They also bought Youtube and made it worse and bought Orkut and killed it.
https://xkcd.com/1361/
't was just a matter of time.Don’t forget the investment into Israel despite the protests of the workers
Honestly Google Drive works great as free storage (Though for large storage there’s no guarantee they won’t accidentally delete it, it’s happened before).
And Google Suite is good enough if you can’t be bothered to get Microsoft Office. Though they’re forcing AI into it and have some weird quirks like being unable to copypaste external text with rightclick.
I think the reason they’re hostile to copy past I g is so that it doesn’t work on mobile.
May I ask what Google Drive has that other free cloud storage things don’t? As in what makes it work great?
I’d say convenience and shareability. I come across far more dead Dropbox links than dead Google Drive links.
And Onedrive is further down in enshittification than Drive. Like windows relentlessly trying to reenable and reinstall without permission.
Overall I like it cause it’s just there and works. But I wholeheartedly would not recommend it for business applications (without backups at least). There have been instances of companies data just getting deleted or randomly banned from their google account.
In essence, I would not pay for upgraded storage.
They will enshitify it by forcing you to watch adds on YouTube to get an access code to retrieve your files
Microsoft has free storage options too. As does Dropbox, et al.
G Suite is actually pretty good all things considered but MS won the Office / Outlook / Excel wars ages ago. All big enterprises are running windows. That fight is over so long as MS doesn’t bungle Windows11 too badly.
Gmail and Google drive are far easier to use than Outlook and OneDrive. Not saying they’re good things for the world but those products haven’t been fried yet.
Not even gmail… They turned that to shit years ago.
I still miss inbox :(
All it should be is a goddamn mailbox. Instead it’s now an ad-fueling chunk of spyware that has fucking social media bullshit built into it. I started paying for Proton and have been emptying my Google crap
What exactly does Google have left that people like? Gmail?
Nope, not GMail either, even GMail has ads now.
Yeah I’ve been migrating away steadily. And what a shame! Now Google don’t get to use my emails to train their shit AI.
They are the IMO most supported Single-Sign-On provider. I think Facebook, which I don’t even have, was mostly for games, and then apple also isn’t an option, and that’s just it besides using firefox’ built in password manager for another email/password combination. What’s your opinion on log in providers?
The era of random apps trying to post on my wall made me never use Facebook for sign on. Well that, and Facebook
Maps. There’s still unfortunately nothing better.
Maps also has gone to shit. Complex routing including public transport is pretty much the only thing it still is useful for. For using maps as maps openstreetmap has been better for a long time, even before Google decided to dumb down their maps. For bicycle routing osm also is better nowadays as Google is missing most of the small paths.
Maps was crowdsourced like wikipedia. Still is.
It will turn to shit as crowds migrate. And the crowds are migrating.I’m going to spend an hour happily contributing to openstreetmaps in response :P
Helping to contribute to OpenStreetMap using Street Complete has the potential to change that.
On iOS I find Apple Maps to be better in general. I don’t think Google maps is as much of a monopoly as it once was
That may be, but then you’re in the unfortunate position of owning an Apple device.
I’m fine with that, I’ve always had trouble with android devices but I haven’t had any issues since switching a few years ago. To each their own
I’ve always said “Apple devices ‘just work’ for people who think throwing money at a problem is a valid solution”.
Case in point: Louis Rossmann on why he hates Apple devices
Yeah. I tried using OpenStreetMap for five minutes until I realised most of my city doesn’t have the house numbers mapped out.
In my experience, google maps has the same issues in some areas,e.g. Tanger. OSM was way more reliable there. You could help fix those issues by contributing. I think it’s fun and you’ll get to know your neighborhood better
And they’ve been neglecting that. There are a couple of street names that they have wrong, and I’ve been using the edit feature fruitlessly for over 8 years. I’ve included links to local business web sites with the new name of one, links to municipal web sites with the new name, geo-tagged photos of the street signs, and even links to the municipal ordinance that changed the names in 2003. It all goes into the same black hole.
The UI for GMail is awful. Can’t even follow conversations on my phone app. Just put that shit in order like Outlook does. Fuck.
I dunno that Outlook redesign is fucking awful
You know what I don’t want when I search for an email Microsoft? I don’t want your fucking suggestions about what I’m looking for.
I have to use Teams, Outlook, and Sharepoint for work.
What kills me about the search functions in all of them is how bad it is. I work for an ISP, and we use identifiers for different services. I can search SharePoint for the unique numerical identifier of a circuit and get multiple results returned.
Granted, the first is usually what I’m looking for, but none of the other returned results have the identifier anywhere in them.
Same for Outlook. So much junk noise returned when searching for anything.
I mean, a lot of the points are valid, but the Pixel phones are pretty great, Android is pretty great and getting better, and the Chromebook gamble is playing a really long term game where they could end up uprooting Microsoft if they play their cards right. From my understanding, US kids now on average know Chromebook OS better than Windows by far, and will probably prefer to continue using it if they could. If Google makes the OS more viable for professional use and flexible and play their cards right, they’d have a really good chance at uppending Microsoft’s dominance, especially since Microsoft is seemingly trying to shoot itself in the foot with Windows.
