9 ms·

I was a die-hard Google user/fanboy until about a year and a half ago. I was a Fi user, Voice user (before Fi), Hangouts, Nexus buyer, you name it (I even had a

I was a die-hard Google user/fanboy until about a year and a half ago. I was a Fi user, Voice user (before Fi), Hangouts, Nexus buyer, you name it (I even had a Google TV and almost bought an OnHub). I bailed on it all when I realized that Google has absolutely no long-term vision or desire to support what they produce. I went to an iPhone and despite Apple's warts, it's a night-and-day experience. I'll never again trust Google products.

nextos 10y ago
Frankly, I can't understand how Google is so chaotic. Perhaps it's the organization, which looks more like a conglomerate than a cohesive corporation with a clear vision. They release products, only to abandon many of them without a clear reason (like Google Talk). Or they release two products that should be one instead (Android & ChromeOS, or Allo & Duo). The Google Talk fiasco got me particularly disenchanted. A beautiful, open, standards-compliant product (they even helped extending XMPP with Jingle!) gets replaced by a proprietary mess like Hangouts.
- em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
  This: "they release two products that should be one instead (Android & ChromeOS)"... I've been thinking the same exact thing. Google basically split the ecosystem in half...devs have to unnecessary build seperate apps for each (unless they are using a cross platform engine).
  - ramses0 10y ago
    Not really... chromeos is the bare minimum linux environment to run a chrome browser on laptop hardware. Android is some frankenstein of java IDE to develop phone software. They might-should-be the same, but they're fundamentally very different roots.
    - em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
      Actually, I'm agreeing with you... Google never really should have done Android but rather skipped directly to making Chrome OS for phones.
      - Already__Taken 10y ago
        A major tenant of Chrome is the rolling update model, nobody has ever got the android vendors to do anything slightly like that. My Moto E gen2 got 1 year of updates that's it.
    - rdnt01 10y ago
      If chromeOS is the native eco, why is everyone talking about rolling chrome into Android and not the other way around?
      - xyzzy_plugh 10y ago
        Because Android is the big dog. Android can and very well may eat the world. It's a very easy distro to abuse. Chromeos on the other hand is a very well-thought-out distro that is extremely simple and low-level, enough that it could easily form the basis of a great OS like Android
    - mjevans 10y ago
      Back at the time phones hadn't scaled up enough. Remember how horrid early android (and iphones) were? I actually skipped the first generation entirely (and only got my first smart phone because it would be better than my existing phone and have GPS navigation as it's killer app).
    - xyzzy_plugh 10y ago
      I'm going to take a slightly controversial point of view and say: Android should have been ported to chromeos. Newer phones should've shipped with the ping-pong update system, and the secure permissions system that permeates Linux. Instead we're left with, what is really 75% a hack, Android. The update system sucks. The "recompiling" of app sucks. The permissions system sucks. The bloat really sucks. I am pretty sure my Nexus One was more responsive than my last Nexus phone, or any of the competition (which also, despite Google's best (awful) efforts have deviated in user experience greatly). Google, once a golden god of the entire computer/software industry has fallen so far. It's really depressing. I wonder if it is even possible for a business to succeed the way Google used to and be profitable. It's only a matter of time before someone eats their lunch, just the same as Microsoft. In 15 years $COMPANY will dominate and we'll be in the same spot.
- WorldMaker 10y ago
  The one-two punch of killing Google Talk and Google Reader in quick succession really hurt my confidence in Google. (Wave too, to a lesser extent.)
  - Already__Taken 10y ago
    Wave I still miss. It was like it didn't go gangbusters straight away so google binned it off. Any it only didn't work because of the stupid JS hijacked chat scroller, where was its promise as a new chat protocol.
    - WorldMaker 10y ago
