3 ms·

I disagree. Google's search engine was orders of magnitude ahead of everyone else's when it came out. Like it actually worked vs all the others that did some me

I disagree. Google's search engine was orders of magnitude ahead of everyone else's when it came out. Like it actually worked vs all the others that did some mediocre keyword matching and could be moderately useful if you were good with boolean operators. Gmail, which another poster described, was also mind blowing at the time. Google Maps, and the fact that you could scroll across a map smoothly was mind blowing at the time, and really redefined what was possible with xml http request, and "web 2.0" These are the biggest that come to mind and its somewhat telling that Google Maps was the latest, and I believe launched in 2005 or 2006. There were lots of other products that were less impressive, but definitely a step ahed of just about everyone out there- google finance, the "office" suite- do kids in school even install MS Office anymore? It used to be a defacto must have piece of software, I haven't had it on a personal machine in years now... And a lot of stuff that looked like it was going to be something very big, but died on the vine. Google Voice, Google Reader, Google Image search come to mind here. Then from a pure tech side of things, Go, Kubernetes, Node.js, the early hadoop and "big data" tools, all came from Google as well. But maybe getting back to your point, their backend stuff has not really turned into an "astonishing" user facing product in quite some time.

great_psy 4y ago
Google earth was super cool when it came out. Being able to spin a globe, find our house, visit any place in the world. Maybe it was less useful compare to maps, but definitely more fun.
- kevstev 4y ago
  Yeah I had forgotten until after I submitted that earth was an entirely separate project. There was a lot of other cool stuff. I remembered and tried to use linux.google.com a few weeks ago and found out it's no longer a thing. Also Google labs, I remember playing with their set tool all the time. You add a few items of a set, and it added more. Ie 4-5 grunge bands and it will spit out 10 more. I will say though more recently, when I first got in a car with Android Auto I was like I will never be able to live without this again. It may sound silly but just the fact that the time synced with my phone I was like take my money. Even more recently the call screen feature on the pixel 6 and 7 was just pure surprise and delight. I finally feel like I am the boss of my phone again. Google lens and translate are actually quite impressive but kind of niche use cases. There were a lot of little things, Google desktop which was pretty cool for awhile and it kind of fulfilled what MS was trying to do with it's "Active Desktop." My point being that maybe everyone (including myself) is a little harsh but google is still building interesting things. The pace seems to have slowed down though and they aren't leaps ahead of the pack anymore.

great_psy 4y ago

Google earth was super cool when it came out. Being able to spin a globe, find our house, visit any place in the world. Maybe it was less useful compare to maps, but definitely more fun.

kevstev 4y ago
Yeah I had forgotten until after I submitted that earth was an entirely separate project. There was a lot of other cool stuff. I remembered and tried to use linux.google.com a few weeks ago and found out it's no longer a thing. Also Google labs, I remember playing with their set tool all the time. You add a few items of a set, and it added more. Ie 4-5 grunge bands and it will spit out 10 more. I will say though more recently, when I first got in a car with Android Auto I was like I will never be able to live without this again. It may sound silly but just the fact that the time synced with my phone I was like take my money. Even more recently the call screen feature on the pixel 6 and 7 was just pure surprise and delight. I finally feel like I am the boss of my phone again. Google lens and translate are actually quite impressive but kind of niche use cases. There were a lot of little things, Google desktop which was pretty cool for awhile and it kind of fulfilled what MS was trying to do with it's "Active Desktop." My point being that maybe everyone (including myself) is a little harsh but google is still building interesting things. The pace seems to have slowed down though and they aren't leaps ahead of the pack anymore.