I’m a fan of Google products. I always have been.  In fact, the seamless integration of gmail, google talk, google docs and calendar make life so much easier that I start to stumble when I can’t just simply “search” and find something when I need it.  I don’t like looking for things.  For this reason, I was also seriously considering getting the Motorola Droid, which comes with Android 2.0.  I’ve been an iPhone user for 3 years.  Until Thursday night….

But let’s roll back the clock to Thursday  morning.  I took a cab to the ad:tech conference in New York to bump heads with some of the leaders in the internet advertising industry. On the way there, my wonderful iPhone 3G seemed to slip out of my pocket while I was getting out of the cab. Of course, I didn’t realize this until I was already inside the conference.  I was like “shit” that’s the 3rd iPhone I’ve lost in 2 years, and I didn’t remember the cab number.

Then, I had a brief moment of rejoice, as if Steve Jobs himself appeared before me with angel wings and reminded me that I signed up for MobileMe, Apple’s synchronization service.  One feature of MobileMe is called “find my iPhone.” Aha! The perfect tool for such a problem. Rejoice, rejoice.  Or at least I thought.

Turns out the “find my iPhone” feature on MobileMe is potentially the biggest tease to be introduced into this world since man invented the strip club.  I got to watch my iPhone roam the city for hours on end. I couldn’t do anything about it but send a message to the phone kindly requesting the holder to return it to me.  New York is full of good samaritans. Right? Watching the map get updated every 15 minutes as I obsessively checked  it caused me emotional and physical distress:

I could SEE my iPhone travelling all over the city, like it was on one of those slow-moving, traffic-hell causing NYC city tour buses. Then shortly before 6, it was at LGA. Then it went offline. Did my iPhone go on a vacation? I haven’t been on a vacation in like a year. I was resentful and frustrated all at once.  FML.

All the meanwhile, Verizon was planning to unleash the final efforts of its marketing upon me.  I got a tweet from a friend letting me know that the Droid was going to be released at midnight Thursday at the Verizon on 34th St.  Alas, I got there at 11 p.m., and am definitely somewhere in this picture:

Yup, I got it, the Motorola Droid. And more importantly, I have an Android phone with tons of Google integrated features, and I’m loving every second of it.  I’ll write more about it later. But here is a teaser picture, thanks to the folks over at Boy Genius Report, who have a ton of droid coverage.

Enjoy the weekend all.