14 ms·
Why Google's bookmark manager and Docs have purposefully bad UI
- Qahlel 5y agoEvery company works for itself first.
- aplummer 5y agoThis is assuming malice when you could assume incompetence (to whatever slight degree this stuff is). Probably these things got put in a future release, or are in the backlog still. Well meaning product designers wanted them and can't have them or some other typical big-co reason a product gets little iteration.
- wyre 5y agoGoogle Docs has existed for a 15 years and it’s UI has barely improved from what I remember.
- legohead 5y agoHave you seen Google's latest icons? They aren't exactly known for doing what is competent, sane, or useful. It took them years and years to finally make the "Ignore Toll Roads" on Google maps not reset after you close the app, even after tons of bug reports with hundreds of responses.
- deregulateMed 5y agoSheets has gone through massive improvements in features. It's no Excel, especially for bigger sheets or complex functions, but it's been a good way to provide my website users with a web spreadsheet. I'm reminded this every 4 years when I need to install Excel.
- topicseed 5y agoI love that =QUERY()....
- topicseed 5y agoSmart Canvas are an amazing update coming later this year. Took years in the making, but well-worth it. Working with dozens of people through Docs and Sheets, I love their evergreen-ness. Sure, I wish there were more features but it's amazing to keep software simple, especially when it is used so widely.
- pydry 5y ago>typical big-co reason a product gets little iteration. That they DGAF if they're not facing competition. IE6 was the same. Threaten them with loss of market share and they'll fix these things.
- the_lonely_road 5y agoI think you have that backwards. It takes a strong stomach to claim Google isn't facing competition on Google Sheets and threatening their market share would cause them to start caring. The more likely scenario is they have given up on winning any market share as serious users refuse to switch from Excel and non serious users have pads of paper and pencil, leaving Google just a tiny slice of the pie between those two groups to even fight for. I would guess it has to do with what I have heard is the promotion path at Google. It seems you need to ship, and ship new things, if you want to be a serious contender. That leaves few engineers willing to take a look at Google Sheets issues and put together a PR to fix these things.
- pydry 5y agoI was thinking of chrome bookmarks. I wouldnt put google sheets in the same category. I think it has been improved over the years (perhaps not as much as it should have).
- thrashh 5y agoI don’t think competition in UX exists generally. Just look at all the products in any space out there (for example, Dell, Logitech, etc.) and how many of them would you say has a good consistent product design team? Honestly from my experience, people just don’t care. Devs will just say it’s by design and it’s the users’ fault, product owners don’t use the product so much as develop it, and everyone else is just detached from what they’re making. In the end, no one really owns the product.
- codethief 5y agoThis is the first time I'm hearing about BookmarkOS. Has anyone here tried it?
- cratermoon 5y ago"corals" should be "corrals"
- encryptluks2 5y agoThis is why I use a self-hosted bookmark manager like Shiori, although I concede that I haven't found an ideal bookmark manager yet. I wish Chrome would have never built both its own bookmark manager and password manager, as well as Firefox. I believe those types of tasks are best left up to the community, and that for the most part web browsers should not be trying to re-invent what is already there.
- williamscales 5y agoEssentially all the folders and organization for Google Docs happens through Google Drive. So you have to keep switching between the two. Why is the Google Drive interface not embedded in Google Docs instead of that dumb list of documents?
- TchoBeer 5y agoI know right?! I've been ranting about this for the past year, having to use docs for a small organization. All I want is Google drive but when you click on a text file it takes you into the docs editor.
- webwielder2 5y agoWould be curious to read a blog post explaining why "Bookmark OS" has a UI that looks like someone recreated OS X Leopard from memory.
