5 ms·

It's a trend I've noticed with other services, notably Drive and Calendar - they no longer innovate, just get a UI tweak every few years. It's very reminiscent

by l0b0 5y ago

It's a trend I've noticed with other services, notably Drive and Calendar - they no longer innovate, just get a UI tweak every few years. It's very reminiscent of cash cows, which typically are resourced to just keep going at minimal expense for as long as possible. Another possibility is that the product isn't "sexy" anymore, so they are having trouble finding the great staff they need to stay at the forefront. This would be fine if the rest of the world stood still, but clearly SEO has moved on in the meantime, and so we end up with a quagmire. It's basically another form of bit rot. Unfortunately DDG is much worse in a different way - it seems incapable of dealing with synonyms. I can't recall a specific example since I switched back to Google, but it's on the order of searching for Python and getting results for Java (wrong subtree of the taxonomy), searching for Wellington and getting results for the whole of New Zealand (ignoring specifiers), or searching for double glazed windows and getting results for Microsoft Windows (no understanding of the semantics of the words being related).

sombremesa 5y ago
DDG is also much worse if you Google things like “1 crore inr in usd.”
kyrra 5y ago
Googler, opinions are my own. For products that are core, large UI changes tend to just annoy a lot of users, unless there's something really amazing about the change. Even then, people are hesitant to like new UIs. Engineers and designers definitely want to try new things, but balancing those against messing with UIs that a billion+ people use is hard. My general take on drive and calendar, if they are trying to improve these cases for enterprise users. There's a lot of very non-sexy work going on to make these improvements, and they aren't always visible.
- taftster 5y ago
  It's not "large" UI changes that are needed. (I mean, they are needed, the current google UI for most of their products sucks). But it's small improvements that make the big difference. A small user interface element added or removed to speed up an interaction. An updated user experience so that data can be found or organized in a slightly different way. I could pick on almost everyone of Google's products and have gripes about some UI or UX choice. Missing functionality here, overly complex there, etc. Every product has obvious low hanging fruit that could be improved. That's what parent is referring to (I assume). There's no more micro-innovation happening. If it's not a change that makes 100 bazallion dollars, then it's just not a change worth doing, apparently.
  - sulam 5y ago
    I don’t think it’s that per se, for instance Meet has been innovating in small ways to the point where I believe it’s way better than Zoom. But not all Google tools are innovating at the same rate.
  - zestyping 5y ago
    Every product has obvious low-hanging fruit that could be improved in the UX — yet the company persists in spending effort on sweeping yet entirely cosmetic changes that deliver zero value. A good example is changing the typeface of text labels in every product to match the new Google logo, which Google seem to have been continuously doing for years on end now. I would argue this even has negative value, as it creates a mix of two typefaces (Roboto and Product Sans) in every product that used to have one, which causes every future UI design decision to be saddled with the extra cost of deciding which of the two to use.
  - robtherobber 5y ago
    One such example is the ability to copy my own email address. Gmail makes it so damn difficult it's mind-boggling. Whenever I try to copy my email address other elements are included in the selection, right-click is disabled and probably other annoying things happen: https://i.imgur.com/Ds0ROuT.png https://i.imgur.com/Ds0ROuT.png Protonmail understood this and catered to this need without much fuss: https://i.imgur.com/1ZhWOsC.png https://i.imgur.com/1ZhWOsC.png
- kfrzcode 5y ago
  Calendar is great; but I wish it would let me edit an event the same way I can quick-enter one; from a pop-up. I'm half-inclined to write a browser ext to do it. Also the latest updates to Sheets in the menubars have been welcome
- ikiris 5y ago
  Plus it's more fun to make a new chat / meet or payment app. Apparently.
  - freebreakfast 5y ago
    I'm sure a marketing firm specifically tailored to such startups looking for a quick exit would be rather profitable.
- l0b0 5y ago
  I don't think it came across the way I intended, because I am one of those users who don't really care for most large UI changes. It feels like UI designers are the only people in large organisations who are actually allowed to throw old code away. My point was more that non-UI improvements are extremely rare, probably because they are both difficult to get right and not "sexy" in the sense of being nicely demo-able to less technically savvy managers.
- hffftz 5y ago
IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
Please. No. The stuff just works. From the experience of having several critical business SaaS tools go thru constant UX changes that disrespect the user and make the product less stable, I'm actually glad Google still have some respect for the user. That's why i will gladly buy gsuite for the businesses i provide advice to, yet actively considering replacements of core business infra of which im a power user....for several years. Its hard to keep something running with no bugs, or downtime. Its even harder to change something, and keep it bug free, and with no downtime.
- resonious 5y ago
  I think innovation != backwards-incompatible UX changes. There's quite a lot that Excel can do that GSuite can't, for instance. There's probably room for additional features that don't affect current workflows.
  - Aperocky 5y ago
    You're right, however there are spots where the tools/products have just the 'right amount' of features. e.g. grep, vim.
    - l0b0 5y ago
      Those are both massively bloated in terms of features, IMO. One curse of most open source projects is that features are almost never removed, even when they are obsolete, dangerous or plain stupid.
- l0b0 5y ago
  Oh, I don't want them to "innovate" like they've done elsewhere, just that they need to continue actually improving their services. I've had lots of interoperability, standards compliance and currency conversion issues with their services and practices, such as that time when I spend something like a year getting false promises from their support about being able to pay them in a different currency from the one with which I'd set up the account. In the end they exhausted the grace period for payment, and just shut down access to my account. Luckily by then I'd shopped around and found (to my surprise) a cheaper alternative which I'm still using.