I’m still rocking my Pixel 2 and am perfectly happy with it
I only replaced my Pixel 2 with a Pixel 6a because the screen broke. Took it to a repair place and the screen stopped working after replacement.
I had that phone for ~8 years and I hope to get similar mileage out of my 6a.
US kids now on average know Chromebook OS better than Windows
Source? I would like to read about that ropic.
As a parent, my kids are issued Chromebooks by the school for “e-learning days”. I imagine mainly because of cost and ability to be managed remotely.
Pixel phones are garbage compared to Nexus line at the time. Android is garbage now too, like the OP said. Chromebook is gonna have to turn itself into a real platform with powerful machines and software to ever be relevant beyond disposal classroom computers. Frankly I think SteamOS has a better chance at making a comeback, and that’s a long shot.
My Pixel 6 is not “great”.
Mine was, as is my P7, especially compared to a lot of competing devices from Samsung etc
The camera sucks, Google doctors the resulting photos with AI but it looks like crap. The battery sucks, it also overheats easily. But that’s not the worst part, the worst part is the ZERO FRICTION BACKING. It fucking slides off everything. Who the hell in their design department approved such a moronic idea? How are billion dollar corporations making such shit products while continuing to fail upwards?
Who the hell uses a phone without a case?
I have to take the case off because it overheats genius.
I have a pixel 6a that I use a lot, and it only overheats if I leave it in the phone holder in my work truck when I park in the sun.
What are you doing that causes the phone to work that hard?
What are you doing that causes the phone to work that hard?
Doing literally anything on it south of the 37th parallel.
I own a Pixel 7 and although not ideal, it’s certainly better than most of the phones out there for me. The only downsides of daily driving a Pixel are battery drain and overheating. Granted, I live in a rather cold climate so I imagine it being not the most useful piece of tech for the folks near the equator…
It’s been confirmed that Pixel 10 will finally get a non-exynos chip, so perhaps it can indeed become the pinnacle of Android smartphones, who knows.
This scenario still requires Google to play their cards right, however, but there’s hope.
I went from a Galaxy S20 to a Pixel 8 and frankly I miss the S20. Build quality sucks. My screen creaks and I hate the camera ridge especially. Whole thing feels cheap and it’s not even very root friendly anymore like Nexus phones, which is the whole reason I got it.
If Samsung would just give me a phone with pure android and only Samsung pay, I would be so happy.
Don’t worry. They won’t play their cards right.
Don’t tell them about Gmail, they forgot ruining it. Don’t wake sleeping dogs.
I don’t want to advertise but I am on Tutanota and their plans seem fair. If you’re not the product then you have to pay something etc.
Don’t know if this is bulletproof but I just need a regular email provider with no bull shit. The end to end stuff is not even that important for me on a daily basis.
I’ve been using Google voice for almost 20 years it’s wonderful
Mine kept deleting my numbers and I gave up at some point. It was great, a decade ago
Personally I’ve had the same number for years and it’s the one I give out, but as an IT professional I definitely know individual experiences vary. The main issue has been the few texting stuff that doesn’t support it. Like ubereats, which I guess doesn’t matter since I stopped using them a while ago, but there are others.
They’re the #1 in streaming. More people watch youtube on their TV’s than Netflix
Doesn’t Youtube famously bleed money?
Not anymore lol. It used to, but they make a lot of money on youtube now.
No clue, but the question was what do they have that people like. People really really like youtube
Liked. They make it worse every day, there’s just not a viable alternative. Without revanced and 5 different plugins on the browser, I’d have stopped using it already
But they didn’t invent that. They bought YouTube after it was already popular. The only thing they’ve done to the platform is put in more ads.
YouTube launched in 2005 and was bought by Google in 2006. It has been a Google service for 95% of its existence. I’m pretty sure Google did other stuff in that 18 years than “put in more ads.”
And destroying the rating system from points based, to thumps up and down relation, to thumps up only.
Was that a qualifier? “What exactly does google have left that people like?” Youtube, they have youtube
Chromebooks are insanely locked down at schools. I got one on eBay for $40, installed linux, and now it can play Minecraft Java at 60 fps so that’s something.
I really don’t get the Chromebook complaint. It just needs to browse the internet, and a Chromebook is damn solid at that at a super reasonable price and are rugged as hell. Yeah I wish schools didn’t hook into the g suite but like what, you want em on a windows machine to do the same things as on chrome os?
My chromebook was so bloated with the schools proctoring software that it lagged on a Google doc
Which is like half of the things purpose
Okay yeah that’s very true the proctoring systems suck entire ass.
What have Google developed inhouse that’s good since Gmail?
Android and YouTube were both acquisitions.
Hm, 8.8.8.8? That was 5 years after Gmail.
Docs, Sheets, and Slides were all acquisitions. I guess Drive and Forms are good.
1.1.1.1 gang represent.
Once upon a time, search. Those days are long past.