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> I honestly don't know why Google's Product Team has any positive reputation at this point. They have a positive reputation? I've been a loyal Googler for ab

> I honestly don't know why Google's Product Team has any positive reputation at this point. They have a positive reputation? I've been a loyal Googler for about 20 years. Nexus, Pixel, Chromecasts, GMail, Fi, Android TV, Google Domains... I'm about done. It seems like every month they do something to make it more apparent that they're just an advertising company. Products fail to get maintained, they get upgrades that make them less useful, or they're outright cancelled. I'm planning on de-Googling a bit soon. I may stick with Android, although iPhones or FOSS options are tempting. I feel like I can't stomach supporting Google when they continue to make misstep after misstep.

nl 6y ago
I'm in a similar boat. I'm not planning on getting the new Pixel though (the Pixel 5 is badly conceived), and too many bad experiences with Samsung mean I'm considering moving to iPhone.
pkulak 6y ago
I'm the same way, except that photos is still amazing.
- tupputuppu 6y ago
  The lock-in with Photos they've slowly moved in is phenomenal. The exporting of originals is always somehow difficult due to random bugs. Lately I've had to resort to Takeout with some relatives to migrate them to Dropbox where they're not locked in, and about 20% of the photos don't contain any exported metadata. It's ridiculous since Google Photos shows those same pictures clearly on the timeline, indicating it does know when they were take, it just excludes that information from the Takeout.
  - AnssiH 6y ago
    If you are in EU, you can make a request for not-included-in-Takeout data here: https://support.google.com/policies/contact/sar https://support.google.com/policies/contact/sar
- gambiting 6y ago
  Photos continues changing interface every few months, every time without any clear reason or logic. The underlying product is solid, but photos(and other Google products) definitely feel like they have some very expensive designers who continuously have to justify their own existence by changing the interface over and over and over again, without any reason to keep changing it other than securing their own jobs.
- gfxgirl 6y ago
  What features do you like of photos? For me it seems more or less (mostly less?) than iPhoto though I'm not really an iPhoto user. What I find frustrating is I'd like to name people (as in face recognition) but the UI for doing so is horrible. Instead of being optimized to let me tag 50 to 100 people it's design to do one person at a time in a tedious way where you pick one face from the list of faces which takes to another screen where you edit the name, then going to back to the list you've lost your place. Further, there is no way to sort or set a priority on people so for example 8 of the top 20 people it shows are people I haven't interacted with in 10 to 15 years. I'd much rather it show people who are part of my life. Further, one of those 8 is an x. I have no ill will toward them but I don't really want them at the top of the list. And, there's no rhyme or reason who's on that top list. it's not a list by number of photos or most recent or anything that I can figure out. Why is this important? Because if I can tag my photos I can search for photos of people. But since they make it hard to use it's like they don't want it to be used.
  - kace91 6y ago
    not OP, but for me the killer feature of photos is having a phone gallery that syncs with the cloud and is easy to browse in my phone and my pc. My phone breaking or being lost is way less of a worry now since I don't have to worry about backups, and I can take a picture and have it available in my pc instantly. iPhoto is mostly the same but it's too tied to the os, which is a problem if I want to move to android for a while or need a photo in my work laptop that isn't tied to my apple account.
    - azinman2 6y ago
      At least you know the product isn’t going away.
josteink 6y ago
> I've been a loyal Googler for about 20 years. Nexus, Pixel, Chromecasts, GMail, Fi, Android TV, Google Domains... It was the same for me. But when Google seriously started botching the Nexus line and I bought three almost unusable products in a row (Nexus 9, Nexus Player, Nexus 5X), I was fed up and left.
willis936 6y ago
Any issues with Google domains? I switched to them when I saw that they were a tenth of the price of competition and haven’t had any issues.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
  I use it and have no complaints. Its just become better over time.
- Kwpolska 6y ago
  Even if Google kills the Domains product, migrating to a different domain registrar is easy, and even Google wouldn’t kill the service off without offering a long time to migrate. PS. Cloudflare Registrar might be even cheaper, at $8.03 for a .com domain: https://www.cloudflare.com/products/registrar/ https://www.cloudflare.com/products/registrar/.
- breakingcups 6y ago
  Regardless of price, I would never tie my domains to any Google account that has anything else in it. If it ever gets suspended by a rogue algorithm you might've just lost your domains unless you backed up your transfer keys and took a bunch of other precautions.
jwalton 6y ago
I'm having a very hard time deciding what my next phone will be. I'd like to move away from Android because it's basically an advertising machine, and iOS certainly seems to be the more privacy focused... But I also won't be able to run "real" firefox with an ad blocker like I can on Android...
- jdeibele 6y ago
  Use PiHole on a Raspberry Pi or set your DNS to use servers that block ads via DNS. I did the latter six months ago. One time I've had to show my college freshman how to change the DNS on her MacBook from the router default settings to Google or Cloudflare because the software her class was using wouldn't work otherwise. We do have a Roku and I get tempted to set up 2 Raspberry Pis for PiHole. I did set up one, then had some issues because the router wants 2 DNS hosts. But it looks like a lot of time and switching DNS was so easy.
  - jwalton 6y ago
    I have PiHole set up, and it's great. I do need to figure out a way to VPN to my pihole while I'm out and about. I also am using cloudflared so my upstream provider is CIRA's excellent Canadian Shield DNS provider and all the clients in the house end up going over DNS-over-HTTPS. If you upgrade your router to something like FreshTomato or DD-WRT, you have a lot more control over what DNS servers you advertise to clients on the network.

