Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself • Hacker News Board

Re: Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

#211

Post by xradionut » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 12:57 PM UTC

Heliosmaster wrote: post #189

You are also welcome to stop using Google Search, Gmail (and contacts), Google Drive/Documents, Google+, Google Calendar, and YouTube, ... Because, you know, they are from the same company responsbile for the demise of Google Reader, and the less you get DEPENDENT on them, the least you will suffer from the demise of another product as this. Or you can move on.

There's alternatives to all of the Google services, although some will be harder to replace in the short term than others.

In terms of usefulness, Reader, as an information sieve, is a tool that saved me hours a week. If Google had offered a paid version to keep Reader going instead of shutting Reader down, I would have paid. Now I don't trust any "free" service they offer to be there in the long term. I guess Google "free" isn't "free". Explains why both OSS and commercial software(with long term agreements) are better choices.

Re: Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

#212

Post by mcintyre1994 » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 1:17 PM UTC

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #16

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It ties into Google Now. It's already super convenient for me. Swipe up "Google, note to self, pick up milk". Now I have a TODO. Combine that with what Google already knows (that I leave work at 5 and drive within half a mile of a grocery store), think about the intelligence they could bring to my Todo list. (I know lots of people aren't going to like the privacy implications, my comment isn't meant to apologize or t…

How is Now strategic?

Google Now is the best thing Google have done yet with the vast swathes of information they collect. Right now, Google Now is the reason to use everything Google.

Re: Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

#213

Post by mcintyre1994 » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 1:22 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #121

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess? The fact that the CM team doesn't even generate 10.1 builds for the Passion is a pretty good indicator that it's too weak. Or HTC won't upgrade the graphics drivers.

That's probably the case, although I'm a bit lost on the distinction between what GN does and the regular reminders from my calendar/mail client etc. It's powerful enough to run maps with little 3d buildings and stuff, so I've never been wholly clear on why it's stuck on Android 2.3.

I 'upgraded' my Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S to ICS, and it's absolutely ridiculously bad. I blame Sony for most issues, but the fact is ICS is bigger and uses way too much space for older devices that sold with none. I imagine JB even more so.

On my HP Touchpad though, Jellybean runs like a charm. I think the real reason fragmentation was ever an issue is because so many devices shipped without enough space for apps.

It doesn't help of course that Google and their strategic app partners (see Facebook) assume that every device has a tonne of space (which modern devices do of course) and grow ridiculously big. Chrome and Currents are both unusably big on an older device.

Bit of a ramble, but in short you're getting a much much better experience by not upgrading, unless there's a way to hack that tiny storage partition?

Re: Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

#214

Post by neolefty » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 1:28 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #102

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It ties into Google Now. It's already super convenient for me. Swipe up "Google, note to self, pick up milk". Now I have a TODO. Combine that with what Google already knows (that I leave work at 5 and drive within half a mile of a grocery store), think about the intelligence they could bring to my Todo list. (I know lots of people aren't going to like the privacy implications, my comment isn't meant to apologize or t…

This would be the Google Now that doesn't run on my Nexus One? :-)

You and me both, browlther. I found a Nexus 7 (thanks, visiting relatives) to go along with my aging Nexus One, and before I even knew what Now was, it figured out my commute (which is by bus, in Chengdu, China), telling me how long it would take that day based on traffic. I was pretty floored, since at that point I thought of the 7 as kind of a toy.

Re: Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

#215

Post by mcintyre1994 » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 1:30 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #137

cddotdotslash wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot Mozilla - pretty much the only company left that supports what you mentioned.

Mozilla is mentioned. :-) End of the first paragraph: Mozilla have a lot of clout on the browser side, but arguably much less so than in years past, as their market share has slipped.

In the past a huge majority of their revenue was from Google being their default search, and I highly doubt that has changed. If we set up a scenario where Google are the enemy, Mozilla has very little influence there.

Re: Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

#216

Post by mcintyre1994 » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 1:32 PM UTC

fpgeek wrote: post #143

Anyone in the "Just let me pay for Reader" brigade (I'm not sure whether or not Om is a member, though it seems likely given the "How much would you pay" poll I saw on one of his posts) has no basis for complaining about Keep. Keep, unlike Reader, is a paid service. A big point of Keep is to encourage people to use Drive - a storage service you pay for, once you fill up your introductory tier (keeping audio notes mig…

I'm not sure Keep lets you actually store an audio note. I believe it's just speech to text. Of course nothing stops you dropping a recorded note into Drive, but I don't think the Keep interface supports them.

