Most large companies have a "jump the shark" moment where business needs and biz dev take over the engineering/product side and starts running the show unilaterally. It becomes less of an equal affair and more dictating terms. Microsoft's was in the 90s in the os/browser wars.
Same thing happened to Sun Solaris
I call them "how do they stay in bussiness if they don't do anything?".
Basically all those shops that never have any customers, yet pay thousands in rent.
(They are fronts for money laundering is the answer!)
I'm not sure why people are surprised. Google has been downright evil for quite a while now. They do this in all their products, down to the point of intentionally crippling them. For instance, since Android 5, the standard contact app doesn't allow you to modify a contact which is not synced with an account. Why even do this? The list of tracking settings that can be turned permanently on, but only temporarily off i…
Maps is insanely laggy on my Xiaomi Redmi note 4x. THis is with the performance kernel configuration on with GPU running 100%. Its just horribly optimised and has so much clutter now. Does anyone know a decent alternative? (please don't say waze)
HERE Maps or one of the OSM-based apps (maps.me, OsmAnd) depending on map quality where you live.
There was a lot of uproar about this internally but nothing changed. They told us that this was the only "practical" option. The company has rotted.
Tracking for everything.. with Android 6 and upwards you now have to turn on location in order to (get this!) find your Chromecast dongle when you set it up. Positioning, to find a wi-fi source inside your own place? Fortunately I still have an old screen-broken Android 5 tablet to use for such things. After that everything works.
FWIW, at least the official story is that that is because doing a scan on Bluetooth or Wi-Fi is in fact enough to locate you regardless, so it now requires the permission to do so.
I freaking HATE youtube so much. Its such a vile POS of a service. Its hardly even worth my packets to type out all the ways its so bad. I feel like nobody in charge of YouTube actually even uses it for anything.
im using newpipe on android and adding the rss feeds to newsblur so I can watch on desktop. its actually really good since you get away from their suggestions side bar and autoplay (and the UI). newsblur let's you organise things into subfolders too which is helpful the other thing in going to start using is youtube-dl to download my watch later videos and then use something like emby or plex to watch them. maybe do…
So if I’m reading you right, “YouTube is great, provided you work around their UI, feature set and arbitrary limitations by replacing it all with 3rd party software.” Yeah google’s really nailing it. /s
>Yes, that starts with "leaving it" You're right, but the percentage of Google users aware of how evil they are is probably less than 0.5%. An overwhelmingly large percentage of users won't care about what could happen as long as nothing happens directly affecting them. Mass surveillance companies like Google, Facebook know this and take advantage of it. Technology activists aren't strong enough to start a wave that…
"You're right, but the percentage of Google users aware of how evil they are is probably less than 0.5%." Not unaware of, just don't care. Most people aren't persnickety, anal, border line autistic nerds so Google/Facebook knowing who they know or where they are, when they're using software to tell their friends where they are or are using maps to literally work out where they are right now is just not an issue. If y…
> Most people aren't persnickety, anal, border line autistic nerds so Google/Facebook knowing who they know or where they are, when they're using software to tell their friends where they are or are using maps to literally work out where they are right now is just not an issue.
Please don't insult people for caring about privacy.
Was there internal uproar? Did they say this was the only "practical" option? I have missed all of this if so, I thought this is how Maps worked since this feature first popped up.
There is only uproar for war contracts... turns out "Do No Evil" isn't as important as "get a paycheck that allows you to live in the most expensive real estate in the known universe"
Lol you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Googlers get into an uproar over _everything_. The flipside of which is that all of the issues that you're incensed about (like this one), you can pretty much guarantee that they're more incensed about. Not that leadership listens always or even often...
Thanks, but I was more thinking along the lines of installing a new OS (Linux) and running Android apps (e.g. for banking) in a sandbox. Is that possible?
Not at this point in time, as far as I'm aware. I've been trying to do this on my linux, so far, I failed; all the android emulators are extremely slow.
Another one is if you remove body sensor permission for Google play services. Once you do that, Maps will keep on showing an error notification every few minutes.
I'm not sure why people are surprised. Google has been downright evil for quite a while now. They do this in all their products, down to the point of intentionally crippling them. For instance, since Android 5, the standard contact app doesn't allow you to modify a contact which is not synced with an account. Why even do this? The list of tracking settings that can be turned permanently on, but only temporarily off i…
I feel the same way, and it makes me sad. I was so bullish on Google when I first got a job and investing my savings, bought into the company when it was still Google. I thought the rebrand to Alphabet was a good idea like everything Google, though their abandonment of 'Don't be Evil' planted the first seed of doubt. What made that doubt grow was that I use Youtube as a customer and... well. I'm sure you've seen the…
I'm not sure why people are surprised. Google has been downright evil for quite a while now. They do this in all their products, down to the point of intentionally crippling them. For instance, since Android 5, the standard contact app doesn't allow you to modify a contact which is not synced with an account. Why even do this? The list of tracking settings that can be turned permanently on, but only temporarily off i…
I feel the same way, and it makes me sad. I was so bullish on Google when I first got a job and investing my savings, bought into the company when it was still Google. I thought the rebrand to Alphabet was a good idea like everything Google, though their abandonment of 'Don't be Evil' planted the first seed of doubt. What made that doubt grow was that I use Youtube as a customer and... well. I'm sure you've seen the…
Can you elaborate on the problem with YouTube? Other people have mentioned it too here. I use it pretty frequently and it seems to work the way it always did, more or less. Hell, they don't even bug me with original content recommendations the way they did briefly (and the way Netflix continues to).