6 ms·

And in my experience Google products have gotten significantly better and more polished in the last few years. Goes to show that their products aren't getting w

by turing 13y ago

And in my experience Google products have gotten significantly better and more polished in the last few years. Goes to show that their products aren't getting worse, just shifting in focus and priority.

wtvanhest 13y ago
Which products specifically have gotten better?
- ChrisClark 13y ago
  It's all subjective but I love the new Gmail interfaces, Hangouts is much better than Talk and keeps getting better. Google+ photos is so much better than Picasa, I love how I can search for 'blue cars' in my photos and it returns them even though I've never tagged any of them. Android has seen enormous improvements, I love stock 4.3 and Google Now. Chrome's new 'native' apps wrapper-like thing is neat. Even Youtube has improved a little bit, they've got a nice nifty ajax loader bar up top instead of refreshing the entire page when you go to another video. But I guess with a different perspective, someone could argue how they don't like any of those changes. But for me, I love them.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    The Hangouts experience on Android is an abomination. Its why I disabled (yes, fully disabled) Hangouts and switched to Whatsapp. Its that bad.
    - gabriele 13y ago
      I double that. It's slow, clunky and unnecessarily heavy. That's why most of my contacts have already switched to other platforms. Talk for Android 4, that added support for multiple accounts, was just good enough.
    - Keyframe 13y ago
      At least you have hangouts. </wp>
      - JTon 13y ago
        Yes, agreed </BB10>
  - patrickk 13y ago
    I'm using a poor internet connection (because of geography) and my experience is that the usability of Youtube has gone down dramatically. They made a change a while back where the video will only buffer a few seconds beyond where you've paused it. Previously, you could go a few seconds into the video, pause it, and let it buffer 100% in whatever quality you needed, now I find myself having to constantly pause the video to let it load. One workaround I was forced to use is TaperMonkey Chrome addon with a script that adds a download link underneath the Youtube video in Chrome. I download the video and watch it offline in perfect quality.
    - lnanek2 13y ago
      Ah, I was wondering why I kept leaving videos in tabs to buffer nowadays and they just never did it any more. Very sad day. ;/ Sucks for someone on a mobile connection 99% of the time like me.
      - cma 13y ago
        They've announced offline viewing for android recently which should help
    - Semaphor 13y ago
      YouTube Center [1] allows you to disable Dash [2]. I had the same problem and worse, before I could autoplay 720p video but with Dash that didn't work. [1] https://github.com/YePpHa/YouTubeCenter/wiki https://github.com/YePpHa/YouTubeCenter/wiki [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over_HTTP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over...
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      The continuing problems with buffering on youtube have caused me to resort to youtube-dl/mplayer.
      - tedunangst 13y ago
        Your comment about maps is dead, fyi. No idea why. I agree.
- Semaphor 13y ago
  Android and the play store. The DFP API (their only API I'm using)
  - orblivion 13y ago
    Oh man, quite some room for disagreement. In my opinion Android's UI is a complete joke. Maybe they're doing their research after all.
    - Semaphor 13y ago
      > Oh man, quite some room for disagreement. Yeah, even the rather homogeneous group of HN readers seems to have very different opinions of what got better and what got worse :) But with Android I was talking features. The UI is not bad but (without ever having used Win mobile) MS seems to have the better UI. And Apple the worst (again, without having used them).
- damon_c 13y ago
  Google places API makes my customers happy!
- MarkMc 13y ago
  Search. Seriously. For many queries Google search is now better than Wikipedia. For example, Google 'Tom Cruise' and the right-hand side of the results page has an almost perfect summary of the actor: A great selection of photos, a concise biography, a clickable list of his popular movies and other actors related to him. This is the sort of thing that makes Google search far better than the competition for most people.
jwcooper 13y ago
Some products have improved, and some have gotten worse (losing Exchange on Gmail, Reader, Google Talk, Google Checkout) and some haven't changed in years (Google Finance). I use a lot of Google services, and it's frustrating when they keep removing features, or killing off products that I use daily. It's gotten to the point where I'd rather pay for a service now and be the customer rather than signing up for another Google product.
- dman 13y ago
  Google should just shut the google finance android app down. Its so bad its embarassing. Adding arbitrary securities (some foreign adrs in the cases I have found) will prevent any portfolios from being displayed at all. When you open the app and hit update it will update the portfolios and show a notification that portfolios updated but the portfolios themselves will never appear anywhere in the UI.
  - aetherson 13y ago
    God. I have two different google accounts linked to my android devices -- my work address and my personal one. And Google Finance just Can Not Cope with that. Every time I open it, it prompts me (again) to choose (again) the only account I've ever used for Finance. And then, having chosen my account, it promptly makes all of my stocks disappear. THANKS FINANCE. So then I background and foreground and refresh a few time and it says, "Oh, okay, maybe I'll list your stocks for you." As its postscript, if you click on your stock, you get a list of articles about that stock! Helpful! Those articles are webpages. So if you click on the article that's actually a link to the webpage, in a Google app, it will open the webpage in the other Google app that's designed for opening webpages, ie Chrome, right? WRONG. What you wanted was a crippled web browser inside the Finance app, right?
- icefox 13y ago
  Google finance is one of those apps that seems to just work, but if you try to actually use it you keep hitting bugs. My latest bug is that it thinks UUU should redirect to UUU.TO I keep end up going and using yahoo finance for quick things, what about you guys?

by turing 13y ago

wtvanhest 13y ago

Which products specifically have gotten better?