      I've said before that there is probably an interesting alternate universe out there was G+ was built on top of Talk, Reader, and Wave instead of replacing those three. They really did throw out several babies in trying to throw out their over-silo-ed bathwater. One can only imagine the world in which the UX work applied to the G+ walled garden Facebook clone effort had instead been used to polish (a federation-capable) Wave and make it a consumer friendly product...
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Likely because of their "20% personal project time" policy. As best I recall, ChromeOS started as a personal project to see if one could build a OS around a web browser (and Google already had one handy). On top of this Android didn't start within Google. And Rubin ran it as his own fief. Supposedly he insisted that all Android devices come equipped with a mobile radio, and thus Google would not certify WiFi only tablet devices.
  - hk__2 10y ago
    A lot of other companies have this policy (Google didn’t invent it) and aren’t in that kind of mess.
- fh973 10y ago
  It's the promotion system. People are incentivized to work 2y on a project, launch, get promoted, move on. Coupled with no clear strategy other than "we need the next toothbrush" you get what you see.
  - will_pseudonym 10y ago
    "I think we could get them to brush their tongues." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brU_Pp-20g0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brU_Pp-20g0
- blakesterz 10y ago
  >> Frankly, I can't understand how Google is so chaotic. I'd love an open and honest answer from someone up high in the org chart at Google on that. Better yet, just an acknowledgement of it and how they're going to stop doing this in the future. If they were a startup with 200 employees under the age of 30 I'd understand it, but they're obviously waaaaay beyond that stage.
  - saurik 10y ago
    Hell, at this point I would settle for some closure on "what the hell did you mean by 'more wood behind fewer arrows' in 2011 when you began the process of mass project shutdown?!... that's not really how arrows work :/".
    - Infernal 10y ago
      More wood = bigger bow. Shoot fewer arrows harder, i.e. more resources behind fewer projects, i.e. quality over quantity.
      - saurik 10y ago
        THANK YOU! All of the other explanations I'd come across have thought they meant to shoot fewer, but heavier, arrows :/.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - yborg 10y ago
      The real problem seems to be inability to aim. Google fired a ballista at Facebook with G+ and missed completely.
      - rosege 10y ago
        Yeah the smart thing would have been to acknowledge that you arent FB and dont need to be FB and to focus on areas that are underserved rather than trying to semi repeat what they have done
- megablast 10y ago
  Stupid theory: It is fun working on projects, it is not fun supporting projects.
  - pokemongoaway 10y ago
    The problem with this idea is that once the project becomes a product or services of Google's, then it is supported by official paid working hours of its employees.
  - taneq 10y ago
    Putting together what a bunch of different people have said, it's not just this (although it's this too). It's that you get promoted by producing a high profile, popular product. After which you've been promoted and you're working on something else, and so the product you got promoted for gets neglected, languishes for a bit and then dies.
- prostoalex 10y ago
  That is the bane of a large company. A product that would've been successful user-count-wise and revenue-wise for a smallish startup starts looking like a failure when you operate in billions of users and tens of billions of revenue. It's not that someone internally calls it out as a failure, but the constant pressure to compete for scarce resources (department budgets and developers in Google's case) encourages the internal politicking and resource wars. If YouTube or Search or Android is considered top priority at the moment, it's very unlikely some project like Google Voice or Google Talk have any kind of leverage in defending their budgets and/or teams.
0xCMP 10y ago
Same happened to me a long time ago. This is kind of why I think "apple is dead" is a little early...
djsumdog 10y ago
