Google upsets customers with background images - a Bing rip-off

This morning I switched on my PC only to be met by a Google search window covered in pictures. This wasn't the result of iGoogle (Googles personalised area) but infact due to Google decision apparently force users to have images on it's search engine.

Some users might like this "pretty" idea, but not me. As a colour-blind person I find this not only destracting, but down right annoying. In addition, it also slows down the load-time of the webpage and for someone like me who searches a lot, that's a big annoyance.
It also seems like they annoyed a few thousand people according to their support forum and this article.

Apparently, tomorrow, Google will give us an option to stop this bahavior. I'm not sure what made them do it in the first place - if I wanted tacky searches I'd use Bing!

If you want to see some of the many thousands of complaints from people about this, take a look here, here and here.

New Microsoft phone - rubbish!

Microsoft have revealed plans for their "phone of the future". Details are here.

I just wonder where they're going to store the battery, circuits and antenna? Microsoft say that this is a "Windows Phone that will change the entire ecosystem". Mmm...

Something tells me they haven't thought this through very well...no surprise there.

Google Andriod for PC - could this be the beginning of the end of the road for Microsoft?

With Google's ever increasing market share of the moble phone market with it's seemingly reliable operating system Andriod (not forgetting Google's constant push of their Mozilla based internet Browser Chrome), there's increasing talk of Google eventually producing a full operating system for Intel based PC's. It would appear that Intel already recognise Google are striving to push their technology in to as much of the market as they can and Microsoft are beginning to worry...and so they should.

For years it was almost joked about that Bill Gates 'stole' DOS from IBM; yet the second coming of Apple has forced Microsoft to lose an enormous cut of the market share they once held. Microsoft have, for many years, wasted resources on a part of the market that I think they never really understood (or didn't care to). That mixed with the release of really slow and unreliable operating systems such as as Windows Vista (added to the worlds increasing dislike of multi-billion corporations), means that more people are turning away from Microsoft than ever before for operating systems like Snowleopard and Linux Ubuntu.

I've used Ubuntu for some time now and whilst not perfect, it's a bloody good free alternative to the (still very expensive) Windows 7. I also owned a Windows Mobile phone up until a few months ago but it's constant unreliability forced me back to Symbian - basic, but it works, and that's what I need. That's what most people need which is why they're increasingly telling Microsoft that they're not prepared to put up with being charged for something that simply doesn't cut it.

Of course, it's easy to single out Microsoft; they are still the market leaders and there are still far more Windows-based machines in the world that Apple, but Microsofts share is getting less and less and will continue to do so until Microsoft sit up and listen that people are no longer prepared to pay over-the-odds for technology which could be funded by alternative means such as pay-per-click. Apple are gaining all the time and Google want a slice of them too. If I was a Microsoft shareholder I would be seriously considering moving my money...perhaps it's just too late for Microsoft to recover?