4 ms·
The major differentiating factor that Google has had in every product category is that their products are free and you have to deal with ads (and they monitor y
by danudey 4mo ago
The major differentiating factor that Google has had in every product category is that their products are free and you have to deal with ads (and they monitor your behavior for profiling you and your interests).
GMail and Google Maps were revolutionary when they came out, sure, but the vast majority of Google's products now are... fine? at best? And a lot of their "big products" were acquisitions that they absorbed in order to further the core goal of the business - to organize all the world's information and use it to serve ads to people.
Meanwhile, Google has a litany of products they've started internally, launched, ran for a while, and then let stagnate or canned entirely; anecdotally I've heard that this is because your bonuses at Google hinge on your ability to launch a product and not your ability to support a product, so it's beneficial to get something launched and then immediately leave to go launch another project rather than polish the one you just launched into something to be proud of.
I'm not sure if that's true, but it would certainly explain a lot; if Google launches something and it's bad or it doesn't click, they just give up on it. Google Wave, a half-dozen chat apps that I can think of, Stadia, and dozens of others. Things that Google launched, which had problems or didn't hit mass adoption instantly, and then just petered out and were retired with all of the time and energy and money put into them arguably wasted - products that people wanted, and wanted to succeed, but which weren't revolutionary successes at launch so they weren't worth further investment.
Meanwhile, they (and most of the industry) are pushing AI for some reason despite the fact that almost no one actually wants AI to be the only way that people interact with information.
This all reinforces what I've been saying about Google for decades: they're not creating things that users want to use, they're creating things that they want users to use. Sometimes those things align, but when they don't then it's not worth further investment (except, apparently, AI).
- harrall 4mo agoI just don’t think your opinion is shared by most people. Gmail is the most popular email service in the world, people are always telling me how they prefer Google Docs over everything else and their only competition is Microsoft. Yes it’s free but there is no other service that I rather switch to, and I actually pay for additional storage.
- phs318u 4mo agoBy any definition of good usability, Gmail is not good and Google Docs are not far behind. It’s not that they are functionally bad, just really poor UX.
- andybak 4mo agoThat's hyperbole. They have flaws, but at the very least, when they were launched, they were arguably best in class. I'm not sure how much me sticking with them is due to familiarity and muscle memory but I know they won we over purely on merit in the beginning.
- phs318u 4mo agoAs someone who was an original invitee to Gmail it was the clarity of function that was the differentiator. They were “grown up” and acknowledged user agency vs their competitors. But as others have mentioned, they operating model of Google as a company incentivises creating products but does not incentivise refining it. Gmail has gotten far richer in functionality but at the same time the interface has gotten far less consistent. Their competitors (mainly Microsoft but not only them) also got richer functionality, but they also paid attention to UX. While none are perfect, there are definitely some better than others. Familiarity definitely breeds inertia though, I’ll grant that.
- skydhash 4mo agoYou can’t beat free. The Fastmail web interface is snappier than gmail. And you can’t beat dedicated mail clients like thunderbolt in terms of workflow. Google doc is wordpad level with very good collaboration (but that’s mostly what people need). People were fine with typewriters, so they are fine with a word processor like google doc. But it’s not at the level of even Libreoffice or Apple’s page in terms of features.
- soco 4mo agoWe probably talk to different sets of people, as I don't even know anybody who ever used Google Docs.
- wvenable 4mo ago> GMail and Google Maps were revolutionary when they came out, sure, but the vast majority of Google's products now are... fine? at best? Is that... good? I mean take maps -- what more can possibly be done to that product that wouldn't just make it worse? It's done. The fact that's the default choice for mapping and just works is fantastic really. There aren't any competitors doing anything revolutionary either because there isn't anything revolutionary to be done.
- bmurphy1976 4mo agoMaps is far from done. At the very least it's still riddled with usability issues. One bug-bear I have in particular: when I zoom into a very specifically chosen area, search for a Chinese restaurant, and it zooms out to half the state. Maddening. And it's rife with problems like this.
- no-name-here 4mo agoI’ve never experienced that issue - which platform/what location? I just tested and I was unable to replicate that issue.
- sakex 4mo agoI worked at google for 3 years and can confirm what you've heard. Obviously, every org is somewhat different.