4 ms·

There is a strong trend of anti-Google stories, not just on HN, but all over the web. Why? Is it just trendy to dislike Google? What are the alternatives to Go

by fumar 13y ago

There is a strong trend of anti-Google stories, not just on HN, but all over the web. Why? Is it just trendy to dislike Google? What are the alternatives to Google services? I am curious, I am not ready to dump Google, but I have been diversifying the services I use. Started using Outlook and Skydrive.

yeukhon 13y ago
Outlook interface is the worst. I have been using it because my school is using it. Every two months or so I see new frontend changes. The style/font/color jesus christ. No. Just no. As much as I dislike some of the recent changes in the gmail interface, overall Gmail is still quite usable. And if one doesn't trust Gmail then why would one trust Outlook or Yahoo Mail? The one thing I complain the most about GDrive is only one account is allowed to log in and use google drive. I just don't understand why Google engineers haven't fix this issue.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- JacobSkyler 13y ago
  >Outlook interface is the worst. I haven't had an issue with it, and I've been using Outlook.com pretty much since it came out. Before then I was using the Windows Live Mail desktop client and before then I was using Gmail.
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    It's all subjective, frontend stuff. But it's ugly. Really ugly. The font, the color scheme, default all effing ugly. A bug I encounter is when I click on an unread email, and if I then refresh the page the email is still mark unread, unless I read that email and hover to another email. Th
    - danishabdullah 13y ago
      Weird, I have never encountered this bug and I have been on outlook.com since the beta days. Perhaps, you temporarily had bad connectivity? Also, I will have to disagree on the design part. I find outlook.com refreshing. For me, that's just about right. Minimal, if any, bells and whistles.
  - JelteF 13y ago
    The thing that made my day when I saw someone using it was him actually editing the placeholder in the search bar (by bug). It didn't use the placeholder attribute, just some autoselect. This is something that reeks of bad design overall. disclaimer I have not used outlook and my opinion is based on this one thing and some other quick looks over the shoulder.
ryanhuff 13y ago
There are likely many motives, with some being opportunistic. My read is that a lion share of the discourse is rooted in Google attempting to redefine its relationship with users (unified id), when users are happy with the status quo. YouTube is what brought it out of the shadows. Google can justify the move as being good for users, but I strongly suspect that, in most cases, this agenda is not supportive of the value proposition that the individual properties offer its users. I suspect that Google knows this, but their goals are not consistent with that of most of these users. In other words, Google is willing to take a hit from angry users in exchange for building a unified user network.
bluthru 13y ago
I don't want to support the biggest advertiser on the web anymore. Google has become too big for me to be comfortable with them. An open and diverse web flourishes with competition and anonymity. Right now you can search for a video with Google search, watch it on Google YouTube, watch some Google ads preroll, all on your Google Nexus, powered by Google Android, connected to Google Fiber. Google is AOL's wet dream.
tmallen 13y ago
Google services remain hugely strong, sometimes it all reeks of the desire to make a story out of nothing, like how a national press will play up some pointless political intrigue.
rdsubhas 13y ago
Its the same case as was with Microsoft. Microsoft forced its users to lock into its ecosystem - by artificially making "Microsoft Product X works only with Microsoft Product Y". And they also had this practice of bundling some software for free, destroying all competition, and then pricing for it. Now, Google isn't that bad yet, but they're slowly on their path. Recent "YouTube comments requires G+", "Hangouts in GMail requires G+" are examples of those. And as with the past against Microsoft, the same sentiments are now being replayed.
cLeEOGPw 13y ago
I am changing from gmail mainly because of privacy considerations. Other people arguments also include g+ profile enforcement and negative UI changes, which I both agree with, but it were not the reasons I am changing. Also many are generally against companies growing too big.
netcan 13y ago
I think it's somewhat of a disillusionment, like a boss you thought was a friend turning out to be just a normal boss. Google had such a great reputation. Don't Be Evil. 'Unintrusive text links'. Effective advertising for small businesses. Free stuff. Empowering with information. Free webapps. 20% time. Nice to employees etc. etc. Over time several things have happened. We got used to some of the good things about Google and made them our baseline expectation. They got used to all that income and growth. To keep up growth they had to "optimize" and in many cases put profit before aesthetics/ethics. The "unintrusive text links" for high value searches got bigger and more intrusive. 'Contextual links' in Gmail became contextual to your digital life (eg scanning your emails and analyzing your browsing). You need a lot of goodwill believe 'Don't be evil.' From an average company it sounds phony. A lot if stuff has a tipping point. So when a free service gets shut down or rolled into another service its seen as putting profit first, herding users into profitable products or just generally sucking. Before it might have been seen as failing fast. When they ask users for a phone number now, they react with cynicism. Google started with a lot of goodwill. Perhaps too high. People react emotionally when you don't live up to perceived promises. Maybe there is a lesson here about over promising.
- gnaffle 13y ago
  I think they started off with that goodwill because they actually delivered on their promises. Lots of contributions to Open Source, Summer of Code etc. So there was this hope that this would be the Good Engineering Company that would make the Right Decisions. Maybe the best example was how they shut down their China operation instead of caving to pressure like many others did. In a way, I feel that Google has lost what they "were about". If Google overpromised anything, it was that they were the "open internet company". In many ways, that and "don't be evil" was what defined them.
  - bsdetector 13y ago
    > Lots of contributions to Open Source, Summer of Code etc. Which is funny because these things were a smoke screen from day 1. Google is a past master at doing things for themselves, but throwing in a token benefit for everybody else so they look like the good guys. Summer of Code was primarily a recruiting tool for Google, not a contribution to open source. They spent 0.06% of profit on Summer of Code, and in exchange got access to some great developers and got a mostly-unpaid trial period to evaluate them. That's a HR recruiting gold mine. Despite their entire operation running on Linux, most years they contributed so little back to the kernel that they didn't even show up on most rankings -- and adjusted for corp size they were barely a footnote. It's only recently that they have started to contribute anything substantial to Linux. One of their largest contribution to Linux is cloning all the GPL code into BSD code so it can be sold for profit. Sure Google has done a few good things for Open Source, but far far less than one should expect.
gnaffle 13y ago
No, it's not just "trendy", there are some legitimate reasons to dislike them. Just like many people have reasons to dislike Apple or Microsoft even though they also make some great stuff. Google has done a lot to shoot itself in the foot regarding goodwill in the developer community, even though they still contribute a lot to open source. They killed off Reader and a lot of other products, has closed down many open APIs, so instead of enthusiasm when they launch a new product, now they get "oh yeah, how long is this product going to live?" They are now forcing every service and pushing their users into Google+ whether they want to or not. It seems like Social is something Google is obsessed with winning, and they are happy to alienate some users in order to do that.
walshemj 13y ago
Not sure if Microsoft are doing this in the USA but in the UK they are running TV adds for outlook.com with the USP as we dont read your email :-)