ChrisClark 13y ago
It's all subjective but I love the new Gmail interfaces, Hangouts is much better than Talk and keeps getting better. Google+ photos is so much better than Picasa, I love how I can search for 'blue cars' in my photos and it returns them even though I've never tagged any of them. Android has seen enormous improvements, I love stock 4.3 and Google Now. Chrome's new 'native' apps wrapper-like thing is neat. Even Youtube has improved a little bit, they've got a nice nifty ajax loader bar up top instead of refreshing the entire page when you go to another video. But I guess with a different perspective, someone could argue how they don't like any of those changes. But for me, I love them.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  The Hangouts experience on Android is an abomination. Its why I disabled (yes, fully disabled) Hangouts and switched to Whatsapp. Its that bad.
  - gabriele 13y ago
    I double that. It's slow, clunky and unnecessarily heavy. That's why most of my contacts have already switched to other platforms. Talk for Android 4, that added support for multiple accounts, was just good enough.
  - Keyframe 13y ago
    At least you have hangouts. </wp>
    - JTon 13y ago
      Yes, agreed </BB10>
- patrickk 13y ago
  I'm using a poor internet connection (because of geography) and my experience is that the usability of Youtube has gone down dramatically. They made a change a while back where the video will only buffer a few seconds beyond where you've paused it. Previously, you could go a few seconds into the video, pause it, and let it buffer 100% in whatever quality you needed, now I find myself having to constantly pause the video to let it load. One workaround I was forced to use is TaperMonkey Chrome addon with a script that adds a download link underneath the Youtube video in Chrome. I download the video and watch it offline in perfect quality.
  - lnanek2 13y ago
    Ah, I was wondering why I kept leaving videos in tabs to buffer nowadays and they just never did it any more. Very sad day. ;/ Sucks for someone on a mobile connection 99% of the time like me.
    - cma 13y ago
      They've announced offline viewing for android recently which should help
  - Semaphor 13y ago
    YouTube Center [1] allows you to disable Dash [2]. I had the same problem and worse, before I could autoplay 720p video but with Dash that didn't work. [1] https://github.com/YePpHa/YouTubeCenter/wiki https://github.com/YePpHa/YouTubeCenter/wiki [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over_HTTP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over...
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    The continuing problems with buffering on youtube have caused me to resort to youtube-dl/mplayer.
    - tedunangst 13y ago
      Your comment about maps is dead, fyi. No idea why. I agree.
Semaphor 13y ago
Android and the play store. The DFP API (their only API I'm using)
- orblivion 13y ago
  Oh man, quite some room for disagreement. In my opinion Android's UI is a complete joke. Maybe they're doing their research after all.
  - Semaphor 13y ago
    > Oh man, quite some room for disagreement. Yeah, even the rather homogeneous group of HN readers seems to have very different opinions of what got better and what got worse :) But with Android I was talking features. The UI is not bad but (without ever having used Win mobile) MS seems to have the better UI. And Apple the worst (again, without having used them).
damon_c 13y ago
Google places API makes my customers happy!
MarkMc 13y ago
Search. Seriously. For many queries Google search is now better than Wikipedia. For example, Google 'Tom Cruise' and the right-hand side of the results page has an almost perfect summary of the actor: A great selection of photos, a concise biography, a clickable list of his popular movies and other actors related to him. This is the sort of thing that makes Google search far better than the competition for most people.

jwcooper 13y ago

Some products have improved, and some have gotten worse (losing Exchange on Gmail, Reader, Google Talk, Google Checkout) and some haven't changed in years (Google Finance). I use a lot of Google services, and it's frustrating when they keep removing features, or killing off products that I use daily. It's gotten to the point where I'd rather pay for a service now and be the customer rather than signing up for another Google product.

dman 13y ago
Google should just shut the google finance android app down. Its so bad its embarassing. Adding arbitrary securities (some foreign adrs in the cases I have found) will prevent any portfolios from being displayed at all. When you open the app and hit update it will update the portfolios and show a notification that portfolios updated but the portfolios themselves will never appear anywhere in the UI.
- aetherson 13y ago
  God. I have two different google accounts linked to my android devices -- my work address and my personal one. And Google Finance just Can Not Cope with that. Every time I open it, it prompts me (again) to choose (again) the only account I've ever used for Finance. And then, having chosen my account, it promptly makes all of my stocks disappear. THANKS FINANCE. So then I background and foreground and refresh a few time and it says, "Oh, okay, maybe I'll list your stocks for you." As its postscript, if you click on your stock, you get a list of articles about that stock! Helpful! Those articles are webpages. So if you click on the article that's actually a link to the webpage, in a Google app, it will open the webpage in the other Google app that's designed for opening webpages, ie Chrome, right? WRONG. What you wanted was a crippled web browser inside the Finance app, right?
icefox 13y ago
Google finance is one of those apps that seems to just work, but if you try to actually use it you keep hitting bugs. My latest bug is that it thinks UUU should redirect to UUU.TO I keep end up going and using yahoo finance for quick things, what about you guys?