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Indeed. A list of Google's decisions that drive me crazy. 1. Killing Google Reader 2. Removing swipe from Google News feed (both Chrome homepage and News feed

by sg47 6y ago

Indeed. A list of Google's decisions that drive me crazy. 1. Killing Google Reader 2. Removing swipe from Google News feed (both Chrome homepage and News feed in Android that's part of the launcher) 3. Deprecating Google Play Music and switching to Youtube Music (the interface is horrible and intended for videos). I'm a paying user of Google Play Music and this is idiotic. 4. Random recommendations in Youtube, especially more of the same. I have to open one-off videos in a private window so that I don't get recommendations 5. Minor changes in G Suite that make no sense (I'm forgetting what these are at the moment) 6. Showing ads for everything even when I'm just looking for medical information 7. GBoard suddenly asking me to add misspelled words to the dictionary 8. Google Maps interface changes (all the freaking time) I really wish Google would send all its PMs on a sabbatical for a while so that I can go about using these products in peace without random changes.

londons_explore 6y ago
Google reader only had 2 million users. They just happen to be the 2 million most vocal people in tech circles...
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  'only'
  - darkwizard42 6y ago
    There are over 2 billion MAU on Google Maps...so for Google, yes its only... It wasn't sustainable
    - Gibbon1 6y ago
      Most normal companies are okay with small divisions. Sometimes they'll sell them off. It feels like Google is like Intel. They reflexively kill anything that isn't going to be worth a few hundred million in revenue.
      - muratsu 6y ago
        Alphabet has a revenue per employee of $1.5M. In order to keep that number they need big hits. That's why small products just get abandoned / die.
        csande17 6y ago
        I'm now thinking about the math here. If they put Reader in maintenance mode, even with big-company inefficiency it'd probably only take three full-time engineers to keep it running. That means that they'd need revenue of $4.5M per year to stay competitive with other Google departments. That's less than $3 per user. Google can't squeeze $3/year in ad revenue out of a product used primarily by wealthy plugged-in tech types?
- smegger001 6y ago
  there are several dozen countries with lower populations that that.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
yoz-y 6y ago
Disclaimer: I work for Google 1. I was annoyed at killing reader too. However, in hindsight before we had Google reader and that was it. Now there is Feedly, Feedbin and multiple self hosted aggregators. And a plethora of RSS clients. RSS did not “die” because of lack of tech around it but because majority prefers twitter and Facebook. Had Reader stayed, would people be lamenting its dominant position?
- hoseja 6y ago
  Not if it stayed a user-friendly tool. Which it probably wouldn't.
- doublerabbit 6y ago
  As your a google employee, whats the reason of google suddenly implementing YouTube "Sign in to continue" popups when I try to use YouTube? I have cookies disabled however, with that, it means I then get the popup every single time I play the video.

by sg47 6y ago

londons_explore 6y ago

Google reader only had 2 million users. They just happen to be the 2 million most vocal people in tech circles...

Gibbon1 6y ago
'only'
- darkwizard42 6y ago
  There are over 2 billion MAU on Google Maps...so for Google, yes its only... It wasn't sustainable
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    Most normal companies are okay with small divisions. Sometimes they'll sell them off. It feels like Google is like Intel. They reflexively kill anything that isn't going to be worth a few hundred million in revenue.
    - muratsu 6y ago
      Alphabet has a revenue per employee of $1.5M. In order to keep that number they need big hits. That's why small products just get abandoned / die.
      - csande17 6y ago
        I'm now thinking about the math here. If they put Reader in maintenance mode, even with big-company inefficiency it'd probably only take three full-time engineers to keep it running. That means that they'd need revenue of $4.5M per year to stay competitive with other Google departments. That's less than $3 per user. Google can't squeeze $3/year in ad revenue out of a product used primarily by wealthy plugged-in tech types?
smegger001 6y ago
there are several dozen countries with lower populations that that.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

yoz-y 6y ago

Disclaimer: I work for Google 1. I was annoyed at killing reader too. However, in hindsight before we had Google reader and that was it. Now there is Feedly, Feedbin and multiple self hosted aggregators. And a plethora of RSS clients. RSS did not “die” because of lack of tech around it but because majority prefers twitter and Facebook. Had Reader stayed, would people be lamenting its dominant position?

hoseja 6y ago
Not if it stayed a user-friendly tool. Which it probably wouldn't.
doublerabbit 6y ago
As your a google employee, whats the reason of google suddenly implementing YouTube "Sign in to continue" popups when I try to use YouTube? I have cookies disabled however, with that, it means I then get the popup every single time I play the video.