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Google employees blast 'profoundly boring' management lacking 'visionary leader'

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Re: Google employees blast 'profoundly boring' management lacking 'visionary leader'

#31

Post by thiago_fm »

mola wrote: post #13
thiago_fm wrote: post #6

You don't need to be a Google employee to know its products lack innovation from day 1. It's a one trick pony company, having just created search, rest is only buy/copy/steal. It's a company rotten to the core. It bought a few companies back then and helped scale it with capital (Android, YouTube...), also copied others, like there's a whole Netflix documentary about Google Maps. Don't come saying that Gmail was geni…

Be fair, Gmail was groundbreaking. It's UX was miles ahead of anything else. Especially webmail UIs. Google was a good product company for a while. But the it wasn't anymore.

Nah, it was only groundbreaking if you were using Yahoomail.

Sure, they were innovative to use XHR along lots of Javascript to improve the experience, but what got people into were the 1GB + no ads.

Nowadays, they probably offer one of the worst email experience, with ads and terrible privacy. How many times have we heard about the US government reading emails from other governments countries, like US spying on ex-presidents from Brazil regarding oil companies?

Google had also the coolness factor of the "don't be evil" and being overall a lean and trustful company. Nowadays nobody thinks of Google like this.

Re: Google employees blast 'profoundly boring' management lacking 'visionary leader'

#32

Post by prepend »

Maro wrote: post #23
IAMMidway wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: What is category defining about Google Calender? Or even good? In my experience it lacks a lot of features and is kind of clunky.

I worked at roughly 10 companies in my life. Most either used Outlook/Office or Gmail/Calendar/Drive. Personally I hate the Microsoft office productivity stack, and on the other hand, I love using the Google stack, including Calendar.

Different strokes for different folks. I don’t like google calendar and prefer outlook’s. It’s probably the only part of office except Excel that I actually think works well.

Not perfectly, I’d still like a good calendar based around sharing and collab, but the best out there.

I think we need a good decentralized calendar that treats all calendars as peers. Outlook and google treat a single server as being the authority and everything has to go to those servers for actions. I’d rather see something like a calendar blob for individuals that gets sent around and rehosted lots of places like git. Or at least the availability. It’s still funny to me how hard it is to tell someone off server what your availability is.

Re: Google employees blast 'profoundly boring' management lacking 'visionary leader'

#33

Post by prepend »

Havoc wrote: post #10
thiago_fm wrote: post #6

You don't need to be a Google employee to know its products lack innovation from day 1. It's a one trick pony company, having just created search, rest is only buy/copy/steal. It's a company rotten to the core. It bought a few companies back then and helped scale it with capital (Android, YouTube...), also copied others, like there's a whole Netflix documentary about Google Maps. Don't come saying that Gmail was geni…

I seem to recall gmail starting with 1gb?

Yep. And it was quickly searchable. I think Hotmail had like 10megs and search sucked.

Do Gmail’s innovation was “lots of space and search works as well as google.”

Re: Google employees blast 'profoundly boring' management lacking 'visionary leader'

#34

Post by prepend »

bradhe wrote: post #8
thiago_fm wrote: post #6

You don't need to be a Google employee to know its products lack innovation from day 1. It's a one trick pony company, having just created search, rest is only buy/copy/steal. It's a company rotten to the core. It bought a few companies back then and helped scale it with capital (Android, YouTube...), also copied others, like there's a whole Netflix documentary about Google Maps. Don't come saying that Gmail was geni…

Even if Gmail was genius, it's almost 20 years old and hasn't really evolved that much since day 0.

It’s devolved actually. The ui used to be faster and more responsive (remember compact mode?).

Re: Google employees blast 'profoundly boring' management lacking 'visionary leader'

#35

Post by latexr »

Maro wrote: post #20
thiago_fm wrote: post #6

You don't need to be a Google employee to know its products lack innovation from day 1. It's a one trick pony company, having just created search, rest is only buy/copy/steal. It's a company rotten to the core. It bought a few companies back then and helped scale it with capital (Android, YouTube...), also copied others, like there's a whole Netflix documentary about Google Maps. Don't come saying that Gmail was geni…

Search, Ads, Analytics, Gmail, Docs, Drive, Youtube, Maps, Android, Calendar.. All 10 are category defining (but at least top 3) products. I'd like to have a 1-trick pony like that one day!