- shadowgovt 5y agoI can't speak to Chrome's handling of bookmarks one way or the other, but the author fundamentally misunderstands both the history of Drive and its current application. Regarding history: Drive had tags early on and a lack of hierarchical folder categorization (think of "files sorted like email messages" instead of "files sorted in a hierarchy"). Users pushed back with a very clear demand for folders, so Google implemented them (at which point, tags are redundant). 100% of the functionality of tags exists via folders and the ability to use Shortcuts (select a doc in Drive and shift-Z) to assign a file to multiple folders. Regarding current application: Drive syncs to filesystems of major OSes and is therefore constrained somewhat in supporting features that are maintainable across multiple OS filesystem abstractions. I don't doubt Google could find a way to implement the wishlist the author describes, but the value / cost ratio is questionable. Author's claim of lack of support for folder colors is also just false. I agree that his full laundry-list isn't present, but folder colors are accessible by right-clicking on a folder in the Drive UI and selecting "Change color". All of that having been said, the author's own app seems to be well-positioned to address those wants so I'm not sure why they are making wild guesses at Google's intentions instead of just taking advantage of the big, lumbering megacorp being big and lumbering and back-filling those features for users.
- H8crilA 5y agoOr, you know, they happen to have a pretty good search solution and don't want to spend time and risk building something else. Large organizations nearly cannot change course, that's why the blowups are so spectacular and seem so dumb (ex: Kodak).
- JohnBooty 5y agoOr, you know, they happen to have a pretty good search solution and don't want to spend time and risk building something else You wrote "or" as if this was an alternative conclusion. However, this is essentially identical to the thesis of the linked article: Google’s core business is still search. By neglecting UI and design for these products, Google corals user behavior into a “search-first” mentality. The more disorganized you become, the more reliant you become on search, and Google benefits. If it helps, I think you're both right. =)
- admax88q 5y agomacOS takes the same approach with Finder however. Managing files in macOS is a huge pain if you want to keep it in some nicely organized tree. Its optimized for just searching to find what you're looking for. It presents all files in a flat list by default. Apple's primary business model is not search, so there could be some evidence that more people just prefer search over tags/folders/icons etc.
- tasogare 5y agoThere is tons if options to find files on macOS: the find command, spotlight, search in the finder, hierarchical view in the finder. Which popular OS has a better system than that?
- whimsicalism 5y agoThe search on MacOS is unusable for me. It always surfaces wrong/irrelevant things and defaults to searching in the oddest places.
- sobjornstad 5y agoThis exactly. Yesterday I needed to change my Touch ID settings and typed "Touch ID" into Spotlight search. First result: the dictionary definition of "Touch ID". Nowhere in the list: The System Preferences applet called exactly "Touch ID". Seriously?
- tacker2000 5y agoI have to agree with this. The search in macos is really broken. There are so many problems with it. It could be so much better but they havent improved it in years. Even using Alfred i dont get what i want sometimes. Maybe its because alfred is using spotlight indexes? I’d have to look it up.
- alisonkisk 5y agobut it's the easiest way to find system header files. Who cares about Preference Panes?!
- jarofgreen 5y agoFlip side - Google Keep. To search for a note you have to press the search box twice. First time you just get types of things - if you want to search free text you have to press again. I'd argue that UI encourages using tags over search. It's honestly my only major annoyance about Google Keep.
- cunthorpe 5y agoReminds me of Google Maps. Me: I want a coffee shop. Maps: Ok let me zoom out and show you coffee shops in a 20km radius. So you have to zoom back in and “Search this area”. But hey the Starbucks next door is not shown, it’s maddening. Google’s core business is now ads, not search.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- overscore 5y ago> Google’s core business is now ads, not search. It has been for over 20 years now, since October 2000.
- Tenoke 5y agoIsn't keep an abandoned project? I use it daily and it doesn't seem to have gotten an update in years (if ever since launch). >It's honestly my only major annoyance about Google Keep. I definitely have more annoyances - it can be slow, it has only minimum features, you can't change the ordering etc.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago> it doesn't seem to have gotten an update in years (if ever since launch) That's probably why it doesn't suck as badly as most other Google products. > you can't change the ordering etc. Of notes? Of checkbox items? In both cases: you most definitely can. I just did that, both in the browser and in the app.
