Roboto is Google's Arial. It's the result of intellectual property licensing. It's pointless comparing Google to Apple here. Apple has learnt that it's more i

Roboto is Google's Arial. It's the result of intellectual property licensing. It's pointless comparing Google to Apple here. Apple has learnt that it's more important to license fonts from the legitimate IP holders instead of generating dupes that are just different enough to avoid a damages case. Even when creating custom typefaces based on existing fonts, Apple have engaged the original IP holder to create the font (see Apple Garamond.) Roboto a chimera of existing popular typefaces and the problem with that is that it's a poorly assembled "frankenfont", the borrowed sections are obvious and poorly connected, this creates an inconsistent aesthetic. Namely a shitty typeface. However, just like Arial, everyday users don't, and won't care - there is no point fussing over it, the only thing this shows is that Google hires lame design agencies, and is perhaps not as thoughtful as championed. The problem with Hacker News is that there is a demongraphic of two faced users who gush over their preferred tech companies, while scorning others. Note here that Microsoft did similar with Windows 7 and the dialogue was far different to what I'm reading today.