The commenter you’re replying to was explicit:

> rest is only buy/copy/steal.

Go check the wikipedia page for those products and scroll to the “History” section. You might be surprised how the common thread is “another company was doing X, and then”.

Re: Google employees blast 'profoundly boring' management lacking 'visionary leader'

#36

Post by thiago_fm »

Maro wrote: post #20
thiago_fm wrote: post #6

You don't need to be a Google employee to know its products lack innovation from day 1. It's a one trick pony company, having just created search, rest is only buy/copy/steal. It's a company rotten to the core. It bought a few companies back then and helped scale it with capital (Android, YouTube...), also copied others, like there's a whole Netflix documentary about Google Maps. Don't come saying that Gmail was geni…

Search, Ads, Analytics, Gmail, Docs, Drive, Youtube, Maps, Android, Calendar.. All 10 are category defining (but at least top 3) products. I'd like to have a 1-trick pony like that one day!

Most of those on your list were either bought/copied/stolen, as mentioned in my comment.

For the office suite tools they offer (calendar, docs, gmail and drive), they were the first to move to the cloud, but nowadays there are so many companies with similar offerings that are either cheaper or better.

Even Microsoft nowadays has Excel on the cloud, which let's all be frank. It's much superior.

Before I do look like a google hater, I use a Pixel, pay for Google drive etc, but I know how nowadays I have so much more interesting choices(better privacy, better phones etc) and don't move out mostly out of laziness.

Re: Google employees blast 'profoundly boring' management lacking 'visionary leader'

#37

Post by latexr »

Maro wrote: post #23
IAMMidway wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: What is category defining about Google Calender? Or even good? In my experience it lacks a lot of features and is kind of clunky.

I worked at roughly 10 companies in my life. Most either used Outlook/Office or Gmail/Calendar/Drive. Personally I hate the Microsoft office productivity stack, and on the other hand, I love using the Google stack, including Calendar.

There’s nothing wrong with you preferring one service over another, but the question was what makes Google Calendar “category defining”.

Re: Google employees blast 'profoundly boring' management lacking 'visionary leader'

#38

Post by cqqxo4zV46cp »

thiago_fm wrote: post #31
mola wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be fair, Gmail was groundbreaking. It's UX was miles ahead of anything else. Especially webmail UIs. Google was a good product company for a while. But the it wasn't anymore.

Nah, it was only groundbreaking if you were using Yahoomail. Sure, they were innovative to use XHR along lots of Javascript to improve the experience, but what got people into were the 1GB + no ads. Nowadays, they probably offer one of the worst email experience, with ads and terrible privacy. How many times have we heard about the US government reading emails from other governments countries, like US spying on ex-pr…

Your issues with Gmail seem to be the sort that would desolate with privacy wonk nerds, which I suspect are immaterial from Google’s perspective.

Re: Google employees blast 'profoundly boring' management lacking 'visionary leader'

#39

Post by cqqxo4zV46cp »

AznHisoka wrote: post #16
bell-cot wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a disclaimer of sorts - "this is my immediate reaction, probably somewhat emotional, which should not be taken too personally nor too seriously".

If you don’t want anyone to take it personally or seriously, then maybe don’t post it

Yes I suppose that there are always going to be people that respond with vitriol, yourself included.

Re: Google employees blast 'profoundly boring' management lacking 'visionary leader'

#40

Post by FirmwareBurner »

happymellon wrote: post #27
ctvo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail was the first single page application I remembered using. It was eye opening to many people what the web could be as an application platform. You could compose a message and have it follow you as you read other emails, for example. It was not just about storage space: Gmail was better in every way. Even the spam filter was smarter and better than everyone else’s for a very long time.

Then they disabled the delete key from deleting an email. Why would anyone do that?

>Why would anyone do that?

Part of the trend of needing to dumb down everything by removing "power" user features because we can't trust non-computer savvy users to not self immolate their data.

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