4 ms·

For all the hype "AI" gets these days, it's amazing how much things have regressed. My Android phone used to remember where I parked and show it on my Google No

by bilalq 3y ago

For all the hype "AI" gets these days, it's amazing how much things have regressed. My Android phone used to remember where I parked and show it on my Google Now feed and a push notification as I headed out, all without ever asking it to do anything. The travel.google.com site used to show my itineraries without ever adding them there. Hotels, flights, car rentals, and more would be aggregated. Doesn't do that anymore. You used to just be able to search for "my flights" on Google and it'd tell you about you about your upcoming flights.

leros 3y ago
The old Google Now feed was amazing. Showed me where my car is parked. Told me when to leave to arrive places in time. Pulled up my flight details automatically. Now it's just a bunch of click bait articles.
- verelo 3y ago
  It’s almost like google intentionally kills good projects. I still miss Inbox more than anything. The snooze feature on an email was so amazing.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    I miss Inbox too, but Gmail now has snooze functionality built in.
    - throw_nbvc1234 3y ago
      I had to stop using gmail/snooze on my ipad because the snoozes wouldn't be synced with my phone. Seems like such a poor implementation vs inbox.
      - verelo 3y ago
        yeah thats the struggle i had too. Found I'd snooze on my phone but then they're in my desktop.
  - tayloramurphy 3y ago
    I've been using (and paying!) https://simpl.fyi/ https://simpl.fyi/ for a few years now and it makes up for missing inbox for me. It was founded by the design lead for Inbox. Highly recommend if you use a Chromium-based browser.
    - _elf 3y ago
      It works in Firefox and Safari too. I like it a lot and pay for it.
    - rattray 3y ago
      How does it compare to Superhuman? (I use that now)
  - karmasimida 3y ago
    I have the opposite experience with Google Now, it is useless and showing me mostly irrelevant information. It is like that one kid, you know he is trying hard, but he could never make it.
- rezonant 3y ago
  It was fantastic. It's worth noting that Pixel's At a Glance does still tell you when to leave (and you get a notification), but as far as I can tell, the parking features are completely gone. That being said, I no longer have any clue what features exist in Google's ecosystem because their A/B and feature flag rollout system is so fundamentally broken and misused by the product teams that some features literally never arrive for some users until they factory reset their devices, and suddenly they get a fresh set of feature flags. I am still waiting on just about all of the new RCS features Google announced months ago, and just yesterday I spent a bunch of time trying to figure out why my partner's devices never received cross device timers while all of my devices do. That feature was launched in May of last year. My partner does a lot of the cooking, and our kitchen Nest Hub usually handles the timers. But only my phone and tablet receive it's timer status... I say misused above, because it strongly appears that they announce features before completion and then use an extremely shallow rollout to finish the features with the cover of "finding bugs". Is it actually released if the only Google accounts that receive the flags are the dev and product team members? Google, you've perverted a fantastic engineering practice into a broken mess that reduces your user's confidence in your product and breeds confusion that hurts your brand.
  - kccqzy 3y ago
    I have a very similar experience. When I bought an EV I wanted to turn on Google Maps' energy efficient routing feature (announced in 2021 at https://blog.google/products/maps/3-new-ways-navigate-more-sustainably-maps/amp/ https://blog.google/products/maps/3-new-ways-navigate-more-s...) but the setting is simply not present. After an hour of wasted time debugging, I had to uninstall and reinstall the app to get the setting to show up. I personally much prefer Apple's approach where generally features are identified by specific version numbers. If you have the version or newer, you have it. Certainly a bit more difficult to do capacity planning for the backend engineers but absolutely worthwhile for users.
gretch 3y ago
In the past, Google has been criticized for being anticompetitive by integrating too much with itself. Here is an article with complaints about Google travel. https://skift.com/2020/10/20/u-s-antitrust-lawsuit-faults-google-for-abusing-monopoly-power-what-it-could-mean-in-travel/amp/ https://skift.com/2020/10/20/u-s-antitrust-lawsuit-faults-go...
fsmv 3y ago
The new DMA law prevents combining data across products
- progbits 3y ago
  Also, some companies stopped including the essential data in the email itself, eg. eshops won't list the products or tracking numbers directly in the order confirmation email, but only link to their website where gmail can't extract it. I think I've seen some airlines do the same, though most do include a boarding pass attachment.
- 0xcafefood 3y ago
  Does it prevent it? I thought it just required explicit consent from users.
  - fsmv 3y ago
    That's true it's allowed for users to consent to it. I don't know that this is the reason people are noticing less cross over but DMA certainly makes it harder.
- gerash 3y ago
  Really? If so, then Google should only apply it to European users and not the entire world
  - Tyr42 3y ago
    Doing everything two ways is hard and we are a little short staffed atm.
  - vkou 3y ago
    Just like how California is a big enough market that it drove emissions improvements in American cars, Europe is a big enough market that it drives privacy improvements in the world-wide internet.
PopePompus 3y ago
Yes, Siri was initially amazing, but it never improved significantly. Several years ago Google's voice assistant was much better than Siri, but it has degraded enough now that it's roughly on a par with Siri. But however disappointing Google Assistant is now, it's better than it will be tomorrow.
- bogomipz 3y ago
  >"Yes, Siri was initially amazing, but it never improved significantly." I feel like the same can be said for Auto-Correct, also from about the same era. How is it that with all of the edge processing it's still the same old miserable experience? It seemed to me that it actually got worse.
emmelaich 3y ago
So what happened? Google Assistant was pretty cool and a groundbreaker. Then ... nothing happened for years, until ChatGPT gave them a kick. Maybe it was all the kerfuffle about AI ethics that nobbled them for a while.
- lxgr 3y ago
  I wish they'd spend some of that energy on exploring the ethics of neglecting and abandoning products that people spend time and energy on, integrating them into their homes and workflows.
foooorsyth 3y ago
Software has to be maintained. Nobody wants to do maintenance of their own works — it doesn’t look like a new accomplishment in a performance cycle. Nobody wants to inherit maintenance work. Google’s perf cycle directly causes its graveyard issues.
015a 3y ago
I feel its genuinely important to not dismiss this valid observation, and recognize it as actually something that is happening. Its not just Google, and I think Johnathan Blow captures the trend really well in this talk [1]. Both the doomers and e/accs can be wrong. "Today is the worst that AI will be" isn't a foregone conclusion. There aren't many domains of software that haven't degraded in quality, and even functionality, if at least a little bit; and there is no evidence that the same won't happen to AI. Technologists say AGI will happen; but why this happens is really outside the hands of the technologists, somewhat more in the hands of the capitalists, but really outside of anyone's hands and in the capitalist system itself; it can't be stopped. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko
mrtksn 3y ago
Maybe they did A/B testing and found out that it reduces the revenue when it’s populated with everything you need? Maybe you end up using the phone less?

