Today at SearchSIG, Google was mentioned once every five minutes! Wow…. lets admit it, whether we hate them, or we love them, we do love to talk about them. Them being Google, Yahoo and Microsoft aka GYM. What would happen if the blogsphere decided that we would not talk about the Big Three for a whole week? Instead we shifted our focus on the little guys, interesting technologies, and some other important stuff. Can the blogs exist without talking about the GYM? I don’t know…maybe be a week. I am going to try, and see how long this detox can last. If you are feeling adventurous, then spread the No-GYM meme! I am quite certain this will remind a lot of us about that classic Sienfeld episode about abstinence!
Update: Scoble is on the wagon, PaulK was, but fell of it. 37Signals and Bubble Generation have joined. Jason Clarke is upset, but Jason, we just trying to get diverse conversations going.. Pss.. blame it on Kevin
True, we can’t survive ou tech life without GYM, not M atleast. But I simply hate G now, for various reasons…
GYM! I love it!
Did you just make that acronym up, or am I that out of the loop?
mike… you have been to busy working all the time. out of the loop. 🙂
I like the sound of The GYMP better: The Google-Yahoo-MSN Party.
Google Who? Yahoo What? Microsoft, huh?
Kind of reminds me of ‘if a tree falls…’
This article reminds me of a little 8 minute film(?) I watched the other day.
http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/
If I say I am not going to talk about GYM, am I talking about them? 🙂
Maybe we can take 1 start-up everyday and discuss about them (rojo.com for RSS, damaka.com for VoIP, pandora.com for Music, meebo.com for Ajax-IM)
Thanks for thinking differently and stretching our imaginations – thats what keeps me coming back.
Can I talk about AOL then?
…at least until AOL is part of G or M?
“we come not to praise GYM, but to bury them.”
signed,
all the vertical search companies
😉
so AOL is fair game michael. i think we should just talk about them instead…
Not sure if burying GYM is a good idea considering how much we hate AND love them and depend on them. Its like a parent-child relationship where no matter how much the child hate the parent, they are almost always looking up to them for everything. I don’t think there is a day that passes by when I don’t use G and M. Ooops, I am not supposed to talk about GYM. Sorry. Don’t bury me…
ravi,
the idea here is to take a little break from GYM and focus on the other stuff and not just GYM.
Couldn’t agree with you more. There is so much innovation and exciting stuff happening around us that deserve attention. you carry the baton and lead the way like you always do… 😉
The first rule of GYM is, you do not talk about GYM.
The second rule of GYM is, you DO NOT talk about GYM. 🙂
I really wish I could obey this. But it’s either GYM or another social networking/photo sharing Web 2.0 site. Sigh.
If the blogosphere could cease talking about American companies for a day, then we’ve got something.
paul, we can all collectively dream don’t you think 🙂
We can probably cease talking about GYM but the bigger question I’m thinking is, can we _be_ without using GYM for a week?
Om, maybe you could ask your readers to try this as a challenge. Ask them to give up using products/services from these 3 companies for a week. Get them out of their comfort zone. What alternatives do they eventually turn to. Allow them to do a guest post at the end of the week..
This is a classic catch22. Spreading the no-GYM meme only increases our ‘precious attention’ towards GYM.
To get to a real no-GYM point (which would be increddibly nice), we need nothing short of personal campaign conducted by op leaders around the world with clear dates to start the no-GYM period!
Thought-provoking article… until you read the area just below your post: “Ads by Google” 🙂 Oops…
GYM free. It is hard to be GYM free. But, it is worth a try.
I’m all in favour of focusing on the little guys for a while.. *cough* 😉
However the little guys are mostly dreaming about that mystical ‘exit’ involving GYM so you know even if nobody TALKS about GYM we are all certainly still THINKING about GYM.. anyway be careful not to stop talking about them for too long since the hype needs to be maintained otherwise the bubble will collapse again! 😉
confession time guys – the GYM addiction is worse than my nicotine addiction. I have started and scrapped three posts…. and chanted… self control …
If you add eBay, Amazon and AOL (GEMAYA – cornered by Dan Farber), then you get all the usual suspects. Though you might want to add NewsCorp based on their stated acquisitive mindset.
I’ve been living on a diet of nothing but M for a while now… of course, I do have a Yahoo messenger account, but I use trillian. Does that still count?
If you visualise all thoughts of GYM being outside your mind, or trying to get into your mind(/head), then you can reject them, visualise them as being thrown back as if by a forcefield. Pretty soon you will be GYM-free. If they try to come back, reject them again. It works!
My son dragged me into the Palo Alto Apple store to try to cleanse my mind! Heh!
We also went to Fry’s to look at HDTVs. If you guys are missing what’s going on in HDTV land, you better pay attention. Best Buy and Fry’s were both packed with people buying $3,000 TVs. That’s a big opportunity.
robert, finally a break through… wonderful. i do agree, hdtv is the big opportunity. unfortunately i bought one already…. so cannot trade up
What about Ask Jeeves
For obvious reasons I love the acronym (I write a techy fitness blog)…. however with that said, I’m more of a “G” girl. I visit google daily… I visit Yahoo as a second option only when I didn’t find enough on a subject… and I visit Microsoft once or twice a year only to verify links.