Hello, my name is TechMan and I'm a Googleholic.

This is my sad tale.

Like most people, TechMan started out using Google's search engine. It was easy, available and fun. But pretty soon TechMan began to forget there were other search engines out there.

It was just a click down the primrose path to Gmail. Never mind that Outlook and Thunderbird were old friends. TechMan cast them aside.

After that it was easy to spurn old pal Mapquest for the shapely Google Maps. Before he knew it, TechMan was exploring Google Earth, walking Streetview and gazing at Google Sky.

Late one night, in a moment of weakness, TechMan downloaded Google Toolbar. But soon even that wasn't enough, so he copped a hit of Google Desktop.

TechMan was becoming a hopeless Google addict. He got his news from Google News, his back issues of the Post-Gazette from Google News Archive and tracked his meager portfolio on Google Finance.

Soon his Google habit started to cause problems at the homepage. TechMan created an iGoogle account, tarted up his new homepage with Google Themes and Google Gadgets, and piled on Google Stroll Through History, including Google Timeline.

Now TechMan had abandoned his faithful plain search homepage and was spending time with the homepages with lots of Flash.

Then TechMan made the fatal mistake of clicking "more" at the top of his Google homepage. He couldn't help it. He was like a rat nudging the bar to get more food pellets.

"More" led to Google Groups where TechMan ran with the fast and loose UseNet gang. Google Calendar let him plan his whole life around his habit.

TechMan was shameless. He abandoned his old RSS reader friends SharpReader and FeedReader, transferred all their subscriptions to Google Reader and deleted his old buddies.

When the Google Charybdis sucked in YouTube, another part of TechMan's soul was pulled into the black hole.

Just when TechMan thought he could sink no further, at the bottom of the "more" list he noticed those beckoning words "even more."

Of course TechMan could not resist, and there it was -- a whole page of Google. Google, Google everywhere and not a different link. There was Google Book Search and Goog-411 and Google Health and Google Scholar and Google Patent Search.

And all of it free, free, free!

After that, TechMan was not in possession of himself. When Google's browser, Chrome, came out, TechMan quickly adopted it as his browser-of-choice.

And using Chrome's "create applications shortcuts" feature, TechMan could launch his Google addictions with just a click from the desktop or the launch bar.

So here I sit, Googly-eyed and Googlified. I tried joining Goggleholics anonymous and following the 12-step plan, but I couldn't remember the third step and had to Google it.

The Google phone is about to come out, allowing me to carry Google everywhere. Even the blessed peace I had when I could tear myself away from the computer will be gone.