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Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

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Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#441

Post by Kiro »

jlbnjmn wrote: post #125
Kiro wrote: 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.

Anecdote: the majority of non-tech business owners I know passionately hate Google. These are guys in their 40s and 50s. The reasons may differ, but the hatred does not. For them, the reasons are more about manipulating search results to control public opinion. For me, it's things like hiding organic search queries from Google analytics and saying they broke it for "privacy reasons". Even though I can still see searc…

Business owners and techies are still a minority of users. I'm not taking a stance here, just trying to realistically evaluate the "users have lost trust in Google" statement but it seems that we want to stay oblivious and glutton in Google's presumed downfall instead.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#442

Post by rnotaro »

rrdharan wrote: post #290
thoraway1010 wrote: post #25

No kidding. Early adopter of gsuite for domains (work and personal email). The google home devices CANNOT get your calendar from your google calendar. My Alexa device can easily. The thing of stuff just stagnating and no care to scrub the rough corners is crazy. They have some things they keep on improving. I think youtube is there (after the dumped plus thank goodness). Chrome seems to be moving along nicely. I used…

In beta, but FYI you can grant calendar access: https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/11/use-google-assi...

I'm using it but the fact the the assitant can only respond for the active google account is driving me nuts.

The Google Calendar app from my Google Pixel merges all my accounts but yet, the assistant is linked to my Google Account instead of my device.

It's useless because I'm using multiple calandars on multiple accounts.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#443

Post by rement »

Androider wrote: post #430
jedberg wrote: post #399

The author mentions switching to hey for email. Given all the press it's gotten recently, I decided to check it out. I don't get the hype. This is how my gmail already works. I use priority inbox. New senders get high priority until I mark them as low priority, and then they don't. Gmail already has a snooze button so I can reply later (and also I have a reply-later tag that's easy to do with keyboard shortcuts). You…

When you open the Hey inbox, it only has the important stuff in it, not the messages of whoever decided to reach out to you today. It's a subtle difference but I love it. Then when you have a moment, it's also very satisfying to just go through the screener list in bulk and click thumbs down/up and knowing you'll never see that sender again. Sometimes in GMail, no matter how many times I mark some thing as spam, the…

You can add filters to delete mail from specific senders. I have quite a few that ignore my requests to unsubscribe.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#444

Post by Kiro »

falcolas wrote: post #434
Kiro wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still talking about users within tech circles, which I'm not doubting has lost trust in Google. However, my mom or my siblings wouldn't understand what any of those points even mean.

They're hearing about notable accounts being closed in Google. Don't underestimate the exposure provided by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and a dozen other small sites who are also covering many of these "my account was lost/stolen/closed" stories. They know (often better than I) when a service is relegated to Google's graveyard. They wonder why their crappy 5-year old Lenovo laptop struggles with Chro…

It's funny because I usually use the same argument but for the opposite case: people are not idiots and know very well about the implications of giving up their data to Big Tech but they simply don't care and think it's worth it. As a response to the common trope that we all we need to do is inform users and they will stop doing it.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#445

Post by Spooky23 »

realityking wrote: post #223
stickfigure wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mail, docs, drive et al ... they created them to _open a new market_ for advertising This seems obviously false. Google clearly monetizes gsuite as a paid service, and "everyone uses the same service at home that they do at work" has clear advantages, whether or not there is advertising in your gmail. Advertising in (consumer) gmail came long after paid gsuite (or "google apps for domains", as they called it then - h…

> Advertising in (consumer) gmail came long after paid gsuite This is clearly false. The screenshots in this Time article show gmail having advertising from day one. https://time.com/43263/gmail-10th-anniversary/

It’s accurate and inaccurate. Ads were there but many users saw none for a long time.

IMO ads were a distraction to enable the data harvesting, which drove Adsense targeting. Even today, the ads I see on GMail are pretty low quality. Some lovelorn guy used my email address unintentionally to sign up for a 55+ dating site 3 years ago. The most targeted ads I get are for similar sites.

Of course YMMV.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#446

Post by tehjoker »

Google has reached the mature phase of the corporate lifecycle. They have economic dominance and are putting the screws in to extract more money. The writing was on the wall when they got an ex-Goldman Sachs CFO, but it has become more and more externally obvious over the past few years.

https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/fi...

The mature phase can last a long time so long as they keep buying the competition or use their position to shut others out. Or they can screw up and start to lose their grip to another company or group of companies that slice off their market share one service at a time.

In any case, Google was never actually trying to help the world, their marketing was extremely good though. Hopefully the advertising economy collapses as people realize the ads don't work and we have to find a model (such as public funding of essential services) that actually works.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#447

Post by jlbnjmn »

Kiro wrote: post #441
jlbnjmn wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote: the majority of non-tech business owners I know passionately hate Google. These are guys in their 40s and 50s. The reasons may differ, but the hatred does not. For them, the reasons are more about manipulating search results to control public opinion. For me, it's things like hiding organic search queries from Google analytics and saying they broke it for "privacy reasons". Even though I can still see searc…

Business owners and techies are still a minority of users. I'm not taking a stance here, just trying to realistically evaluate the "users have lost trust in Google" statement but it seems that we want to stay oblivious and glutton in Google's presumed downfall instead.

They are the majority of Google's customers though.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#448

Post by the_black_hand »

The new office online surprisingly works really great. Funny enough, office 365 works better online than desktop. I do thing Web OS is the future. User's are now spending 90% of their time in the browser. Basically browser === os. Apps like electron, react are proving that point. Chrome OS was maybe a start (I've never personally used it because I've never really felt the need to make such a huge OS transition), but at the present business incentives were weak. Why would someone pay (not monetary, but by opportunity cost) for just a browser?

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#449

Post by listenallyall »

arkades wrote: post #397
listenallyall wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only one of these services is brand new and just starting to build mindshare. Only one has no free tier. Only one currently has few enough users that securing a highly desirable username is still wide open: "My new email is billy@hey.com. I love it so far."

Excising "no free tier" (because we damn well know "free" products ain't free either - that's not an indicator of marketing), your argument boils down to "one of those services is new, therefore, content marketing." "All internet discussions of new products are content marketing" seems way overboard for me.

No, that's not correct, it's far more specific. This article advertises the fact that Hey (which is asking you to pay $99 for a service most people currently get for free) has one very significant benefit, a short email address, which might be gone if you don't take immediate action. And the author does this ingeniously, by offering social proof after bonding via attacking a common enemy. As I said earlier, I'm impressed.

Re: Google Blew a Ten-Year Lead

#450

Post by Spooky23 »

thoraway1010 wrote: post #25

No kidding. Early adopter of gsuite for domains (work and personal email). The google home devices CANNOT get your calendar from your google calendar. My Alexa device can easily. The thing of stuff just stagnating and no care to scrub the rough corners is crazy. They have some things they keep on improving. I think youtube is there (after the dumped plus thank goodness). Chrome seems to be moving along nicely. I used…

MS Office online collaboration still hasn’t caught up with Google, even with Google’s neglect.

Personally, I think web based office is something Microsoft wants to drive subscription revenue, but isn’t something customers want. Office is probably the best and most complex fat client app in the world, why sacrifice that?

IMO, Office will embrace add on supplementation and value add to the Office apps.

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