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Mood: Happy ]
So Google has produced a new keyboard for their OS computer, and in a stunning, albeit self-serving move, they have eliminated the CAPS LOCK key. Instead you get a dedicated search key. Guess what you use to search?
Now to say that this has gotten people a little over stimulated would be an understatement. Why just this morning, CBC had a debate feature Grammar Girl and some tech expert debating the usefulness of the CAPS Lock key.
I will be blunt in my analysis, everyone is making a mountain out of a molehill.
Yes, Google is an industry leader. People look to them for trends and the like, but what many have failed to point out is that this is a branding exercise. Has Google replaced the CAPS LOCK with some new, more useful key? Say an interrobang? Or please unsend that email? Or how about an egosurfing button to monitor my minute-by-minute popularity? No. It launches a search engine, most likely Google. No doubt we will have similar initiatives from Microsoft, Apple and Yahoo in the next few years. Heck, I also predict Facebook and Twitter will find a way to get one key access to their sites, that doesn’t involve programming macros, in about the same amount of time.
And really, what is the grievance against the CAPS Lock? That your grandma can’t seem to unclick it? That some snotty, nitpicking jerk on YouTube over uses it? That the accidental hitting of the caps lock key as you type, cause a whole sentence (GASP) to be in CAPS? Well ignore the first one, she’s 80 and doesn’t know any better. And she did make you cookies when you were a kid. Ignore the second one too. Really, they are clueless and have no life. You will not change them. In the third case, imagine how helpful it will be to have a browser window complete with search engine popping up every few minutes instead of the all caps sentence. How useful!
I also do not think, as others do, that this will be the end of CAPS LOCK key. Instead this is a marketing stunt, it is destined to go the way of New Coke and the McDonald’s "I’d Hit It" campaign. Fade away into nothingness. Or at least make the sticky keys option way more popular.