Yahoo! Maps Beta

So this must be the thinking at Yahoo! Maps:

"Clearly Google made us look like idiots by coming up with this awesome UI for their mapping engine. It's clean, simple, nicely animated, and even lets you see satellite and hybrid views. Let's see if we can make something that is vaguely similar, but a lot shittier."

Welcome to Yahoo! Maps Beta. It's slow, the interface is confusing, the graphics aren't particularly nice, and you feel as though you never quite know what's going on. From the fact that you have to wait while it initially loads, to the insane cursor when I mouse over the address field, this site is sure to complement Yahoo!'s existing reputation as the site that was almost as good as Google, but sucked instead.

Google Spreadsheets

Cause what the world really needs is a slow, underpowered spreadsheet that you access online. The only reason this application has received any attention at all is because it's Google and apparently Google can do no wrong and is slowly, but surely, going to take over the world from Microsoft. Well, not if this is their best effort.

As far as I can tell, you can't even draw a border around a cell. That's fine if all you are going to do is some simple number crunching, but useless if you are going to do anything more than that. And I just can't imagine the day anytime soon when I am going to say, hmmm, rather than start up Excel or 1-2-3 or even VisiCalc, I would like to go to a web site where my spreadsheets won't be accessible without an Internet connection, I can use only a very few features, and the government might subpoena my work at any moment.

This might be a good idea one day, but not now, and not this year, and not next year or the year after. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. Unless, apparently, you're Google.

Jesus why?