by bilalq 3y ago

leros 3y ago

The old Google Now feed was amazing. Showed me where my car is parked. Told me when to leave to arrive places in time. Pulled up my flight details automatically. Now it's just a bunch of click bait articles.

verelo 3y ago
It’s almost like google intentionally kills good projects. I still miss Inbox more than anything. The snooze feature on an email was so amazing.
- fragmede 3y ago
  I miss Inbox too, but Gmail now has snooze functionality built in.
  - throw_nbvc1234 3y ago
    I had to stop using gmail/snooze on my ipad because the snoozes wouldn't be synced with my phone. Seems like such a poor implementation vs inbox.
    - verelo 3y ago
      yeah thats the struggle i had too. Found I'd snooze on my phone but then they're in my desktop.
- tayloramurphy 3y ago
  I've been using (and paying!) https://simpl.fyi/ https://simpl.fyi/ for a few years now and it makes up for missing inbox for me. It was founded by the design lead for Inbox. Highly recommend if you use a Chromium-based browser.
  - _elf 3y ago
    It works in Firefox and Safari too. I like it a lot and pay for it.
  - rattray 3y ago
    How does it compare to Superhuman? (I use that now)
- karmasimida 3y ago
  I have the opposite experience with Google Now, it is useless and showing me mostly irrelevant information. It is like that one kid, you know he is trying hard, but he could never make it.
rezonant 3y ago
It was fantastic. It's worth noting that Pixel's At a Glance does still tell you when to leave (and you get a notification), but as far as I can tell, the parking features are completely gone. That being said, I no longer have any clue what features exist in Google's ecosystem because their A/B and feature flag rollout system is so fundamentally broken and misused by the product teams that some features literally never arrive for some users until they factory reset their devices, and suddenly they get a fresh set of feature flags. I am still waiting on just about all of the new RCS features Google announced months ago, and just yesterday I spent a bunch of time trying to figure out why my partner's devices never received cross device timers while all of my devices do. That feature was launched in May of last year. My partner does a lot of the cooking, and our kitchen Nest Hub usually handles the timers. But only my phone and tablet receive it's timer status... I say misused above, because it strongly appears that they announce features before completion and then use an extremely shallow rollout to finish the features with the cover of "finding bugs". Is it actually released if the only Google accounts that receive the flags are the dev and product team members? Google, you've perverted a fantastic engineering practice into a broken mess that reduces your user's confidence in your product and breeds confusion that hurts your brand.
- kccqzy 3y ago
  I have a very similar experience. When I bought an EV I wanted to turn on Google Maps' energy efficient routing feature (announced in 2021 at https://blog.google/products/maps/3-new-ways-navigate-more-sustainably-maps/amp/ https://blog.google/products/maps/3-new-ways-navigate-more-s...) but the setting is simply not present. After an hour of wasted time debugging, I had to uninstall and reinstall the app to get the setting to show up. I personally much prefer Apple's approach where generally features are identified by specific version numbers. If you have the version or newer, you have it. Certainly a bit more difficult to do capacity planning for the backend engineers but absolutely worthwhile for users.

