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Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

secondbreakfast.co

141–150 of 576 posts

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#141

I get the desire to abandon google services, and have done so myself for email and search, but there isn't much to this article. An old gmail account being noisy is probably more a function of it being old than it being a gmail account. I suspect he'd see a great improvement just starting a new email address. Airtable has some nice functionality, but I don't think it's head-and-shoulders above sheets and this article…

The article rings completely true to me. One simple example: folders in Google Drive. * It's a constant struggle to keep documents in folders so that you can find them easily. * Yeah I get that I can do google search and find docs wherever they live. But I can't find docs if I don't know that they exist. * Moreover, I can't ensure that important documents are reliably stored in folders where everyone else can find th…

I'm confused. Doesn't shared drives solve this problem? You can set up a group, created a shared drive for that group, and then everyone has access to what's stored within it.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#143

I get the desire to abandon google services, and have done so myself for email and search, but there isn't much to this article. An old gmail account being noisy is probably more a function of it being old than it being a gmail account. I suspect he'd see a great improvement just starting a new email address. Airtable has some nice functionality, but I don't think it's head-and-shoulders above sheets and this article…

The article rings completely true to me. One simple example: folders in Google Drive. * It's a constant struggle to keep documents in folders so that you can find them easily. * Yeah I get that I can do google search and find docs wherever they live. But I can't find docs if I don't know that they exist. * Moreover, I can't ensure that important documents are reliably stored in folders where everyone else can find th…

Can you elaborate more? I have no issues to put files or Google Docs in whatever folders I want in Google Drive, and they stay where they are (after all, Google Drive has local sync. It would be unusable if they don't).

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#144
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've switched to Brave and duckduckgo. They are evil and I try avoid them at all costs. AMP is a good enough reason.

Brave is not good lifeboat if you're jumping ship.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#145

The mobile Google results page is so cluttered that I switched my iPhone’s default search to DuckDuckGo. The results are a tad worse, but I’m never doing heavy-duty searches on the go. And now I don’t have to scroll past 6 ads to get the first result. I use DDG as default search on my phone and it's measurably worse than google for the majority of searches I do and there are absolutely ads on ddg. I inevitably switch…

I use Firefox with uBlockOrigin on my phone to avoid all the ads. It works great.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#146

love the cross-outs section youtube remains un-crossed, but it will be replaced by better offerings in core categories: vloggers, how-to / structured / lego, and music / covers love that this person is privacy-conscious but is making 'purchase' decisions based on the fact that the products just suck now

> youtube remains un-crossed, but it will be replaced by better offerings in core categories: vloggers, how-to / structured / lego, and music / covers

For streaming it already has tough competition by twitch. If twitch manages to improve their stream archive and then take their user base into YouTube's core domain YT might see plausible competition.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

I have a really minimal/desirable gmail address and it's been only annoying. I constantly get emails from people by accident. I made my Hey address longer to avoid this.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#149
post #19
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.

People also increasingly care about privacy, which goes after Google’s core revenue stream. Google is also easier to switch away from than Facebook. None of their services have strong network effects. (Except chat...)

Most places I’ve worked switch cloud office suites every few years. Quip seems to be the new hotness at the current job. Its documents feature is fine, and the spreadsheet is good enough 99% of the time.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#150
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google doesn't have time to fix that. They've got top-level leetcode engineers to make a new chat app.

But first they have to make their own programming languages and frameworks.

and don't forget launching an abysmal cloud gaming service that was DoA!
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