I've never had an eyePhone and switch to Android from Palm's WebOS. But for years I've always used 3rd party ROMS (Cyanogen mostly). Google has a vested interest in not fixing Android's brokenness. They make a lot of money off phones that needs to be replaced every 2 years. With their strict control over OHA, they can easily mandate PC style platform standards to reduce e-waste, fight planned obsolescence and offer real security updates: http://penguindreams.org/blog/android-fragmentation/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/android-fragmentation/ But they don't. I feel like I'm through, but I don't want an Apple phone either. Ubuntu Mobile has no device support and Plasma only supports two devices (neither with an SDCard option). I wish we had real open hardware :(
- tw04 10y ago
  >They make a lot of money off phones that needs to be replaced every 2 years. No... they really don't. They make a lot of money off search traffic and the app store. Android licensing amounts to approximately $0.75 per handset. That's not even a rounding error on their balance sheet, and SURELY not something to "intentionally break android" over. Broken android is a great way to drive people to other platforms. There's nothing to be gained for them in that. more to the point, why do you think they released the Pixel line-up? They got sick of vendors screwing up Android by skinning every premium handset on the market (and skins are the primary source of broken garbage). And in that endeavor they've been wildly successful. The pixel is by far the best android handset I've ever owned. You pay for it, but it's worth it if you like android.
  - djsumdog 10y ago
    Okay, sure not off direct licensing of the OS. But total revenues are $31 billion. That's a significant number on their balance sheet. http://www.androidauthority.com/how-does-google-make-money-from-android-669008/ http://www.androidauthority.com/how-does-google-make-money-f... The Pixel doesn't have an sdcard slot, which is a deal breaker for me. (I don't rent my music, so I have a 200GB micosd card with my collection on it). Even their 128GB model simply won't cut it.
    - 10y ago
wvenable 10y ago
I just switched from an iPhone to Android; there are pros and cons to both platforms. But one of the cons of the Apple ecosystem is how terrible all their (cloud) services are. I still haven't fully bought into the Google ecosystem but I'm slowly move over.
- dpcx 10y ago
  I'd be interested to hear what issues you have with Apple's cloud services. I, personally, have had no problems, but am definitely curious.
  - dlandis 10y ago
    One issue is how they nickel and dime you for storage space. I think you only get 5GB free and then have to "upgrade your icloud plan" even after dropping $800+ on a new phone, which you might want to back up.
    - dpcx 10y ago
      Ah. I thought terrible meant "issues using the service." I do have some annoyances with how I'm charged for things, but I don't mind paying for services ($2/month for 200GB) that give me things without resorting to selling my browsing habits to the highest bidder.
    - greggman 10y ago
      It's not free. You must own an iDevice or a Mac to use iCloud and worse if you pay for one device you get 5gig. If you pay for 2 you don't get another 5gig
    - threeseed 10y ago
      5GB is actually enough for most people backing up their phones. The OS, Apps, Music, Books etc don't count towards that 5GB number. The issue is if you take a lot of photos that you will want to upgrade. But it is a small amount.
      - 10y ago
zyxzkz 10y ago
I have a similar story. Google really had momentum. They bungled it terribly. I just use an iPhone now. It works, no bloatware, no bullshit, no need for useless tweaks. I should have switched years ago.
zyxzkz 10y ago
I have a similar story. Google really had momentum. They bungled it terribly. I just use an iPhone now. It works, no bloatware, no bullshit, no need for useless tweaks. I should have switched years ago.
pooloo1 10y ago
I am a Google Fi user, the Pixel is by far the best phone I have ever owned, and I have zero complaints so far. To contact customer service, if I ever need to, it takes less than 10 seconds. I almost always have service, if I don't have tower service I swap to WiFi and have the same and full capabilities. I dont have any issues as it stands, though I have been using Google products since 1997 and might be a bit of a fanboy... =P
- SamBam 10y ago
  You can contact customer service right now because they're promoting the heck out of Pixel, and are happy to sink lots of resources into it. Once it becomes a legacy party of Google (hey, remember the original Pixel that Google made? The premium laptop that they no longer support at all? I own it.), chances are they'll drop all that support, just like everything else at Google.

