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Mourning Google

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Re: Mourning Google

#91

Post by fidotron »

rezonant wrote: post #86
fidotron wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Gmail was not actually a particularly elegant product design” It popularized instant search, tagging and threading to such a degree you have clearly forgotten how elegant it was!

Features are not product design.

You seem to confuse graphic design and product design.

Product design is what something does, how it is structured and how it behaves to user interaction, _and_ how it appears, not just one of them. GMail was almost to email what the iPhone was to smartphones.

Re: Mourning Google

#92

Post by DeathArrow »

cousin_it wrote: post #16

I have a different theory about the cause of the decline. Google 10-15 years ago had a clear idea of how to win: hire the best programmers, give them freedom, and they'll build products that will win in every market. And, well, that hasn't happened. Long before the current talk of Google's decline, there was talk of the Google black hole, where talented people would get hired and their noteworthy output would drop to…

>I have a different theory about the cause of the decline.

What decline are you talking about? They have hundreds of billions revenue and climbing.

Re: Mourning Google

#93

Post by puchatek »

I really want to make the switch from Google maps to OSM but i always find that I also want to look up some data about the destination, usually the opening hours. Sometimes the reviews. OSM just doesn't have enough coverage for the place where I live. I wished there was some project that automatically looked up businesses in Google maps and copied their details to OSM but most likely that would violate some t&c or something like that.

Re: Mourning Google

#94

Post by ImaCake »

> It’s not that I think the companies are the problem, it’s the machineries and imperatives of Late Capitalism, which for a while we foolishly thought Internet companies could route around.

Blaming “late capitalism” for google’s institutional problems provides absolutely zero insight. Rapidly growing orgs have turned rotten since ancient times. OP’s other comments on institutional dysfunction are more informative and it made this well worth the read.

Sorry for your loss OP, it sounds like google was once a great place and I hope you find something like it again <3

Re: Mourning Google

#95

Post by coldtea »

closewith wrote: post #32
coldtea wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Things were better when I was younger and still worked there" You make it sound like having actually worked there, and knowing how Google was, versus what it is now, is a bad thing, that somehow "taints" your critique. It's, on the contrary, one of the most important prerequisites to be able to evaluate current Google.

The real issue the OP has is that they’re aging and seeing things differently. The Google they remember never existed - it’s just how they felt at the time.

Well, a Google existed then, and a Google exists now. Has Google always been the same, so that we can attribute any note of it changing, to "aging and seeing things differently"?

This is a kind of gaslighting ("Google was always the same, your experience of it in a previous state is irrelevant, you see things that never existed because you're older").

Tons of real world changes have happened to Google, the people, the culture, its reach, its products, its business practices, between 1998 and 2024. Things obvious even to people who weren't there - and of course more obvious to people who have been there, but in any case not things that are subjective as to whether they happened, but concrete things, documented in news reports and press releases, shown in the product line, and so on.

And many of the things that changed between 1998 and 2024, changed in the part between 2010 (when TFA's TB was hired) and 2024.

Similar to how Apple was different in 1977, different in 1984, different in 1992, different in 2000, different in 2008, and different in 2024. That's not some personal subjective hallucination, it's a hard fact.

You can say "Google was good/shit then to be that way, and it's equally good/shit now, even though it has changed in several ways".

But you cannot say "Google was always the same, it's just you 'seeing things' if you see it as having changed", because that's absolutely and objectively wrong.

Re: Mourning Google

#96

Post by chpatrick »

baud147258 wrote: post #31
bluetomcat wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't mean to say it was a waste of talent, because clearly some of these things were a huge success. Nothing apart from search, ads, maps, Gmail, Chrome and Android was a huge success. They essentially created their own monocultural ecosystem. Most of everything else was a short-lived fad. Plus, Wave, Reader, Chat and Glass, to mention a few.

I'd add Youtube as a huge success, even if I don't think if ever brought in much money

YouTube made $8 billion in ad revenue in Q3 2023, that's more than 10%: https://www.shacknews.com/article/137516/google-googl-q3-202...

Re: Mourning Google

#97

Post by Obscurity4340 »

puchatek wrote: post #93

I really want to make the switch from Google maps to OSM but i always find that I also want to look up some data about the destination, usually the opening hours. Sometimes the reviews. OSM just doesn't have enough coverage for the place where I live. I wished there was some project that automatically looked up businesses in Google maps and copied their details to OSM but most likely that would violate some t&c or so…

Try MagicEarth

Re: Mourning Google

#98

Post by coldtea »

sanderjd wrote: post #49
closewith wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real issue the OP has is that they’re aging and seeing things differently. The Google they remember never existed - it’s just how they felt at the time.

Well put! It's very difficult to know how you'd feel about experiences from your past if you plopped your current self into the middle of those past experiences. It makes me cringe to think about it!

It makes me cringe to think people believe any mention of the past and comparison to the present is automatically some age-induced hallucination, as if reality doesn't exist, changes never happen, and (in this case) 2024 Google isn't a much shittier version of the older Google.

Re: Mourning Google

#99

Post by coldtea »

duringmath wrote: post #26
coldtea wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Things were better when I was younger and still worked there" You make it sound like having actually worked there, and knowing how Google was, versus what it is now, is a bad thing, that somehow "taints" your critique. It's, on the contrary, one of the most important prerequisites to be able to evaluate current Google.

Sure, but it comes with its own biases and a certain conviction about how things should be.

And why would the conviction of "how things should be" should be assumed to be wrong, and the way things are now should be taken as better?

Is 2024 Google better than 2010 Google? How about 2001 Google?

Re: Mourning Google

#100

Post by redrove »

Xcelerate wrote: post #53

> quickly got into a pattern of hiring and empowering psychotic pricks who were presumably “good at business” This seems to be the real challenge that I haven’t seen any company founder overcome. How do you keep these types of people out? It’s like one gets in, then they let all their friends in, then they overtake the company. The tech company offices I visited in 2010 were full of nerds—people who rode unicycles, j…

I think it’s simpler than we may think: don’t hire anyone who hasn’t pushed a git commit in a management position.

Knowing code is the new knowing how to read and write, we should be less tolerant of “non-technical”, “in English, doc!” type people in positions of power in tech companies.

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