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I'm tired of Google's business products

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Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#81

Post by krinchan »

gumby wrote: post #34

Drive is incredible…ly terrible. Our non-technical staff (and some good technical people too) are always losing track of where files are. They write a doc then can’t find it later. The desktop tool (so you can use it like Dropbox) keeps getting confused and disconnecting on the Mac. I’m also part of a scout troop that uses google to organize its activities. In the troop’s Drive I’ve found doctor’s patient records, th…

I used to be part of a volunteer organization that is a loose confederation of local chapters that are all kept in line with a bit of copyright law by the original chapter. The central council that meets nationally on a monthly basis is organized almost entirely through Google Drive.

The problem with the Business side of Drive is how Google conflates Groups, the message board/mailing list product with Groups that you apply permissions to. The chapter I belonged to had our own Google Apps domain. My account on that domain was added to one of the mothership's Groups so I would get announcements and participate in discussions.

Unknown to them, that Group inherited a lot of default permissions from their Shared Drives. I couldn't get to the drives by browsing, but if I searched for terms that matched documents in those shared drives, I could open the documents AND open the containing folder. At which point I could browse up to the root of the shared drive.

I reported it on the sly, one Mistress of Webs to another. We had a good "holy sh** what?!" laugh about it.

It got fixed but as I've spoken to people at other NPO orgs that use Google apps, I've found that most have had the same mess happen: A group with external members was created as a convenient mailing list. Then, later they discovered that if the external member was also a Google for Business account they "inherited" some interesting access to things in Drive.

Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#82

Post by jupp0r »

taylodl wrote: post #17

* > I've been trying to start a business lately, and as many people do, have chosen to rely on Google's suite of products.* Just a reminder, most businesses fail - so doing what many people do is not necessarily the best thing to do. Having said that, it's rather foolish to have your business depend on Google. They have repeatedly demonstrated they're not good business partners and the main thrust of their business i…

Sorry, but as a user, Office 365 is a nightmare to use. Outlook on Mac can’t even do in-line email quotes. Sharing documents in your org is done via SharePoint(tm), the greatest nightmare on the planet. Don’t get me started on MS teams.

Google products are much better from a UX perspective imho.

Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#83

Post by lwkl »

sqlpipe wrote: post #36
pocketsand wrote: post #24

I created a small ad campaign to advertise a side project. The projects makes no money, has no plan for monetization, does not use passwords. The only personal data it collects is an email address. I bought $50 worth of ads using my credit card. My account was immediately suspended for suspicious payment. I appealed, noting the card was mine, and I bought the ads. The appeal was rejected. I have occasionally tried to…

"I've called Google to try to talk to them"... Currently contemplating this, but am certain it will leave me with a feeling of "well, I'll never get that 30 minutes back"

The support reps are nice and will talk to you but can't do much. My experience has been the following:

I have Google One and it annoys me that the new Drive client automatically adds a shortcut to my favorites in Finder and Explorer everytime I restart my computer. Google has been made aware of this a year ago according to threads in their product forums from about a year ago (they have thousands of upvotes). They haven't done anything about it and I haven't heard any feedback from the request that the support rep forwarded to the product team.

So from my POV it looks like they have support staff that answers to your request, but they have basically no power in the company and can't make any decisions. They probably send their request into a void where they get ignored.

My guess is that the only way to work with Google as a business is to buy their services over a major partner that generates tens of millions in revenue per year and has a personal relationship with account managers at Google.

Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#84

Post by ghaff »

gumby wrote: post #78
ghaff wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can usually find the docs I've created pretty easily--but then I'm pretty good about sensibly filing things. But finding random Shared with Me is pretty problematic especially if I don't know exactly what I'm looking for. And, of course, as you say, if you're sharing docs, it's pretty easy to share with someone you don't mean to. Of course, the same could be said with sending around docs on email.

And docs shared with me can’t be moved into my filesystem

Whether you can make a snapshot copy depends on permissions I think.

But, yes, what I'd really like to do in many cases is to basically create a symlink to documents I know I'll be referencing/working with somewhere that they aren't mixed in with all the shared meeting presentations and the like I'll never look at again.

Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#85

Post by jatins »

probably_wrong wrote: post #11

> Is this a problem of my own making (...)? Or is this a feeling that others get? I can understand why you "had" to rely on Google Ads. But in my opinion choosing Google Workspace/Drive falls unfortunately under "problem of your own making". None of the problems you describe is new nor unknown, and there are plenty of products that are just as good. > I hope Google gets some real competition soon because it feels lik…

> and there are plenty of products that are just as good.

Other than MS Office, what's a good suite providing all of shared docs, spreadsheets, email, and a cloud drive?

Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#86

Post by notreallyserio »

allisdust wrote: post #65

I have been trying to increase the quotas they set on my gcp account and the whole thing has been an absolute madness : 1) Try increasing number of nodes - > fails with some cryptic message saying number of in use addresses is hitting the quota limit. 2) Search through their absolutely garbage console to go to the exact page which has the quotas. Try editing - > See a tooltip (not even an error message just a tooltip…

It's funny they manage to have resource quotas but folks around here claim they couldn't possibly add spend quotas.

Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#87

Post by akrymski »

Cordivae wrote: post #18

I hate Google Workspace so much. Not because of the product, which seems fine. But because 10 years ago I signed up for google apps. It was marketed as a way to have a vanity gmail domain. Free forever up to 10 users. I thought it was cool, was a huge Google fan at the time, and created a custom domain for myself and another one for my grandparents. Now, 10 years later they are holding my online persona hostage in a…

I use Gmail with my own domain for free. My domain registrar (namecheap) allows forwarding of email for free. You can add extra email addresses in Gmail itself.

Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#88

Post by trelane »

doubled112 wrote: post #48
mikece wrote: post #4

Makes me think of a question I've pondered but to which I don't have an answer: is there a way to use Libre Office synched through cloud storage such that multiple people can work on different parts of the same document at the same time and see each other's changes?

Nextcloud with Collabora CODE has worked pretty well for me, but please keep in mind I'm only using it at home. They offer a more enterprise option, I believe. CODE is more the development track.

Collabora is also a major LibreOffice developer. They're pretty great from about all standpoints.

Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#89

Post by agentdrtran »

taylodl wrote: post #17

* > I've been trying to start a business lately, and as many people do, have chosen to rely on Google's suite of products.* Just a reminder, most businesses fail - so doing what many people do is not necessarily the best thing to do. Having said that, it's rather foolish to have your business depend on Google. They have repeatedly demonstrated they're not good business partners and the main thrust of their business i…

You have the same problem with MS or Google, and Google probably isn't going to kill Gmail/Drive anytime soon. If it's a core service you're fine.

Re: I'm tired of Google's business products

#90

Post by agentdrtran »

gumby wrote: post #34

Drive is incredible…ly terrible. Our non-technical staff (and some good technical people too) are always losing track of where files are. They write a doc then can’t find it later. The desktop tool (so you can use it like Dropbox) keeps getting confused and disconnecting on the Mac. I’m also part of a scout troop that uses google to organize its activities. In the troop’s Drive I’ve found doctor’s patient records, th…

Drive's organization is a usability nightmare and I hope someone at Google has a plan for this. Shared with me is a graveyard, file permissions are a nightmare to manage, and repairing mistakes is painful to impossible.
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