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Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

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Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#81

Post by ancarda »

searchableguy wrote: post #17

I am getting tired of these google articles. I know how this will go, users will pat themselves for using duckduckgo, open street maps, firefox and fastmail anytime now.

I've never met anyone who uses OSM. I have just shy of 500 edits on OSM because I kept going to use it, finding it didn't have what I was looking for, and making improvements.

It would be nice if there was a viable alternative to Google Maps. Apple Maps is apparently not too bad, but I'm using Android and Linux these days.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#82

Post by krtkush »

[Shameless plug] For anyone who uses DuckDuckGo but finds themselves using !g too and is curious how much their DDG vs !g search distribution is - I have made a small FOSS add-on for Firefox called DDG Stats[1].

I am planning on a Chrome port too (though, I would always recommend Firefox over chrome).

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ddg-stats/

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#83

Post by api »

I've personally backed way off when it comes to putting everything in the cloud. I know some people love the convenience and I get that, but I spend a lot of time and energy creating what I create and I want to actually have some control over it. I also don't trust cloud companies at all when it comes to either privacy or continuity.

For similar reasons I've started data hoarding again. When I find an interesting video or podcast I tend to mirror and stash it on a NAS. Things disappear from the cloud quite regularly.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#84

Post by dalyons »

eugenekolo wrote: post #49

I'm sure these alternatives work for some, but I really don't find "Hey" a suitable alternatives to Gmail, nor "Notion" to Google Docs. I think the innovation and updating in those Google products has stagnated a lot, but they're still better for actual work and business than the new hip things.

If your “actual work” is designing documents for printing on dead tree paper, then sure. If your work is modern digital-first collaboration there are way more effective choices these days.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#85

Post by moogleii »

s3r3nity wrote: post #23
tengbretson wrote: post #9

> It’s amazing how they have four monopolies and only monetize one of them. They appear to me to have begun monetizing google maps. And it is awful.

This is why I've switched to Apple Maps for like 98% of my navigation needs. I might be biased, because I live in one of the cities with the updated maps data, sure, but I find that it handles most of my use cases just as well as Google Maps.

I find the Apple Maps navigation to be far more polished and human. Whenever they added "After the stop sign, at the next light turn right" made it my goto nav app.

The search is still not great compared to Google Maps, though.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#86

Post by falcolas »

Kiro wrote: post #19
aphroz wrote: post #5

They also lost the trust of their users. They didn't drop the "don't be evil" for nothing..

Is that actually true though? I've seen more and more regular people outside tech circles dismiss Facebook but Google? Not so much. In fact, outside of HN I haven't seen many complaints at all.

My opinion: Yes, it's true.

- Canceling accounts, leaving people with the "Post it to HN and pray" customer support option.

- Focusing more on growth than long-term support. See the original article for examples of this.

- Taking their originally fast, svelte, and compliant web browser and injecting more and more features that are virtually required by Google domains, memory/CPU bloat, and privacy hostile tracking/telemetry features.

- People don't trust in any Google product which didn't exist 10 years ago, for fear that it's going to be canceled.

People are noticing. The migration is slow (largely due to the smartphone duopoly), but it's happening.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#87

Post by lostmsu »

jtbayly wrote: post #21
tengbretson wrote: post #9

> It’s amazing how they have four monopolies and only monetize one of them. They appear to me to have begun monetizing google maps. And it is awful.

What are the four monopolies?

I actually don't think Gmail (as other comments here claim) is nearly as much "monopoly" as YouTube. There are many email providers, people use whatever.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#88

Post by burtonator »

Imagine being a VC and hearing the pitch by Elasticsearch that you were going to make massive inroads in search (when they were early of course). I imagine most laughed at them like "How are you going to beat Google" ...

Imagine if they answered "we expect Google to just completely abdicate their role in search."

Google right now has a few wins but most of their projects fall flat. AWS is crushing it ...

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#89

Post by snakeboy »

PhearTheCeal wrote: post #8

For Google Translate you should check out DeepL https://www.deepl.com/translator It's absolutely insane, blows GT right out of the water with its accuracy.

Being in a relationship with a English/French language divide, DeepL was a total game-changer. I can't attest to its abilities in other languages, but it is obviously superior to google translate on correctness and "natural" translations for our use-case.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#90

Post by listenallyall »

lostlogin wrote: post #72
listenallyall wrote: post #57

To be clear, this is a stealth ad for Hey email service wrapped in a rant against Google. #1 on HN 20 minutes after posting. It's quite impressive, actually.

There are more Apple products listed. Maybe it’s a push to get beta OS users?

There's no urgency in switching to DDG or Safari or anything Apple. There definitely IS urgency to sign up for Hey if you want an email address as simple as "billy@hey.com", instead of "william.s.1993@hey.com"
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