You can tell how Google’s changing from the Christmas presents they give.

In 2005, they sent me, as an AdSense publisher, a christmas present of a set of travel accessories: a mini USB hub, USB wireless mouse, USB torch, Google Talk headset, a USB stick, etc.

My Christmas present in 2006 was a perhaps slightly too ambitious electronic photo frame, which read SD cards. Sadly, it didn’t quite understand the full JPEG spec, resulting in some odd fiddling to get the thing to work - and because of that, it lies moderately unloved in my gadget drawer.

My Christmas present in 2007, though, is rather more practical and rather less showy; much like Google’s transfer away from young cool company to grown-up corporation. They’ve sent me a credit-card sized 2GB USB stick. In carefully designed cardboard packing. And I’m delighted with it - it looks very neat, and comes in a nicely-branded Google wallet.

When I can actually get it to work, instead of returning rather odd errors, I’ll be even happier… ;)

(My full disclosure is relevant to this post)