Post date: Aug 28, 2010 11:12:18 AM

Google Ink

Posted on March 6, 2007 by jjn1

Scott Grieder, Ask.com Group Product Manager, was taking notes on an important conference call when his (free) Google Pen ran out of ink without warning. The lapse in this fundamental Google product/service forced him to switch pens at a critical moment, resulting in considerable inconvenience and loss of data.

“I should have known better than to use a free Google product for business purposes.” Scott told us in a recent interview. “Google Pen is fine for home use, but not when my company’s productivity is on the line. I had to switch pens in the middle of taking notes. There’s no telling how much data I lost. The barrel and cartridge of the pen are transparent, allowing the user to see inside the pen, and presumably determine when Google Pen will run out of ink. But due to possibly sub-par materials, the ink stains the inside of the clear cartridge, giving the impression that the pen still has plenty of ink. Now I have to apply all my current behaviors and processes to another pen," Grieder explained. "How long will that take? I used to trust Google to stand behind their products. I guess I was wrong."

He added, "Thanks a lot, Google Pen. I guess you get what you pay for."

But then he received a nice handwritten letter from a Google person. “We note your suboptimal experience with our Google pens”, it said, “and are pleased to send you — at no charge — a replacement set. Fortunately our pen architecture is based on Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Drafting Stuff [warning: embedded geek joke] . If any component fails, a quick recovery is ensured”.

Sources: https://web.archive.org/web/20070207023838/http://blog.ask.com/2007/02/the_latest_goog.html & https://memex.naughtons.org/google-ink/3773/