nextos 10y ago

Frankly, I can't understand how Google is so chaotic. Perhaps it's the organization, which looks more like a conglomerate than a cohesive corporation with a clear vision. They release products, only to abandon many of them without a clear reason (like Google Talk). Or they release two products that should be one instead (Android & ChromeOS, or Allo & Duo). The Google Talk fiasco got me particularly disenchanted. A beautiful, open, standards-compliant product (they even helped extending XMPP with Jingle!) gets replaced by a proprietary mess like Hangouts.

em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
This: "they release two products that should be one instead (Android & ChromeOS)"... I've been thinking the same exact thing. Google basically split the ecosystem in half...devs have to unnecessary build seperate apps for each (unless they are using a cross platform engine).
- ramses0 10y ago
  Not really... chromeos is the bare minimum linux environment to run a chrome browser on laptop hardware. Android is some frankenstein of java IDE to develop phone software. They might-should-be the same, but they're fundamentally very different roots.
  - em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
    Actually, I'm agreeing with you... Google never really should have done Android but rather skipped directly to making Chrome OS for phones.
    - Already__Taken 10y ago
      A major tenant of Chrome is the rolling update model, nobody has ever got the android vendors to do anything slightly like that. My Moto E gen2 got 1 year of updates that's it.
  - rdnt01 10y ago
    If chromeOS is the native eco, why is everyone talking about rolling chrome into Android and not the other way around?
    - xyzzy_plugh 10y ago
      Because Android is the big dog. Android can and very well may eat the world. It's a very easy distro to abuse. Chromeos on the other hand is a very well-thought-out distro that is extremely simple and low-level, enough that it could easily form the basis of a great OS like Android
  - mjevans 10y ago
    Back at the time phones hadn't scaled up enough. Remember how horrid early android (and iphones) were? I actually skipped the first generation entirely (and only got my first smart phone because it would be better than my existing phone and have GPS navigation as it's killer app).
  - xyzzy_plugh 10y ago
    I'm going to take a slightly controversial point of view and say: Android should have been ported to chromeos. Newer phones should've shipped with the ping-pong update system, and the secure permissions system that permeates Linux. Instead we're left with, what is really 75% a hack, Android. The update system sucks. The "recompiling" of app sucks. The permissions system sucks. The bloat really sucks. I am pretty sure my Nexus One was more responsive than my last Nexus phone, or any of the competition (which also, despite Google's best (awful) efforts have deviated in user experience greatly). Google, once a golden god of the entire computer/software industry has fallen so far. It's really depressing. I wonder if it is even possible for a business to succeed the way Google used to and be profitable. It's only a matter of time before someone eats their lunch, just the same as Microsoft. In 15 years $COMPANY will dominate and we'll be in the same spot.
WorldMaker 10y ago
The one-two punch of killing Google Talk and Google Reader in quick succession really hurt my confidence in Google. (Wave too, to a lesser extent.)
- Already__Taken 10y ago
  Wave I still miss. It was like it didn't go gangbusters straight away so google binned it off. Any it only didn't work because of the stupid JS hijacked chat scroller, where was its promise as a new chat protocol.
  - WorldMaker 10y ago
    I've said before that there is probably an interesting alternate universe out there was G+ was built on top of Talk, Reader, and Wave instead of replacing those three. They really did throw out several babies in trying to throw out their over-silo-ed bathwater. One can only imagine the world in which the UX work applied to the G+ walled garden Facebook clone effort had instead been used to polish (a federation-capable) Wave and make it a consumer friendly product...
digi_owl 10y ago
Likely because of their "20% personal project time" policy. As best I recall, ChromeOS started as a personal project to see if one could build a OS around a web browser (and Google already had one handy). On top of this Android didn't start within Google. And Rubin ran it as his own fief. Supposedly he insisted that all Android devices come equipped with a mobile radio, and thus Google would not certify WiFi only tablet devices.
- hk__2 10y ago
  A lot of other companies have this policy (Google didn’t invent it) and aren’t in that kind of mess.
fh973 10y ago
It's the promotion system. People are incentivized to work 2y on a project, launch, get promoted, move on. Coupled with no clear strategy other than "we need the next toothbrush" you get what you see.
- will_pseudonym 10y ago
  "I think we could get them to brush their tongues." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brU_Pp-20g0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brU_Pp-20g0
blakesterz 10y ago
>> Frankly, I can't understand how Google is so chaotic. I'd love an open and honest answer from someone up high in the org chart at Google on that. Better yet, just an acknowledgement of it and how they're going to stop doing this in the future. If they were a startup with 200 employees under the age of 30 I'd understand it, but they're obviously waaaaay beyond that stage.
- saurik 10y ago
  Hell, at this point I would settle for some closure on "what the hell did you mean by 'more wood behind fewer arrows' in 2011 when you began the process of mass project shutdown?!... that's not really how arrows work :/".
  - Infernal 10y ago
    More wood = bigger bow. Shoot fewer arrows harder, i.e. more resources behind fewer projects, i.e. quality over quantity.
    - saurik 10y ago
      THANK YOU! All of the other explanations I'd come across have thought they meant to shoot fewer, but heavier, arrows :/.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - yborg 10y ago
    The real problem seems to be inability to aim. Google fired a ballista at Facebook with G+ and missed completely.
    - rosege 10y ago
      Yeah the smart thing would have been to acknowledge that you arent FB and dont need to be FB and to focus on areas that are underserved rather than trying to semi repeat what they have done
megablast 10y ago
Stupid theory: It is fun working on projects, it is not fun supporting projects.
- pokemongoaway 10y ago
  The problem with this idea is that once the project becomes a product or services of Google's, then it is supported by official paid working hours of its employees.
- taneq 10y ago
  Putting together what a bunch of different people have said, it's not just this (although it's this too). It's that you get promoted by producing a high profile, popular product. After which you've been promoted and you're working on something else, and so the product you got promoted for gets neglected, languishes for a bit and then dies.
prostoalex 10y ago
That is the bane of a large company. A product that would've been successful user-count-wise and revenue-wise for a smallish startup starts looking like a failure when you operate in billions of users and tens of billions of revenue. It's not that someone internally calls it out as a failure, but the constant pressure to compete for scarce resources (department budgets and developers in Google's case) encourages the internal politicking and resource wars. If YouTube or Search or Android is considered top priority at the moment, it's very unlikely some project like Google Voice or Google Talk have any kind of leverage in defending their budgets and/or teams.

