[powera]

This comment has nothing to do with the article except for "I hate Google" sentiment, and does a pretty lousy job of it. It seems reasonable to assume you don't need to drive 2 miles to answer your phone, and "Matt Butts" is just juvenile.

And yet it's currently the top comment.

[PaulHoule]

I do need to drive 2 miles to answer my phone, really. Don't get me started on AT&T and Verizon or the Nigeria-class broadband service in the US. Cell service sort works in mid-tier cities like Rochester, NY, but go to Greenwich Village or Beverly Hills and try getting a signal.

When I talk to people in China or India or Australia or Germany, I get a good connection, but when I talk to people in Encino or Boston I have to repeat half of what I say because their connections keep dropping out.

Calling him Matt Butts gives me once chance in ten that his team of flying monkeys won't see a reference to his name and ban all my web sites and every web site that links to my web sites (except for Wikipedia)

And it's not just "I hate Google", I used to love Google. I've just watched how Google's ecosystem has wrecked the web. So many topics are dominated by old crappy web sites (talked about in Hacker News today) and these sites have an incentive NOT to improve because if you make any radical change in your web site, there's a high risk that your rankings will tank.

In the meantime, if you want make a good site, there's a high risk you'll build it and nobody will come.

If the comment above has gotten a lot of votes it's because a lot of people feel the same way. I think tomorrow I am calling my broker and selling GOOG short.

[jfoster]

Perhaps you do need to drive 2 miles to answer your phone, but I think the point was that the vast, vast majority of Google's users do not need to do that. (sidenote: isn't that because you have 2-step-auth turned on? how would you like it to work, given your circumstances?)

[PaulHoule]

I don't have two step auth on, but it wanted to check my number anyway, which was fine with me. If they'd set a longer timeout it would have been find with me.

[jesseendahl]

You should look into setting up Google Authenticator or another offline TOTP app. Then you can get your 2FA codes without cell signal.

[noblethrasher]

Can't vouch for the rest of the comment but I have to drive between one and two miles from home to answer my phone. One mile gets me to a nearby park and two miles gets me to the university where I work; there's not much else in between.

[ams6110]

I'm not quite that bad off but I do have to stand next to a particular window at one end of my house to get 1 bar on the signal meter. Text message generally work throughout the house but to make a voice call with any hope of clarity I need to stand by that window.