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My Google ecosystem


Google's ownership of my digital self is ever increasing and with the introduction of Google+ I don't see this trend changing. After taking a quick gander at my Google Dashboard I decided to write up a list of Google products to see how much of my online life touches Google's datacenters.

Primary tools
I use these Google tools more often then competing products

  • Gmail - My primary email client for many years.
  • Calendar - Keeps my events synced between everything.
  • Chrome - Fast and clean with great developer tools.
  • Reader - Keyboard commands
  • Google+ - Quickly taking the place of Twitter and Facebook.
  • Search - # 1 since I switched from Dogpile.
  • Openid delegation - I use http://abrah.am as my OpenID delegated to my Google Account.
  • Analytics - Wish it was realtime but I use it to track all my sites.
  • Blogger - Primary blog platform since I realized hosting my own Drupal site was a PITA.
  • Contacts - Tight integration with Gmail and sync to my phone.
  • Docs - Hosts all my documents, spreadsheets, and is starting to take over the roll of Dropbox as storage.
  • Groups - I've always disliked Yahoo! Groups.
  • Maps - Direction, finding stuff, and staring places.
  • Voice - Provides a single number I can use from any computer, or phone.
  • Android - Ties everything listed here together in my pocket!
  • Talk - I've never been happy with AIM or Skype.
  • Goo.gl - My primary URL shortener since the API was launched.

Up and coming
These products are trending towards being primary tools for me

  • Checkout - With the integration to the Android Market, YouTube rental, Ebook store, and Wallet launching this summer Checkout is quickly becoming a big part of my payment scene.
  • Music - Historically I've been a Pandora user but in the coming months I plan on uploading all my mp3s to Music. If music get integrated with the Sandbar I likely will cancel my Pandora subscription.
  • Ebook store - I had a Kindle for a couple years and never really used it. I've purchased a couple books from Google to read on my Galaxy Tab and I see it happening more and more. Google needs to let me upload PDFs to automatically sync though.
  • Picasa Web Albums - Instant upload with G+ is amazing and I just discovered the desktop software is a lot better then I remembered it being. I may not migrate my existing Flickr photos over but everything new is going on Picasa.
  • Latitude - I stopped using Foursquare a while ago and with the new integration with G+ I've started using Latitude when I want a monad associated with a location.
  • Profiles - Twitter used to be my primary third-party online identity. With the launch of G+ this is changing.
  • YouTube rentals - I'm not a fan of rental models as I prefer Neflix's subscription plan, but if the Hulu rumors end up being accurate this could be interesting.
  • Chrome OS - I've got a Chromebook coming and that will likely become my primary computer when I'm not coding.

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  1. Melissa RossFriday, July 29, 2011

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