gretch 3y ago

In the past, Google has been criticized for being anticompetitive by integrating too much with itself. Here is an article with complaints about Google travel. https://skift.com/2020/10/20/u-s-antitrust-lawsuit-faults-google-for-abusing-monopoly-power-what-it-could-mean-in-travel/amp/ https://skift.com/2020/10/20/u-s-antitrust-lawsuit-faults-go...

fsmv 3y ago

The new DMA law prevents combining data across products

progbits 3y ago
Also, some companies stopped including the essential data in the email itself, eg. eshops won't list the products or tracking numbers directly in the order confirmation email, but only link to their website where gmail can't extract it. I think I've seen some airlines do the same, though most do include a boarding pass attachment.
0xcafefood 3y ago
Does it prevent it? I thought it just required explicit consent from users.
- fsmv 3y ago
  That's true it's allowed for users to consent to it. I don't know that this is the reason people are noticing less cross over but DMA certainly makes it harder.
gerash 3y ago
Really? If so, then Google should only apply it to European users and not the entire world
- Tyr42 3y ago
  Doing everything two ways is hard and we are a little short staffed atm.
- vkou 3y ago
  Just like how California is a big enough market that it drove emissions improvements in American cars, Europe is a big enough market that it drives privacy improvements in the world-wide internet.

PopePompus 3y ago

Yes, Siri was initially amazing, but it never improved significantly. Several years ago Google's voice assistant was much better than Siri, but it has degraded enough now that it's roughly on a par with Siri. But however disappointing Google Assistant is now, it's better than it will be tomorrow.

bogomipz 3y ago
>"Yes, Siri was initially amazing, but it never improved significantly." I feel like the same can be said for Auto-Correct, also from about the same era. How is it that with all of the edge processing it's still the same old miserable experience? It seemed to me that it actually got worse.

emmelaich 3y ago

So what happened? Google Assistant was pretty cool and a groundbreaker. Then ... nothing happened for years, until ChatGPT gave them a kick. Maybe it was all the kerfuffle about AI ethics that nobbled them for a while.

lxgr 3y ago
I wish they'd spend some of that energy on exploring the ethics of neglecting and abandoning products that people spend time and energy on, integrating them into their homes and workflows.

foooorsyth 3y ago

Software has to be maintained. Nobody wants to do maintenance of their own works — it doesn’t look like a new accomplishment in a performance cycle. Nobody wants to inherit maintenance work. Google’s perf cycle directly causes its graveyard issues.

015a 3y ago

I feel its genuinely important to not dismiss this valid observation, and recognize it as actually something that is happening. Its not just Google, and I think Johnathan Blow captures the trend really well in this talk [1]. Both the doomers and e/accs can be wrong. "Today is the worst that AI will be" isn't a foregone conclusion. There aren't many domains of software that haven't degraded in quality, and even functionality, if at least a little bit; and there is no evidence that the same won't happen to AI. Technologists say AGI will happen; but why this happens is really outside the hands of the technologists, somewhat more in the hands of the capitalists, but really outside of anyone's hands and in the capitalist system itself; it can't be stopped. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko

mrtksn 3y ago

Maybe they did A/B testing and found out that it reduces the revenue when it’s populated with everything you need? Maybe you end up using the phone less?