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I Fired Google

theartofdoingstuff.com

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Re: I Fired Google

#81

Post by krabizzwainch »

I think that this is a really good article for a reason that none of us are mentioning. This is not a tech blog saying this. This is a cooking/gardening/home blog. I use these terms jokingly, but we are nerds on hacker news and this blog writer is a normie. Regular people are getting fed up with how bad google is getting, not just the nerds.

Companies don't care when nerds complain. We always complain. But when their normal user base starts jumping ship, then they could very well start listening.

Re: I Fired Google

#82

Post by xnx »

9dev wrote: post #67
Hugsbox wrote: post #15

I Fired theartofdoingstuff.com for extremely obnoxious ads - particularly the "Would you like to save this stuff?" one that greys out the rest of the article you're trying to read to... checks notes ... ask if you want the article emailed to you? Who the hell thought that was a good idea?

Why would you even browse the web without using an ad blocker?

No good options on Android right now. You can use Firefox, but there are a lot of tradeoffs.

Re: I Fired Google

#83

Post by elAhmo »

elbasti wrote: post #11

I have an android phone which means I use android auto fairly often. The sheer quality destruction it's experienced since transitioning to Gemini is incredible. I experience this mostly when asking for music. Before gemini, mistakes were common but deterministic. It was easy to understand where the query had gone wrong and so how to fix it. Example: "Hey google, play Blackstar " (Plays the album blackstar by David Bo…

Similarly, Siri was arguably better a decade ago when it has deterministic intents that you could trigger with certainty, now it is all seemingly random at time.

Re: I Fired Google

#85

Post by radiorental »

xnx wrote: post #82
9dev wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you even browse the web without using an ad blocker?

No good options on Android right now. You can use Firefox, but there are a lot of tradeoffs.

I'm curious what the tradeoffs are, I exclusively use FF and any time Chrome auto opens via a link I immediately baulk at the experience.

Re: I Fired Google

#86

Post by Xeoncross »

bsimpson wrote: post #62
elbasti wrote: post #11

I have an android phone which means I use android auto fairly often. The sheer quality destruction it's experienced since transitioning to Gemini is incredible. I experience this mostly when asking for music. Before gemini, mistakes were common but deterministic. It was easy to understand where the query had gone wrong and so how to fix it. Example: "Hey google, play Blackstar " (Plays the album blackstar by David Bo…

There was an Amazon UXR study that floated around ~8 years ago that said the only things people care about from a voice assistant are music, weather, and alarms. PMs keep trying to make them "smarter," and it just makes the core user journeys worse. Surely they think they're inventing cars when we're griping about buggy whips. But it really feels like voice assistants peaked ~10y ago for the things people actually wa…

Considering the decade of poor results from doing anything other than music, weather and alarms I think we've all learned to avoid using them for anything else.

Re: I Fired Google

#87

Post by cmoski »

chymerax wrote: post #19

The whole upgrade thing is stupid. For years I was able to tell my phone in the car: "Play this song on spotify" and it did it. Not any more. "Ok google! Set a timer for 20 minutes." -> "Sorry Bob, I don't have permission to do that". "Ok google, navigate home" -> "Navigating to Store@Home24!" (half a country away). I agree. I wasn't smart but it was useful in certain cases. Now it's just lobotomized.

and it takes sooooo looooong to write a text message with your voice now.

Re: I Fired Google

#88

Post by jimbokun »

bsimpson wrote: post #62
elbasti wrote: post #11

I have an android phone which means I use android auto fairly often. The sheer quality destruction it's experienced since transitioning to Gemini is incredible. I experience this mostly when asking for music. Before gemini, mistakes were common but deterministic. It was easy to understand where the query had gone wrong and so how to fix it. Example: "Hey google, play Blackstar " (Plays the album blackstar by David Bo…

There was an Amazon UXR study that floated around ~8 years ago that said the only things people care about from a voice assistant are music, weather, and alarms. PMs keep trying to make them "smarter," and it just makes the core user journeys worse. Surely they think they're inventing cars when we're griping about buggy whips. But it really feels like voice assistants peaked ~10y ago for the things people actually wa…

And knowing how old Geena Davis is.

Re: I Fired Google

#89

Post by fhdkweig »

elbasti wrote: post #11

I have an android phone which means I use android auto fairly often. The sheer quality destruction it's experienced since transitioning to Gemini is incredible. I experience this mostly when asking for music. Before gemini, mistakes were common but deterministic. It was easy to understand where the query had gone wrong and so how to fix it. Example: "Hey google, play Blackstar " (Plays the album blackstar by David Bo…

I don't really use Google products except Youtube, but their auto-subtitler (closed captions) have really taken a weird turn lately. It used to try sounding out the words so even if it didn't pick the right word, it was at least close to right one. But now it substitutes entire phrases and sentences based on what is most likely to appear in a conversation even if it has no bearing or similarities to what was said.

Re: I Fired Google

#90

Post by yalogin »

Gemini made me turn google off completely. There is no provision to not allow your chat data from being shared send for training - even if you pay. Clearly they don’t care about end users and I am guessing they are losing money on paid cunaumer tier as well. But that is not acceptable to me. I just turned off all Google services and finally switched to ddg as the default search engine.
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