- 5y ago
- cfmcdonald 5y agoI have a number of nits with this post (e.g. OP is confusing Docs and Drive), but more generally I don't get OP's point. Drive search, bookmark search, and Web search are totally different features in totally different products. Notably, the first two have no ads, so driving you to search in this case has no clear positive effect for Google.
- ma2rten 5y agoGoogle Drive has basically all the features that Google Docs supposedly doesn't have. Just go to drive.google.com instead of docs.google.com.
- abxytg 5y agoGoogle also debuted a new Driving Mode on Google Maps that... entirely changes the UI of of the app and several parts of the phone interface itself. I have never had to look at my phone while driving more in my entire life. It's my fault for using the phone, but it very nearly caused 2 accidents for me this weekend as I tried to get google maps to update or display a particular UI. I truly wonder what is going on over there -- I try not to assume bad intent but a lot of this stuff feels almost violently anti-user. Edit: you can and should turn it off in settings: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/media-apps/assistant-driving-mode https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/media-apps/assist...
- vidanay 5y agoNot to mention Google Maps gives you about 1/2" x 1/2" of actual map - the rest of your screen is full of other junk.
- pkulak 5y agoAnd two of the streets on the screen are named!
- Nicksil 5y ago>And two of the streets on the screen are named! Man, I thought I was going nuts. For a pretty long time now I've just been dumbfounded when no or seemingly arbitrary street names are rendered (usually when I zoom in; when it counts). This happens for all sorts of streets, regardless of their significance. It's slightly insane this still occurs.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoThat still occurs, and shows no signs of changing. It seems to be a purposeful decision. And this very aspect is what makes Google Maps not a proper map. It's optimized for point-to-point navigation, where you know the place you want to get to.
- 5y ago
- jozen 5y agoChrome's history UI is also super terrible, why are we not able to search by date? When entries in history have date metadata available?
- zacharycohn 5y agoThis would be fine if Google Drive/Docs search wasn't unusably bad
- joshstrange 5y agoCame here to say the same thing. I thought it was a well-known "meme" that Google Docs/Drive search was trash which is hilarious (or would be if I didn't have to use it for important stuff) coming from a search company.
- robszumski 5y agoThis has always been a head scratcher to me. Google knows the frequency of doc access, it knows roughly who is on what team in my org, and which docs get spread widely. They should be able to knock this out of the park...
- fungiblecog 5y agoThis is just the MVP culture we now have where only the very basics are implemented and nothing more. Whereas a computer used to be a power tool to maximise human capability, modern devices are now designed to subvert the user’s desires for the benefit of mega-corp by making users helpless.
- UI_at_80x24 5y agoCould we use this as a place to suggest alternatives to Google Maps? I have tried OpenStreetMaps (albeit 5+years ago) and couldn't search for an address. So if that's improved I'd like to know. I don't need/want "find X near me" or fluff like "what restaurant's are open right now?". All I want is navigation between current location and target address.
- TchoBeer 5y agoI use Google maps for navigation between locations and it works great, not sure what your problem with it is, but if you want an alternate Waze works better imo.
- sp332 5y agoI like Waze too, but just wanted to point out that they are also owned by Ggogle.
- TchoBeer 5y agoI don't think GP's beef with Maps is that it's owned by Google, though I could be wrong.
- UI_at_80x24 5y agoMy biggest complaint about Google Maps is the UI. Street names are difficult to read, the scale of how-far-away an upcoming turn is always off. Contrast could use improvements too. There is also a lot of clutter. These are traits that have all gotten worse over the years. I'd prefer the UI of the first-gen Google Maps then what we have today. I have no complaints about the actual navigation, there has been quirks over the years but nothing that stands out in my mind.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoThe parent wants a map, which Google Maps currently isn't much of.
- sp332 5y ago
- ChrisArchitect 5y agoad for a bookmark manager? Does anyone have an idea about the userbase of Bookmarks? Maybe it's actually reallllllly low and this isn't worth anyone but power users' time.