by fumar 13y ago

yeukhon 13y ago

Outlook interface is the worst. I have been using it because my school is using it. Every two months or so I see new frontend changes. The style/font/color jesus christ. No. Just no. As much as I dislike some of the recent changes in the gmail interface, overall Gmail is still quite usable. And if one doesn't trust Gmail then why would one trust Outlook or Yahoo Mail? The one thing I complain the most about GDrive is only one account is allowed to log in and use google drive. I just don't understand why Google engineers haven't fix this issue.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
JacobSkyler 13y ago
>Outlook interface is the worst. I haven't had an issue with it, and I've been using Outlook.com pretty much since it came out. Before then I was using the Windows Live Mail desktop client and before then I was using Gmail.
- yeukhon 13y ago
  It's all subjective, frontend stuff. But it's ugly. Really ugly. The font, the color scheme, default all effing ugly. A bug I encounter is when I click on an unread email, and if I then refresh the page the email is still mark unread, unless I read that email and hover to another email. Th
  - danishabdullah 13y ago
    Weird, I have never encountered this bug and I have been on outlook.com since the beta days. Perhaps, you temporarily had bad connectivity? Also, I will have to disagree on the design part. I find outlook.com refreshing. For me, that's just about right. Minimal, if any, bells and whistles.
- JelteF 13y ago
  The thing that made my day when I saw someone using it was him actually editing the placeholder in the search bar (by bug). It didn't use the placeholder attribute, just some autoselect. This is something that reeks of bad design overall. disclaimer I have not used outlook and my opinion is based on this one thing and some other quick looks over the shoulder.

ryanhuff 13y ago

There are likely many motives, with some being opportunistic. My read is that a lion share of the discourse is rooted in Google attempting to redefine its relationship with users (unified id), when users are happy with the status quo. YouTube is what brought it out of the shadows. Google can justify the move as being good for users, but I strongly suspect that, in most cases, this agenda is not supportive of the value proposition that the individual properties offer its users. I suspect that Google knows this, but their goals are not consistent with that of most of these users. In other words, Google is willing to take a hit from angry users in exchange for building a unified user network.

