Seeing Google with different eyes

This afternoon, heading as close as I can to Inbox Zero, I came across an email from Google asking me to "rate their interview process," some kind of follow-up survey to the job interview I did with them back in December.

A lot of the questions are nonsensical. They asked me to rate the quality of the offer, and the quality of the work environment. Having never received an offer or worked at Google, I could not answer those questions with knowledge or integrity. I will say the Google survey software was smart enough to figure out that, by the third time I'd left it blank I just wasn't going to answer the question, and finally let me go on.

The odd thing was, after the survey was over it took me back to the Google home page.

The Google home page is something of a cultural artifact. When we look at the home page for Pepsi, Ford, IBM, or American Express, we know we're looking at the home page for a company that's trying to sell something. The same is even true for that masterpiece of web design magic, the Apple home page. The Google home page is something different: for a lot of people it is a gateway to the internet, the beginning of something big.

But for me, not anymore. Now it's just another home page. The oddest thing about that survey is that it really screwed down how that home page is basically the frontspiece for a crowd of very ordinary members of my tribe. It's no longer any more culturally relevant than Bing or Altavista.