- antognini 5y agoOne thing to note is that the bookmark manager the article describes is Chrome's bookmark manager rather than Google Bookmarks, which, remarkably, is still around given Google's penchant for killing products that don't work out. It looks almost the same as when it launched in 2005. The "Gooooogle" links at the bottom, for example, still use the old serif logo. https://www.google.com/bookmarks/ https://www.google.com/bookmarks/
- topicseed 5y agoOh wow, thanks. I found what I'm going to spend my evening cleaning :)
- woah 5y agoI'm not a fan of Google, or their UIs, but describing this as a "dark pattern" is ridiculous.
- zackbloom 5y agoThe person writing this is confusing their personal opinion for objective UX fact. It is commonly accepted that only highly organized users use features like tags. The vast majority of people simply don't. Rather than jumping to the conclusion that this is hostile it's possible Chrome and Docs just have a wider user-base than this particular author.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoPeople will very much use organizing features if you provide them. Whether it's groups for icons, folders for files, labels for e-mails, tags and colors for documents, or drawers for socks - most people seem to recognize that being organized is a virtue, and will attempt it to the extent it is possible and convenient. Not giving features for self-organization is a choice.
- version_five 5y agoDo you have some basis for these assertions? Personally I agree with the GP but it's personal anecdata only. I would never consider using tags (or a sock drawer) and in my experience working with others with collaboration tools that use tags, there might be one person who is keen in them but they are never widely used. I think this backs up the GPs point that yes, some may find it useful, but it's not necessarily a "must have" that the majority are looking for, or even would use if it was splashed in their faces.
- ethbr0 5y agoYou don't backlink your socks to color family and iconography? Heathen!
- mountainb 5y agoBookmarks are shit for a variety of reasons. Far better to archive pages with images or PDFs. Link rot is so pervasive that just maintaining bookmarks is a waste of time. Tagging, sorting, and annotating files on storage you control is far more reliable. Google is just trying to help users realize that the web is a bad source for organized information. Google sells expensive clicks to personal injury lawyers off of titanic spam plantations of SEO content —- their mission is orthogonal to the organization of information.
- twhb 5y agoI’ve noticed the inverse: when I replaced the Chrome new tab page with a custom .html file, I suddenly found myself using Google Search much less, using Google URL suggestions much less, and syncing less data to Google servers. The difference between a useless new tab page and a decent one had a real impact on my habits. Similarly, when I switched from Google Maps to Apple Maps, the favorites UI was enough better that I started using it more and relying on search less. There’s definitely a pattern of Google underperforming in ways that make you fall back on Google Search, sending Google data, and viewing Google ads.
- rednalexa 5y agoWhat did you replace your tab homepage with? Anything in particular to call out?
- twhb 5y agoI wrote my own local .html file, in a local unpackaged extension for Chrome to accept it. It was just four columns of links with favicons and multiple headings per column, and inline inputs to quickly search different sites, and modifier-less keyboard shortcuts like “h” so that you could hit Ctrl-T H to go to HN. The trick, if you can call it that, was that the layout was clear enough that you could pick between 30-50 options in a second or two once you’re used to it. I considered polishing it for publication, but I think that what made it so good for me is I made it specific to my needs. Besides, I’m off Chrome now, and they fixed the bug I was using to steal focus from the URL bar to make shortcuts work.
- rednalexa 5y agoCool, I think I understand what you mean - sounds like a neat experience. I didn't know that was possible. Thanks for the explanation!
- tomaszs 5y agoThe same goes for Google Photos. Instead of providing folders and other organisational features known for human kind for thousands of years, Google removes them. But not only to use search for pleasure. It is also to train their neural networks maybe? We have to become compulsive hoarders, to train a bot that will help us find things, we could put in the right place in the first place.
- fauigerzigerk 5y agoI have always been wondering why searching in bookmarks doesn't search the linked pages. It seems such an obvious feature for a company that makes both a search engine and a browser.
