I gotta be honest with you. In 2007, I have turned into a huge Google whore. I (like most people) have been a long time user of the search engine. But, this year, I am now owned by Google (in spirit). Why? Because I have ditched Outlook in favor of Gmail. I am now a user of Google Documents. I am now a user of Google Calendar. I have been a user of Google Analytics for awhile for my websites (including this one). In my business, I also make money from Google Adsense.

Google, I am your bitch. I am your slave.

OK, Perhaps I Overstated

More accurately, I really like Google. They do a lot of things right, and they have made the internet a much better and more useful place than it was before they existed. Now, that said, there are things that I really wish Google would do. They aren’t perfect. So, here is my Google wish list. I think it is only fair, being their bitch and all, that they comply with my demands.

1. I would like to have a big “CHECK MAIL” button on my Gmail homepage to get mail from my POP3 account. It is annoying to have to go to Settings > Accounts and hit the “Check Mail Now” link.
2. I would like an option to display my emails in Gmail WITHOUT nesting the emails into conversations. Sometimes it is just more convenient to have the emails listed one-by-one.
3. Remove the BETA from Gmail. I know it doesn’t affect functionality, but come on now, is this really still a BETA? Why has the whole Web 2.o thing resulted in perpetual beta products?
4. Provide an option NOT to quote back previous emails in every email reply. Most of the time it is unnecessary and a waste of bandwidth.
5. Make my email signature appear after my reply, not way down at the bottom after all the aforementioned useless quoted text.
6. Allow the easy ability to manage more than one signature and select it on a per-message basis.
7. On the search engine itself, have a way of starring a search result just like I can do in Google Reader or in Gmail. After all, if I have a Google account, why can’t I hit a little star next to a search result and make a record of cool sites I found? Bring the star feature into normal searches.
8. Sorting search results would be nice. How about being able to sort my results by date, alpha, etc.
9. How about some simple ways of customizing my own iGoogle theme design?
10. Give me a Google to do list. They have email, calendar, RSS reader, documents. It’s a web-based office, but they are missing a simple todo list feature. Google, go buy Remember the Milk and make it a Google product.
11. Have an easy way to secure Gmail using SSL. All this stuff is secured by no more than a web cookie.
12. Stop tracking my search history (I have it paused, but that is really big brother of Google).

Google Listens!

Google does apparently listen to people, too. I was going to also mention two things for Google Reader. They were:

1. Putting a search for my feeds.
2. Allowing me to have plain-English tag folders that did not make me use all lower case with no space.

But, as it turns out, I didn’t have to list those. Just as I was about to publish this article, I saw that Google did indeed put those features into Reader. And we’re talking just within the last day! So, well done, Google!

That’s my current wish list. So, have some of your own? Feel free to chime in in the comments.