bluthru 13y ago

I don't want to support the biggest advertiser on the web anymore. Google has become too big for me to be comfortable with them. An open and diverse web flourishes with competition and anonymity. Right now you can search for a video with Google search, watch it on Google YouTube, watch some Google ads preroll, all on your Google Nexus, powered by Google Android, connected to Google Fiber. Google is AOL's wet dream.

tmallen 13y ago

Google services remain hugely strong, sometimes it all reeks of the desire to make a story out of nothing, like how a national press will play up some pointless political intrigue.

rdsubhas 13y ago

Its the same case as was with Microsoft. Microsoft forced its users to lock into its ecosystem - by artificially making "Microsoft Product X works only with Microsoft Product Y". And they also had this practice of bundling some software for free, destroying all competition, and then pricing for it. Now, Google isn't that bad yet, but they're slowly on their path. Recent "YouTube comments requires G+", "Hangouts in GMail requires G+" are examples of those. And as with the past against Microsoft, the same sentiments are now being replayed.

cLeEOGPw 13y ago

I am changing from gmail mainly because of privacy considerations. Other people arguments also include g+ profile enforcement and negative UI changes, which I both agree with, but it were not the reasons I am changing. Also many are generally against companies growing too big.

netcan 13y ago

I think it's somewhat of a disillusionment, like a boss you thought was a friend turning out to be just a normal boss. Google had such a great reputation. Don't Be Evil. 'Unintrusive text links'. Effective advertising for small businesses. Free stuff. Empowering with information. Free webapps. 20% time. Nice to employees etc. etc. Over time several things have happened. We got used to some of the good things about Google and made them our baseline expectation. They got used to all that income and growth. To keep up growth they had to "optimize" and in many cases put profit before aesthetics/ethics. The "unintrusive text links" for high value searches got bigger and more intrusive. 'Contextual links' in Gmail became contextual to your digital life (eg scanning your emails and analyzing your browsing). You need a lot of goodwill believe 'Don't be evil.' From an average company it sounds phony. A lot if stuff has a tipping point. So when a free service gets shut down or rolled into another service its seen as putting profit first, herding users into profitable products or just generally sucking. Before it might have been seen as failing fast. When they ask users for a phone number now, they react with cynicism. Google started with a lot of goodwill. Perhaps too high. People react emotionally when you don't live up to perceived promises. Maybe there is a lesson here about over promising.

gnaffle 13y ago
I think they started off with that goodwill because they actually delivered on their promises. Lots of contributions to Open Source, Summer of Code etc. So there was this hope that this would be the Good Engineering Company that would make the Right Decisions. Maybe the best example was how they shut down their China operation instead of caving to pressure like many others did. In a way, I feel that Google has lost what they "were about". If Google overpromised anything, it was that they were the "open internet company". In many ways, that and "don't be evil" was what defined them.
- bsdetector 13y ago
  > Lots of contributions to Open Source, Summer of Code etc. Which is funny because these things were a smoke screen from day 1. Google is a past master at doing things for themselves, but throwing in a token benefit for everybody else so they look like the good guys. Summer of Code was primarily a recruiting tool for Google, not a contribution to open source. They spent 0.06% of profit on Summer of Code, and in exchange got access to some great developers and got a mostly-unpaid trial period to evaluate them. That's a HR recruiting gold mine. Despite their entire operation running on Linux, most years they contributed so little back to the kernel that they didn't even show up on most rankings -- and adjusted for corp size they were barely a footnote. It's only recently that they have started to contribute anything substantial to Linux. One of their largest contribution to Linux is cloning all the GPL code into BSD code so it can be sold for profit. Sure Google has done a few good things for Open Source, but far far less than one should expect.

gnaffle 13y ago

No, it's not just "trendy", there are some legitimate reasons to dislike them. Just like many people have reasons to dislike Apple or Microsoft even though they also make some great stuff. Google has done a lot to shoot itself in the foot regarding goodwill in the developer community, even though they still contribute a lot to open source. They killed off Reader and a lot of other products, has closed down many open APIs, so instead of enthusiasm when they launch a new product, now they get "oh yeah, how long is this product going to live?" They are now forcing every service and pushing their users into Google+ whether they want to or not. It seems like Social is something Google is obsessed with winning, and they are happy to alienate some users in order to do that.

walshemj 13y ago

Not sure if Microsoft are doing this in the USA but in the UK they are running TV adds for outlook.com with the USP as we dont read your email :-)