Get lost, Google.

OK Goog­le.

That is what your pho­ne and your Goog­le brow­ser soon will react to. Any time. I’m not even going to go into the details of how I stron­gly I oppo­se this from a pri­va­cy view­point – becau­se at a point in the not so distant future, I will be sur­roun­ded by acti­ve micro­pho­nes whe­re­ver I go, even if my per­so­nal tele­pho­ne is not all ears.

I dis­li­ke the idea of start­ing a con­ver­sa­ti­on – even if it is a rudi­men­ta­ry one – with the words “OK Goo­g­le”. I feel that it is wrong on a num­ber of counts.

1. Who is this „Goog­le“ you talk to? It’s a nebu­lous enti­ty. Do they real­ly want you to think that you’­re addres­sing all of the com­pa­ny, with just one state­ment? Do they want you to feel that with just one com­mand, the many thou­sands of employees are at your beck and call? Or is Goog­le – the com­pa­ny – try­ing to do away with dif­fe­ren­tia­ti­on, dif­fe­rent pro­ducts and have just one iden­ti­fier? Or is it sup­po­sed to be a vir­tu­al assistant, able to get at all data their sys­tems have about your habits, your calen­dar, your fri­ends and your inte­rests,  that just hap­pens to have the same name?
2. Emo­tio­nal con­nec­tion. I feel that in part, using their brand here is sup­po­sed to for­ge an emo­tio­nal con­nec­tion bet­ween you and the com­pa­ny. To me, this is a kind of mani­pu­la­ti­on that I am not at all hap­py to see. They could use any other word „OK, Pho­ne“, „OK, Search engi­ne“ – any­thing. But no, it has to be Goog­le, their name.