nl 6y ago

I'm in a similar boat. I'm not planning on getting the new Pixel though (the Pixel 5 is badly conceived), and too many bad experiences with Samsung mean I'm considering moving to iPhone.

pkulak 6y ago

I'm the same way, except that photos is still amazing.

tupputuppu 6y ago
The lock-in with Photos they've slowly moved in is phenomenal. The exporting of originals is always somehow difficult due to random bugs. Lately I've had to resort to Takeout with some relatives to migrate them to Dropbox where they're not locked in, and about 20% of the photos don't contain any exported metadata. It's ridiculous since Google Photos shows those same pictures clearly on the timeline, indicating it does know when they were take, it just excludes that information from the Takeout.
- AnssiH 6y ago
  If you are in EU, you can make a request for not-included-in-Takeout data here: https://support.google.com/policies/contact/sar https://support.google.com/policies/contact/sar
gambiting 6y ago
Photos continues changing interface every few months, every time without any clear reason or logic. The underlying product is solid, but photos(and other Google products) definitely feel like they have some very expensive designers who continuously have to justify their own existence by changing the interface over and over and over again, without any reason to keep changing it other than securing their own jobs.
gfxgirl 6y ago
What features do you like of photos? For me it seems more or less (mostly less?) than iPhoto though I'm not really an iPhoto user. What I find frustrating is I'd like to name people (as in face recognition) but the UI for doing so is horrible. Instead of being optimized to let me tag 50 to 100 people it's design to do one person at a time in a tedious way where you pick one face from the list of faces which takes to another screen where you edit the name, then going to back to the list you've lost your place. Further, there is no way to sort or set a priority on people so for example 8 of the top 20 people it shows are people I haven't interacted with in 10 to 15 years. I'd much rather it show people who are part of my life. Further, one of those 8 is an x. I have no ill will toward them but I don't really want them at the top of the list. And, there's no rhyme or reason who's on that top list. it's not a list by number of photos or most recent or anything that I can figure out. Why is this important? Because if I can tag my photos I can search for photos of people. But since they make it hard to use it's like they don't want it to be used.
- kace91 6y ago
  not OP, but for me the killer feature of photos is having a phone gallery that syncs with the cloud and is easy to browse in my phone and my pc. My phone breaking or being lost is way less of a worry now since I don't have to worry about backups, and I can take a picture and have it available in my pc instantly. iPhoto is mostly the same but it's too tied to the os, which is a problem if I want to move to android for a while or need a photo in my work laptop that isn't tied to my apple account.
  - azinman2 6y ago
    At least you know the product isn’t going away.

josteink 6y ago

> I've been a loyal Googler for about 20 years. Nexus, Pixel, Chromecasts, GMail, Fi, Android TV, Google Domains... It was the same for me. But when Google seriously started botching the Nexus line and I bought three almost unusable products in a row (Nexus 9, Nexus Player, Nexus 5X), I was fed up and left.

willis936 6y ago

Any issues with Google domains? I switched to them when I saw that they were a tenth of the price of competition and haven’t had any issues.

TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
I use it and have no complaints. Its just become better over time.
Kwpolska 6y ago
Even if Google kills the Domains product, migrating to a different domain registrar is easy, and even Google wouldn’t kill the service off without offering a long time to migrate. PS. Cloudflare Registrar might be even cheaper, at $8.03 for a .com domain: https://www.cloudflare.com/products/registrar/ https://www.cloudflare.com/products/registrar/.
breakingcups 6y ago
Regardless of price, I would never tie my domains to any Google account that has anything else in it. If it ever gets suspended by a rogue algorithm you might've just lost your domains unless you backed up your transfer keys and took a bunch of other precautions.

jwalton 6y ago

I'm having a very hard time deciding what my next phone will be. I'd like to move away from Android because it's basically an advertising machine, and iOS certainly seems to be the more privacy focused... But I also won't be able to run "real" firefox with an ad blocker like I can on Android...

jdeibele 6y ago
Use PiHole on a Raspberry Pi or set your DNS to use servers that block ads via DNS. I did the latter six months ago. One time I've had to show my college freshman how to change the DNS on her MacBook from the router default settings to Google or Cloudflare because the software her class was using wouldn't work otherwise. We do have a Roku and I get tempted to set up 2 Raspberry Pis for PiHole. I did set up one, then had some issues because the router wants 2 DNS hosts. But it looks like a lot of time and switching DNS was so easy.
- jwalton 6y ago
  I have PiHole set up, and it's great. I do need to figure out a way to VPN to my pihole while I'm out and about. I also am using cloudflared so my upstream provider is CIRA's excellent Canadian Shield DNS provider and all the clients in the house end up going over DNS-over-HTTPS. If you upgrade your router to something like FreshTomato or DD-WRT, you have a lot more control over what DNS servers you advertise to clients on the network.