Being labeled as ‘Google sheep’

I’ve been labeled ‘Google sheep’! All this because I said the Google Chromebook wasn’t a bad idea. Did I come out and say it was the only platform worth using? Nope. Did I say it was the greatest thing since sliced bread? Certainly not. Did I say it was revolutionary? By no means. Did I say it would change the way we look at computing? Not even close. Did I say it would be the dominant computing platform for the next 100 years? Sorry, but no. So why label me Google Sheep?

I certainly know some technology sheep, but don’t think of myself that way. According to The Online Slang Dictionary  a sheep is defined as “a person who follows or mimics others, without thought”. That doesn’t sound like me. I give my decisions a lot of thought. Sometimes they follow the mainstream, other times they go completely against the grain. But they’re thoughtful.

I suppose if I were one of the Google sheep I’d be doing everything Google. Let’s have a look shall we. This should be fun!

• Phone – Motorola Droid running Android. So I do use a smartphone running an operating system from Google, but the phone is from Motorola. In case you’re not aware, Motorola is not Google.
• Personal Computer – Lenovo X201t Tablet PC. Hmm, no Google there.
• Family Computer – Mac. Definitely no Google here. In fact I might go as far as to say that this is anti-Google. But my family uses iTunes to manage their music, movies, etc on several iPods so it makes sense. In addition, my wife uses iPhoto to manage the thousands of photos I’ve taken over the years. 
• Computer OS – Windows 7. No Google here either.
• Office Suite – Microsoft Office. Still looking.
• Online Office Suite – Office Live. I also use Google Docs, but Windows Live works better for me because of OneNote and its ability to synch with the desktop.
• Photo Storage – iPhoto. There’s that anti-Google thing again.
• Music Service – Amazon Cloud. Blasphemy!
• Movie Service – Netflix
• Synched Storage – Sugarsync
• Image Capture/Edit – FastStone Capture
• Gaming Platform – Xbox 360/Xbox Live
• Email Client – Several, including: GMail, MS Outlook, Hotmail, MobileMe
• Browser – Combination: Google Chrome, Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox. With that said I do prefer Google Chrome to the other browsers. Firefox has its pros and cons and I use it for very specific things. Same for IE.
• Search Engine – Google hands down. Ah crap! I guess this makes me a Google Search Engine sheep; along with millions of others. I use Bing as a secondary search engine, but only on rare occasion.
• Cloud desktop environment – Jolicloud
• MP3 Player – Don’t use one anymore. I simply use whatever machine I’m on through Amazon Cloud. With that said, there are eight iPods of various flavors in my house, and technically speaking one of those is mine. Not sure where it is, but I have one and it’s not made by Google.

By the look of the list above I’d have to say that I’m decidedly not Google Sheep. In fact, it looks like I’m more of a Microsoft sheep than anything else. I mean I certainly preach the benefits of tablet PCs, use their operating system and office suite. That’s quite an interesting turn of events.