EDIT: Looks like it both transcribes and keeps the audio available. http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57575465-285/get-started...

Re: Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

#217

Post by mkr-hn » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 1:44 PM UTC

Blahah wrote: post #186

mkr-hn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not much to do on there. I see image memes that aren't interesting. I scroll down to find a "What's hot" box with some boring thing from the NRA. Why does Google think I want to see anything from the NRA? The rest is news and updates I already saw on Facebook, Twitter, and RSS feeds. This is with a few carefully curated circles. I culled a few people out for flooding me with uninteresting things, but G+ hasn'…

Google Plus came alive for me when I added a Fraser Cain's shared Science Circle: https://plus.google.com/110701307803962595019/posts/CcPsCorM... There are similarly interesting circles focused on technology, futurism, etc.

Now that I think about it, G+ got less interesting around the same time I culled some shared circles I added when G+ launched. I saw this circle share the other day and added it. Now G+ is interesting again. Weird.

Re: Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

#218

Post by spinchange » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 1:48 PM UTC

Shooti wrote: post #145

spinchange wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what about the decision to drop ActiveSync support for anything after Windows 7/Office 2010? If you buy a new windows machine and are a paying apps customer, you are pretty much screwed. Dropping CalDAV doesn't affect this, but it is icing on the cake since it's hardly a guarantee that Apple is going to request whitelisting to make sure it works. (They have iCloud after all & not seeking interoperability will push…

Where are you getting that they dropped Google Apps Activesync support for Outlook 2013? A search brought up the main support page which says its upcoming (Under "OS and Microsoft Outlook® requirements"): http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en-uk&hlrm=... It also brought up a Google groups thread where a Google representative posted last month saying they're working on it: http://productforums.google.com/for…

>Where are you getting that they dropped Google Apps Activesync support for Outlook 2013?

From the original December announcement that's since been extended, amended, and clarified. And from the fact that at present, it still doesn't work.

Both of your links are relatively new developments. I'm glad to see that this is happening.

I've already spoken to why Apple would have to request whitelisting. The way Google announced plans to phase out CalDAV indicated such. Not for Apple expressly, but for anyone using CalDAV.

I hope you're right and I'm wrong, but none of this seems like simple "housekeeping" It seems like "platforming" or "silo-ing" Calendar in an analogous way to what Twitter did/is doing with its API and 3rd party clients. I readily admit this makes little sense for Calendar, but phasing out support for the most popular sync protocols used to by the 2 most popular software platforms -one of which is the open standard, then allowing them by exception only, is suspect.

Re: Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

#219

Post by corresation » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 1:54 PM UTC

just2n wrote: post #147

signed0 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep and Reader are built for different groups of users. Reader was a niche product used by a small (but vocal) subset of all Google users. Keep is a product built for everyone.

It also turns out that Keep will provide them with a LOT more information about users that advertisers would pay through the nose to obtain. Reader.. not so much.

Reader.. not so much.

How so? Show me someone's blog subscriptions, and then metrics on entries they clicked on, how long they viewed it, and the clicks that they followed, and I could quickly get a very accurate profile of the person.

Re: Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself

#220

Post by desas » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 1:55 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #130

andyl wrote: post #123

Before Google+ came along, Google had many great products and embraced the OpenWeb. Now Google has abandoned Open Standards like RSS and CalDAV, and I think Google is more interested in building their own walled garden.

Bingo. It's very unfortunate too, as Google were uniquely positioned to be great defenders of the Open Web. Who else has the clout to do it now, as well as the motivation? Does anybody see Marissa moving Yahoo that way? I'm guessing "no" but would love to be proven wrong. It won't be Microsoft, you can bet on that. Red Hat are a moderately powerful company, but they aren't that big and could wind up acquired by Oracl…

Redhat tried being a web company. They launched their own social network about six or seven years that played nice with the others as far as possible. Mugshot closed down after a couple of years, the source was still available last I knew.