Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Disrespecting Veterans

As you all probably know, I've been waging a verbal war on Google for some time now for their lack of respect given to veterans two years in a row running, not appropriately noting that it was Veterans Day on their website. Usually when it's someones birthday (MLK, Copernicus, DaVinci, Darwin, etc), a holiday (St. Patricks Day, Christmas, Halloween, etc), or other 'special' day, Google notes that day by re-designing their logo to pay tribute.
Veterans Day 2004, no such tribute. I emailed and received a standard PR response "we didn't do it because it's a solemn occasion and we didn't want to offend" blah blah blah....BUT they did say "Hey, we'll work on it, and if you have a suggestion, let us know and we'll work on it" (paraphrasing). So I sent several suggestions including some sort of Arlington background, and changing the L in Google to the upsidedown rifle, with boots in front of it and a helmet on top, the symbol of a fallen comrade. Never heard back from them.
This year I was sincerely looking forward to seeing what they came up with, being a new stockholder of the company.

Nothing.
Not a damn thing. I emailed them again, along with NBC News, Drudgereport.com, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Fox News, CBS News, ABC News, and Fox News. None of them responded or did I see anything on any of their newscasts (of course, I didn't watch them ALL) about it. No response from Google for a day, then received the SAME email from the previous year. I posted a complaint on FreeRepublic.com only to find that on Google's British and Candadian servers, they had replaced the O in Google with a poppy, in reference to the poem Flanders Fields. US servers? Nada. So, it's fine if you're Australian, Canadian, or British, but if you're an American Vet, screw you.
So, when Google put together their MLK logo this year, once again I fired off an email to them, including the same list of people I emailed on Veterans Day, basically saying that they did a good job of paying tribute to Dr. King, and that it was too bad that they couldn't use that creativity to come up with some sort of tribute to the Veterans who DIED in order for Dr. King to even be able to LIVE in this country. And finally, today they responded with the SAME DAMN LETTER.

God I hate Google. I hope their stock drops to .67 a share. And that Sergey and Larry's plane crashes into their HQ as they're flying over taking pictures.

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