Wyclef is a humanitarian? Is that why he's not releasing any more records?
posted by criticalbill at 7:14 AM on June 5

There's a whole below the water-line-iceburg of internet users who still have the default ie start page as their homepage.

In my experience, a large amount of people do not even understand the concept of a homepage. They somehow believe it to be related to their ISP, or to the web browser icon itself. I frequently have to explain that MSN is not the internet, is not their internet, nor is it the internet at work but it's just their homepage, and that they are allowed to change it to whatever they want, without having to change their internet service.
posted by odinsdream at 7:14 AM on June 5

another igoogle user votes for : what the hell is the point of this
posted by criticalbill at 7:16 AM on June 5

tags for this thread are the best part of this thread
posted by mcstayinskool at 8:15 AM on June 5

tags for this thread are the best part of this thread

Considering that the tags are tired, unfunny and not really accurate, I agree with your assessment.
posted by eyeballkid at 9:01 AM on June 5