Time for a New Search Engine?

Today Google UK is putting irritating background images on their Home Page, and to turn it off you need to log in. http://www.google.com/ is not doing this (today, at least), but when UK users try to navigate there, they are redirected to http://www.google.co.uk/ and the obnoxious image. The work-around is to navigate to www.google.com/ncr (No Country Redirect).

If this isn't gone tomorrow I'm going to change my browser Home Page from Google to http://www.alltheweb.com/. The reason that I and many other IT people moved to the Google search engine in the first place, years ago, was because it loaded very fast. It had a simple clean page with no bells and whistles. Processing a logon account and loading an image does not make for a fast load anymore.

But the thing that really annoys me is that there is no way to send my negative feedback to Google about this feature, or if there is, it's really well hidden. Even their "Contact Us" link doesn't provide an e-mail address or a form for this, and I don't feel like sitting on hold on the telephone.

To change your Home Page in Internet Explorer:

• Navigate to http://www.alltheweb.com/ (or other preferred page).
• In the top right of Internet Explorer menu bar, click Tools, then Internet Options.
• In the Home Page section, ensure that the new web site is shown, and then click Use Current and then OK.

Larry Ellison on Cloud Computing

I agree with most of what he says. "Cloud Computing" is simply a new term for what has been widely available for over a decade. There are some newer services available via the web, or cloud, and it does provide some new business models for IT in terms of renting resources and services in smaller increments only when you need them, but for the most part it is a fancy new buzz-word.