“My Google Changed”

I wonder sometimes how the people I work with manage to dress themselves in the mornings. Over the weekend, LIT pushed down an update for Firefox. No problem for those of us who use Firefox instead of IE, nor for those who are moderately clueful about software. And by moderately clueful, I mean, they know what a web browser is. Apparently some of my coworkers do not.

Now, I realize that there are plenty of folks who manage to find their way around a computer without overstuffing their brains with information they don’t really need to have on tap. So if I asked my mom what a web browser is, she is unlikely to know what the hell I’m talking about. That’s fine. My coworkers, though? We all had to go through a web 2.0 workshop, so they ought to bloody well know what a web browser is, right?

Twice now, I’ve had someone come to my cubicle to tell me, “My Google changed.” Now, I had no idea how to unpack that statement. What the hell were they talking about? Knowing about the Firefox update, I asked which web browser they were using. “What’s a web browser?” Uh-oh. I asked if they were using Firefox or IE, and coworker A said, “I’m using Google.” Um, no. I explained that they had to be using either Firefox or IE (there are no other options on our workstations). “Oh, definitely IE, then, because I never use Firefox.” (Any guesses as to which browser was open when I went to their workstations?) Lordy!

Apparently, when the new Firefox update was pushed down, it made itself king of the mountain (“All ur shortcuts R belong to us!”). Folks who usually use IE as the default browser now found that Firefox was the default. Some folks–including coworkers A and B–litter their desktops with shortcuts to websites, instead of bookmarking them. Because of the update, clicking on any of those shortcuts launched Firefox, not IE. Folks realized that things looked a little different, but couldn’t figure out why, so their explanation was that Google–which LIT has automatically set as the default homepage in both IE and Firefox–had changed.

If I wanted to hold people’s hands and help them sort out their lives, I’d work in tech support. But I don’t, so I don’t.