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I'm tired of Google's business products

news.ycombinator.com

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21–30 of 193 posts

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

#21

Post by salawat »

Google's stuff is barely hastily patched together, hard to reason through crap.

It works, don't get me wrong. But I'm helping a family member start a business on the tech front, and most of their offerings are opaque to her. Built by tech people to be used by tech people, without the benefit of good, solid, onramp documentation, tooling, and user hostile offering design.

Example: don't even try to admin Drive with anything less than business Standard, despite the fact centralized file handling is most useful to those with lower data quotas.

The sharing is a mess. And I was horrified that most searches for Google drive administration were either docs that tried to sell you on drive, or internet public drives of individual users who just left stuff out there with personal information in it waiting to get reaped.

At this point, it really frightens me what Google is trying to normalize in computing.

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

#24

Post by pocketsand »

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 resubmit the appeal, but it says "please wait 3-5 business days before submitting a new appeal." I wait more than that and get the same message.

I've called Google to try to talk to them. However, once it asks for my contact information, it tells me that they cannot talk to me because my account is suspended. It's a circular nightmare.

I currently do not needs ads so it's not a hardship. But it is extremely frustrating.

EDIT: One irony is that it is the same card I use to pay for my other Google services, linked through the same payment backend. They have no issue charging that card for my other services. But for Ads, it's suspicious. Who knows.

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

#25

Post by fatnoah »

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…

>All I ever wanted was my own Gmail domain.

Who owns the domain here? I use a custom domain with Gmail Workspaces, but I own the domain, and therefore control the MX records. The only thing I'd lose in a switch is stored email messages, but there are ways to download those.

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

#26

Post by mcs_ »

> their search engine is still the best, sorry haters

Naming or using the "hater" word in the sentence does not make us in the right side of the story.

Considering users of other search engines as Haters does not sound right.

You think is the best, fine. Recently today, in this network, there is an analysis about it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31020229

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

#28

Post by arkitaip »

endisneigh wrote: post #5

dear diary... In any case, Google has plenty of competition in the areas you're talking about. Try the Office suite + Microsoft Ads.

Microsoft Office+Outlook+Teams is some of the worst software I've recently used. Poorly designed and poorly integrated with tons of overlapping functionality cracks where productivity goes to die.

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

#29

Post by Cordivae »

fatnoah wrote: post #25
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…

>All I ever wanted was my own Gmail domain. Who owns the domain here? I use a custom domain with Gmail Workspaces, but I own the domain, and therefore control the MX records. The only thing I'd lose in a switch is stored email messages, but there are ways to download those.

Yes. I own the domains. And if they go through with this I will move and leave Google's ecosystem entirely.

It will be a huge pain in the ass trying to do it for my grandparents though.

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

#30

Post by ford »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #3

Google is an advertising company. Their productivity apps exist for one reason --- privacy invasion/data collection --- in support of their advertising objectives. Using Google apps for anything other than advertising is like going to a medical doctor for a toothache. You might receive something that temporarily eases the pain but the root problem remains largely unsolved.

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 Microsoft + Google suites (mostly drive + calendar + mail) and generally preferred Google's. I did not have any issues like the post mentions.

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