- rchaves 5y agoRight? I’ve built an extension exactly to do that, index and search on content. I bookmark many things and never organize it, so search is a must
- sethammons 5y agoI want a personal search engine that considers images, docs, and websites I've been to. "Shit, I was reading something about write ahead logs; where was that..." or "there was a funny picture of a guy with a bar of soap I saw 6mo ago that I want to share now."
- kristopolous 5y agoLong time ago I made a proxy service that did that (2004 or so). The idea was that it logged everything you visited and then you could search your own logs. I used it for a few years but sadly nobody else really did. I think I actually wrote it in C of all things. It optionally worked in combination with a browser plugin that did a tree view that showed a true navigation history (one site could have many children). So you could find the site and the context and the time you saw it and trace back the multi-path journey you took. I have no idea where the code is. Probably some old cvs repo somewhere. Wouldn't be of much use now since everything is https. Back then my inability to log https was the "method" to make sure that I didn't log anything sensitive such as banking details because only that stuff was in https at the time.
- z3t4 5y agoAn idea I've had for a while is to store each bookmark's text content for text search, and automatically update the text once a week, and then make a p2p network for searching.
- k_bx 5y agoI always wondered why could you not add a note to someone else’s email in gmail to make it searchable. Would allow you to make gmail UI even simpler and in vein with article's claims too.
- amf12 5y agoYou can. If you open the email, there is a "note" icon in the right sidebar. If you create a new note it tags the email to the note. But this may not be exactly what you want.
- benhurmarcel 5y agoThis is one of the features introduced by hey.com that I wish would get copied by others.
- rchaves 5y agoI’m honestly very okay with this “search-first” mentality the author claims Google promotes. I’ve never organized my photos anymore thanks to Google Photos amazing search, no more time wasted organizing windows media player albums like in the old times thanks to Spotify, I never organize my notes on Notes app but can always find old stuff, my Google Drive is a bit more organized but still I basically go by recent items or search all the time I think we are just so overwhelmed with information nowadays it’s impossible to keep organizing it, why not let machines just find what we want? Now I do agree that browsers search on bookmarks sucks, and I like a lot to bookmark everything so I can find it later, building my own personal index, to solve that I built an extension that crawls my bookmarks and allows me to search better on them later (it’s called Cataloger if you are interested)
- wruza 5y agoNice, but please tell how am I supposed to search for bookmarks I made in japanese section of xvideos? we are just so overwhelmed with information nowadays it’s impossible to keep organizing it, why not let machines just find what we want whenever we need them Then you don’t need bookmarks. You bookmark for a reason, and one of these is that you may not remember exact wording and use other cues like when you did it, what was around, how it looked like on a thumbnail.
- dillondoyle 5y agoLOL. I have a possible solution. I basically add tags when bookmarking and categorize distinct 'tastes' by adding typed keywords into the bookmark text. Though that's an argument that standard search alone isn't enough.
- rchaves 5y ago> one of these is that you may not remember exact wording that’s exactly the reason to have a good search, I usually always remember a word or at least the general idea of what the thing I’m trying to find was about, a good enough search like Google understand meaning, even if I don’t use the exact words > please tell how am I supposed to search for bookmarks I made in japanese section of xvideos? I don’t know, how does xvideos or YouTube does it? You do the same, but with a very limited corpus of just your bookmarks it will be way easier
- jokull 5y agoNo. Google is just shit at design.
- GuB-42 5y agoI have always been in the "search" camp. Even on my local hard drive, grep and locate are my tools of choice. So, no need for Google to prefer a search-based approach. In fact, I will gladly give up all my organization tools for better search, and that's why I am happy with Google's way. I actually dislike most of their UI decisions, like I hate most of the modern web/electon app design, not just Google's. But search-over-organization, love it. I wouldn't call it a dark pattern, just not a pattern suitable for the author. I would like to say, go find something else, Google is about search and has always been, but unfortunately, the options are limited. Maybe because Google is so successful, most of the other big names go search-first, but do it poorly. They don't search as well as Google, and don't have good organization tools.