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I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

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Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#161

Post by infp_arborist »

cogman10 wrote: post #119
largepeepee wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like it's not only products that get left behind once Google gets bored. Many of Google's software eventually get worse too. YouTube for example has killed most of their social features by removing dislikes, limited searchability of videos by channel, allowed bots to fill the comments. And Google search has so much malware in their ads that pop up first, that even govts are recommending ad blockers by default.…

Google is just shit. As my company briefly decided to look into using them for a cloud provider it quickly became apparent that they are just awful stewards of any software that isn’t related to advertisements. It’s beyond shocking how amateurish GCP is being operated. My assumption is it comes down to really awful leadership. They only care about making and selling new things. You simply can’t trust that any piece o…

I have said it before and will say it again:

Google wants to look amateurish for as long as possible to avoid stronger regulation.

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#162

Post by ericpauley »

riskable wrote: post #155
linsomniac wrote: post #144

My primary use of the Home speakers is playing music in the shower. That experience is actually pretty bad though, over the years between google music and spotify, getting it to play my music is just horribly obtuse. I can't reliably get it to start my music. "Playing a playlist called my favorites" or similar rather than playing my own playlist. At one point after 3-4 failed attempts like this I said "F you" and the…

I never understood why people put smart speakers in their showers. Why is a simple and cheap Bluetooth speaker not good enough? You can get them in any size and shape and sound quality and they (can) work with your phone's built-in "smart" assistant. I never use that though because when I'm in the shower all I want to do is listen to music. Here's my routine, for reference: 1. Turn on the speaker (which is hanging on…

I’ve just started playing music on my phone. The iPhone is plenty water resistant now and it’s not going under the shower stream anyway.

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#163

Post by ksec »

Corrado wrote: post #2

I feel like this is just one more thing that Google leadership is failing at. I have some similar examples to the ones in the article. I recommended that my brother-in-law get a Google wifi AP some years ago. Recently, I got an email from Google saying that they are no longer supporting it and after a certain date you will no longer be able to make changes to it. WTF?!? My Apple Airport Extreme is older than the Goog…

>I feel like this is just one more thing that Google leadership is failing at.

Apart from increasing ad revenue, there isn't a single thing that Google's leadership has been succeeding.

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#164

Post by JoBrad »

rcarmo wrote: post #23

I recently went and got a couple of Lenovo ThinkSmart View displays off eBay and re-purposed them: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2023/04/22/1330 The reason I got them was that I wanted small desktop displays to both replace my “now playing” Raspberry Pi display and act as smart speakers, and there didn’t seem to be anything event in the market (there are plenty of cheap Chinese tablets, but I wanted something with…

That’s really cool. Thanks for sharing!

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#165

Post by katbyte »

knolan wrote: post #41
Corrado wrote: post #2

I feel like this is just one more thing that Google leadership is failing at. I have some similar examples to the ones in the article. I recommended that my brother-in-law get a Google wifi AP some years ago. Recently, I got an email from Google saying that they are no longer supporting it and after a certain date you will no longer be able to make changes to it. WTF?!? My Apple Airport Extreme is older than the Goog…

I love my Time Capsule. It worked flawlessly for a nearly a decade when the disk inevitably failed. I still use it in my office for backups with a new disk. I wish Apple still made them and made swapping disks tool free.

Is time capsule any different the Time Machine backups to networked eogtage?

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#166

Post by rch »

maxerickson wrote: post #147
rch wrote: post #143

Something about Google's incentive structure is eating them alive. For instance, there's an alarm setting on Android (Pixel) for "Night Mode: Very dim display (for dark rooms)". Which I interpret as a Googler's way of saying: "my bonus is tied to minutes of display visibility while charging, so F users there's no way to turn the display off."

On my Pixel, there's a "Keep the Screen Dark" in the digital well being settings. It's nested 4 screens in or whatever, but it's there. Going from an older device to a Pixel 6, I would say that there is some additional complexity in the settings, but directionally, the changes make the device nicer to use. So like the setting in the alarm isn't the overall device control, it's deep in the digital well being settings…

I had used an option like that, until about 6 months ago IIRC. It's gone now.

However I've just found something under Settings - Accessibility that might mitigate the problem a little more. Extra dim: dim screen beyond your phone's minimum brightness.

It still won't really be off though, most likely.

And the text labels on these settings belong in a Monty Python sketch about product management.

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#167

Post by ksec »

titzer wrote: post #152
Corrado wrote: post #2

I feel like this is just one more thing that Google leadership is failing at. I have some similar examples to the ones in the article. I recommended that my brother-in-law get a Google wifi AP some years ago. Recently, I got an email from Google saying that they are no longer supporting it and after a certain date you will no longer be able to make changes to it. WTF?!? My Apple Airport Extreme is older than the Goog…

Prior to replacing my furnace I had a mercury thermostat that was easily over 50 years old. The new one is digital but isn't "smart". I don't expect 50 years, but 20-30 seems reasonable. Somehow software people have forgotten that physical things last a long time, and people want them to keep working and stay the same as long as possible . My thermostat doesn't need "upgrades", and anyone who thinks they are going to…

>Somehow software people have forgotten

Thank You. And that is precisely why I increasingly hate anything that comes with software.

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#168

Post by selimthegrim »

blitzar wrote: post #32
bruce343434 wrote: post #10

Investing? To me it implies stocks. You are not investing in anything, you are consuming goods and services. When people buy loads of crap and call it "investing in a [good] ..." is that some sort of coping mechanism? No, you don't own boot futures. You bought some boots and you wear them.

The Latin verb investire meant “to clothe” or “to surround” (the prefix in- + vestīre meant “to dress,” “to clothe”; the etymology of invest literally means “in clothes”).

Hence investiture of bishops or to invest someone with power.

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#169

Post by 23B1 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #128
kps wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like it's not only products that get left behind once Google gets bored. As someone who had been working at Google in this space (Nest Hubs, Matter, and planned thing I couldn't tell you about even if I knew its current status) until the decimation, I assure you it's not only products that get left behind.

>I assure you it's not only products that get left behind. Could you please enlighten us what else gets left behind?

Ethics

Re: I'm never investing in Google's smart home ecosystem again

#170

Post by DocTomoe »

eimrine wrote: post #82

> I believe in a future where homes are connected, smarter, and automated enough not to require switches (...) An average switch can work probably more than an average human, not requires any king-for-a-day with their blessed updates and even continues to work when the supplier stops his business. This article maybe should be not about Google but about any IoT because you can do all kinds of automatization with the p…

> You can use use any upto 15yo laptop on x86 architecture with some free and open source OS, or you can use any non-Smart display with Raspberry-like computer which obviously is going to serve you as long as Raspberry's video coprocessor will keep supporting actual Youtube's video codec.

Which is all nice and cool as long as only tech geeks live in a household. The moment you are trying to make an aesthetically pleasing home, old monitors and green electronics boards are a no-go.

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