0xCMP 10y ago

Same happened to me a long time ago. This is kind of why I think "apple is dead" is a little early...

djsumdog 10y ago

I've never had an eyePhone and switch to Android from Palm's WebOS. But for years I've always used 3rd party ROMS (Cyanogen mostly). Google has a vested interest in not fixing Android's brokenness. They make a lot of money off phones that needs to be replaced every 2 years. With their strict control over OHA, they can easily mandate PC style platform standards to reduce e-waste, fight planned obsolescence and offer real security updates: http://penguindreams.org/blog/android-fragmentation/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/android-fragmentation/ But they don't. I feel like I'm through, but I don't want an Apple phone either. Ubuntu Mobile has no device support and Plasma only supports two devices (neither with an SDCard option). I wish we had real open hardware :(

tw04 10y ago
>They make a lot of money off phones that needs to be replaced every 2 years. No... they really don't. They make a lot of money off search traffic and the app store. Android licensing amounts to approximately $0.75 per handset. That's not even a rounding error on their balance sheet, and SURELY not something to "intentionally break android" over. Broken android is a great way to drive people to other platforms. There's nothing to be gained for them in that. more to the point, why do you think they released the Pixel line-up? They got sick of vendors screwing up Android by skinning every premium handset on the market (and skins are the primary source of broken garbage). And in that endeavor they've been wildly successful. The pixel is by far the best android handset I've ever owned. You pay for it, but it's worth it if you like android.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  Okay, sure not off direct licensing of the OS. But total revenues are $31 billion. That's a significant number on their balance sheet. http://www.androidauthority.com/how-does-google-make-money-from-android-669008/ http://www.androidauthority.com/how-does-google-make-money-f... The Pixel doesn't have an sdcard slot, which is a deal breaker for me. (I don't rent my music, so I have a 200GB micosd card with my collection on it). Even their 128GB model simply won't cut it.
  - 10y ago

wvenable 10y ago

I just switched from an iPhone to Android; there are pros and cons to both platforms. But one of the cons of the Apple ecosystem is how terrible all their (cloud) services are. I still haven't fully bought into the Google ecosystem but I'm slowly move over.

dpcx 10y ago
I'd be interested to hear what issues you have with Apple's cloud services. I, personally, have had no problems, but am definitely curious.
- dlandis 10y ago
  One issue is how they nickel and dime you for storage space. I think you only get 5GB free and then have to "upgrade your icloud plan" even after dropping $800+ on a new phone, which you might want to back up.
  - dpcx 10y ago
    Ah. I thought terrible meant "issues using the service." I do have some annoyances with how I'm charged for things, but I don't mind paying for services ($2/month for 200GB) that give me things without resorting to selling my browsing habits to the highest bidder.
  - greggman 10y ago
    It's not free. You must own an iDevice or a Mac to use iCloud and worse if you pay for one device you get 5gig. If you pay for 2 you don't get another 5gig
  - threeseed 10y ago
    5GB is actually enough for most people backing up their phones. The OS, Apps, Music, Books etc don't count towards that 5GB number. The issue is if you take a lot of photos that you will want to upgrade. But it is a small amount.
    - 10y ago

zyxzkz 10y ago

I have a similar story. Google really had momentum. They bungled it terribly. I just use an iPhone now. It works, no bloatware, no bullshit, no need for useless tweaks. I should have switched years ago.

zyxzkz 10y ago

pooloo1 10y ago

I am a Google Fi user, the Pixel is by far the best phone I have ever owned, and I have zero complaints so far. To contact customer service, if I ever need to, it takes less than 10 seconds. I almost always have service, if I don't have tower service I swap to WiFi and have the same and full capabilities. I dont have any issues as it stands, though I have been using Google products since 1997 and might be a bit of a fanboy... =P

SamBam 10y ago
You can contact customer service right now because they're promoting the heck out of Pixel, and are happy to sink lots of resources into it. Once it becomes a legacy party of Google (hey, remember the original Pixel that Google made? The premium laptop that they no longer support at all? I own it.), chances are they'll drop all that support, just like everything else at Google.