Why Google's bookmark manager and Docs have purposefully bad UI

I can't speak to Chrome's handling of bookmarks one way or the other, but the author fundamentally misunderstands both the history of Drive and its current application.

Regarding history: Drive had tags early on and a lack of hierarchical folder categorization (think of "files sorted like email messages" instead of "files sorted in a hierarchy"). Users pushed back with a very clear demand for folders, so Google implemented them (at which point, tags are redundant). 100% of the functionality of tags exists via folders and the ability to use Shortcuts (select a doc in Drive and shift-Z) to assign a file to multiple folders.

Regarding current application: Drive syncs to filesystems of major OSes and is therefore constrained somewhat in supporting features that are maintainable across multiple OS filesystem abstractions. I don't doubt Google could find a way to implement the wishlist the author describes, but the value / cost ratio is questionable.

Author's claim of lack of support for folder colors is also just false. I agree that his full laundry-list isn't present, but folder colors are accessible by right-clicking on a folder in the Drive UI and selecting "Change color".

All of that having been said, the author's own app seems to be well-positioned to address those wants so I'm not sure why they are making wild guesses at Google's intentions instead of just taking advantage of the big, lumbering megacorp being big and lumbering and back-filling those features for users.

macOS takes the same approach with Finder however. Managing files in macOS is a huge pain if you want to keep it in some nicely organized tree. Its optimized for just searching to find what you're looking for. It presents all files in a flat list by default.

Apple's primary business model is not search, so there could be some evidence that more people just prefer search over tags/folders/icons etc.

I have a number of nits with this post (e.g. OP is confusing Docs and Drive), but more generally I don't get OP's point.

Drive search, bookmark search, and Web search are totally different features in totally different products. Notably, the first two have no ads, so driving you to search in this case has no clear positive effect for Google.

Google also debuted a new Driving Mode on Google Maps that... entirely changes the UI of of the app and several parts of the phone interface itself. I have never had to look at my phone while driving more in my entire life. It's my fault for using the phone, but it very nearly caused 2 accidents for me this weekend as I tried to get google maps to update or display a particular UI. I truly wonder what is going on over there -- I try not to assume bad intent but a lot of this stuff feels almost violently anti-user.

Edit: you can and should turn it off in settings: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/media-apps/assist...

Chrome's history UI is also super terrible, why are we not able to search by date? When entries in history have date metadata available?