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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

#171

Post by jorams »

saimiam wrote: post #124
jermaustin1 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, 10 years later they are holding my online persona hostage in a shameless cash grab to try and make Workspaces more profitable. I'm in the same boat, but since ~2006 when I started my first company (dont recall exactly when I set up my google apps account though). I have to chose whether to move my account (which thanks to sign in with google is attached to more places than I can even remember), or pony up $6/m…

My baby, PretzelBox.cc, is no Google but it does give you an inbox for your domain and a half decent looking blog ( https://pretzelbox.cc/blog/ ) and a way to store and share files. /shameless_plug

The page you link doesn't exactly give a good impression. The logo in the top left links to bulma.io, The templates list links to one called "Very Cool", but there's no way to get back to the original template (except of course the back button). There's no link back to pretzelbox.cc. The landing page there is much better, but then one of the testimonials is for a service called Moogle. The only connection between Moogle and PretzelBox seems to be your Twitter account.

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

#172

Post by Rastonbury »

I think you hit the points yourself, Google is an advertising company that also makes business software. They never really had to offer support for SMBs, even for Ads, you need like double digit million spend to have a account manager. I've heard similar complaints from friends at big cos who moved to Workspace and even from Googlers themselves.

In terms of competitors, MS and Zoho the big ones are actually productivity software companies.

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

#173

Post by Rastonbury »

mountainriver wrote: post #9

Yeah they have edges and the support is bad, but they still kind of hit a sweet spot of good ux and features all tied into the google account you probably already use for mail/search. I think we will see more competitors in this space though. Google isn’t investing enough into it and there is opportunity.

I think its kinda funny that Office is so ubiquitous that everyone forgets how the productivity software market is like. Microsoft has 90% of it, so credit to Google for taking on the incumbent. It will be insanely hard for any challenger to dislodge MS from a company with thousands of employees, let alone build multiple products to beat all of the ones bundled in Office. The moat is large, like taking on Google themselves in search/ads

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

#174

Post by atraac »

agentdrtran wrote: post #90
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.

> I hope someone at Google has a plan for this

Knowing Google the plan is to kill it and make a new thing, without options of moving, make it free so people flock to it and then turn into a subscription a year later.

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

#175

Post by Chyzwar »

helloworld11 wrote: post #162
Chyzwar wrote: post #147

I am now working on a startup idea. We use: Fastmail for email Github for code, actions, registry and projects management Discord for comms Obsydian + Git for notes Cloudflare for domains, analytics Hetzner Cloud for hosting We are not at stage to advertise (pre MVP) but I made a decision to avoid Google from day one.

How about advertising? Do you plan on using adwords, or do you have any alternative platforms/services you think are useful?

We are building product for public sector. We plan to use a combination of direct sales and advertising on conferences and expert groups.

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

#176

Post by ford »

efa wrote: post #53
ford wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think Google is reading the contents of drive documents? I struggle to make the connection between those kinds of business apps and advertising. Perhaps they get some usage data of how/when people work? I do believe much of what Google does (i.e. chrome) is to benefit their ads business, but I think it's a bit cynical to think that's true of every product they have. FWIW I've worked at companies that use both…

>>I struggle to make the connection between those kinds of business apps and advertising. I'm starting a restaurant. I put together a doc about items I need. All the sudden I'm getting ads for restaurant equipment.

Yes - I understand the connection if they are in fact reading document content

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

#177

Post by ilyash »

avipars wrote: post #122
onemoresoop wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed this trend. However, this is not a solution. There are many people with similar problems who cannot win the viral lottery.

Yes! It's a systemic issue and it has turned into a popularity contest online... whoever has more clout gets their account fixed... It is a big issue and I agree with you.

Yep. Worked for us when the issue got quite a bit of attention.

Details - https://ilya-sher.org/2018/03/23/google-deleted-our-g-suite/

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

#178

Post by datavirtue »

version_five wrote: post #98
jupp0r wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it's just a matter of opinion. I've used both O365 and GSuite extensively at different jobs, and after the initial switch, they are not too different, each has their annoyances, but I don't see a major change in productivity or quality of output between the two. In my business I like the option of sharing a .docx or .pptx and not having to ask a client to use google docs to view stuff. But when I had google d…

Spot on. GSuite is a temporary thing, a fad. Microsoft 365 will be around long after we are all dead.

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

#179

Post by datavirtue »

rapsey wrote: post #97
agentdrtran wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can absolutely contact support for MS products and they will be helpful. I've done it multiple times for our tiny account.

Same here. Their support is rock solid.

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

#180

Post by huffer »

mcs_ wrote: post #141
huffer wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as far as I understood it, it was a tongue-in-cheek, a joke... or are you trolling too (in which case joke's on me :D)?

You got me...

yeah.. these days you really can't tell; every opinion, its counter-opinion, its meta-counter, its sarcastic spin, its trolling version, its counter-trolling, meta-counter-trolling versions.. everything (in the absence of body language cues etc.) is equally likely, which if I recall correctly is the definition of maximal entropy of information, i.e. random noise
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