by l0b0 5y ago

sombremesa 5y ago

DDG is also much worse if you Google things like “1 crore inr in usd.”

kyrra 5y ago

Googler, opinions are my own. For products that are core, large UI changes tend to just annoy a lot of users, unless there's something really amazing about the change. Even then, people are hesitant to like new UIs. Engineers and designers definitely want to try new things, but balancing those against messing with UIs that a billion+ people use is hard. My general take on drive and calendar, if they are trying to improve these cases for enterprise users. There's a lot of very non-sexy work going on to make these improvements, and they aren't always visible.

taftster 5y ago
It's not "large" UI changes that are needed. (I mean, they are needed, the current google UI for most of their products sucks). But it's small improvements that make the big difference. A small user interface element added or removed to speed up an interaction. An updated user experience so that data can be found or organized in a slightly different way. I could pick on almost everyone of Google's products and have gripes about some UI or UX choice. Missing functionality here, overly complex there, etc. Every product has obvious low hanging fruit that could be improved. That's what parent is referring to (I assume). There's no more micro-innovation happening. If it's not a change that makes 100 bazallion dollars, then it's just not a change worth doing, apparently.
- sulam 5y ago
  I don’t think it’s that per se, for instance Meet has been innovating in small ways to the point where I believe it’s way better than Zoom. But not all Google tools are innovating at the same rate.
- zestyping 5y ago
  Every product has obvious low-hanging fruit that could be improved in the UX — yet the company persists in spending effort on sweeping yet entirely cosmetic changes that deliver zero value. A good example is changing the typeface of text labels in every product to match the new Google logo, which Google seem to have been continuously doing for years on end now. I would argue this even has negative value, as it creates a mix of two typefaces (Roboto and Product Sans) in every product that used to have one, which causes every future UI design decision to be saddled with the extra cost of deciding which of the two to use.
- robtherobber 5y ago
  One such example is the ability to copy my own email address. Gmail makes it so damn difficult it's mind-boggling. Whenever I try to copy my email address other elements are included in the selection, right-click is disabled and probably other annoying things happen: https://i.imgur.com/Ds0ROuT.png https://i.imgur.com/Ds0ROuT.png Protonmail understood this and catered to this need without much fuss: https://i.imgur.com/1ZhWOsC.png https://i.imgur.com/1ZhWOsC.png
kfrzcode 5y ago
Calendar is great; but I wish it would let me edit an event the same way I can quick-enter one; from a pop-up. I'm half-inclined to write a browser ext to do it. Also the latest updates to Sheets in the menubars have been welcome
ikiris 5y ago
Plus it's more fun to make a new chat / meet or payment app. Apparently.
- freebreakfast 5y ago
  I'm sure a marketing firm specifically tailored to such startups looking for a quick exit would be rather profitable.
l0b0 5y ago
I don't think it came across the way I intended, because I am one of those users who don't really care for most large UI changes. It feels like UI designers are the only people in large organisations who are actually allowed to throw old code away. My point was more that non-UI improvements are extremely rare, probably because they are both difficult to get right and not "sexy" in the sense of being nicely demo-able to less technically savvy managers.
hffftz 5y ago

IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago

Please. No. The stuff just works. From the experience of having several critical business SaaS tools go thru constant UX changes that disrespect the user and make the product less stable, I'm actually glad Google still have some respect for the user. That's why i will gladly buy gsuite for the businesses i provide advice to, yet actively considering replacements of core business infra of which im a power user....for several years. Its hard to keep something running with no bugs, or downtime. Its even harder to change something, and keep it bug free, and with no downtime.

resonious 5y ago
I think innovation != backwards-incompatible UX changes. There's quite a lot that Excel can do that GSuite can't, for instance. There's probably room for additional features that don't affect current workflows.
- Aperocky 5y ago
  You're right, however there are spots where the tools/products have just the 'right amount' of features. e.g. grep, vim.
  - l0b0 5y ago
    Those are both massively bloated in terms of features, IMO. One curse of most open source projects is that features are almost never removed, even when they are obsolete, dangerous or plain stupid.
l0b0 5y ago
Oh, I don't want them to "innovate" like they've done elsewhere, just that they need to continue actually improving their services. I've had lots of interoperability, standards compliance and currency conversion issues with their services and practices, such as that time when I spend something like a year getting false promises from their support about being able to pay them in a different currency from the one with which I'd set up the account. In the end they exhausted the grace period for payment, and just shut down access to my account. Luckily by then I'd shopped around and found (to my surprise) a cheaper alternative which I'm still using.