This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I've maintained this idea for a while as well. It's really only after Pichai took over that Google and Android both have started scrapping useful programs/apps/services, made needless change to make products worse, and in general just haven't really innovated much at all. At least when compared to how the company was run when Larry Page and Erik Schmidt were running the company.
This dude has made Google boring.
I also have the impression that google jumped on the feature treadmill that microsoft is on. Working with Google ads + analytics in 2016 was a pleasant experience, it was fairly simple and it worked. I could easily maintain it as a side project next to my main job, but a few years later and it had become a feature treadmill where all new features seemed to have 3 goals in common: waste my time by making me migrate settings to basically end up with the same end result, make the product more convoluted to use + milk more money per customer. Add to that, that facebook campaigns were both easier to run and resulted in more good leads for us and it doesn't look good for Google.
Enshittify👏Enshittify👏Enshittify👏Enshittify👏
I wonder if this correlates with my recent desires to de-Google my life. I'm steadily growing less happy about daily using their services and them holding all my info.
I'm open to suggestions for cloud photo storage/management on par with Google Photos if anyone has some. I'm looking into FOSS but would rather pay for the service in the long run. These days I'm too busy to learn to be an effective server admin and keep up with the technology.
Proton, has email, cloud storage and VPN services.
I'll second Proton. It sucks to have to pay for services again to have something that matches the generous free shit that we got before... but seems those wild west days of the internet, unless you were grandfathered on or have to give up a lot of info in return... are now long gone.
If you're not paying for a service, then you're the product. I never understood the expectation that people should just provide you email and storage for free, because?
This saying is actually horseshit, though. The profit motive and infinite growth model of capitalism guarantees that even if you are paying for a product, your data and attention — everything that can be — will be monetized eventually.
The saying should be "if the service isn't open-source and E2E encrypted, you're the product"
It should be noted, though, that the "if you aren't paying, you're the product" mantra isn't always true. FOSS exists.
And I know that seems obvious to anybody reading this on Lemmy, but I've had people refuse to use good open source software because they fundamentally refuse to trust something being provided to them for free.
You can also feel good about supporting Proton. They are literally bootstrapped as a service and only rely on what we pay them. They never took any money from vc or other sources.
If you have more than one person who should/would/could move over to Proton, they have a family plan and every so often they bring back their visionary plan which is a better version of the family.
Self hosted immich is by far the closest. It has many if the same features but all runs locally
Me too, trying to figure out what I'm gonna do about Gmail.
Lots of people here say Proton, but I'd also consider selfhosting my email on either a home server or the cloud, whichever meets my criteria for redundancy to stay online vs cost
I hear self-hosting email is a really complicated thing if you want it secure and all that. I never tried, just hearsay.
The only problem with self-hosting is that big coorps like google or microsoft will put you on their spam list, so your e-mails will land in the spam folder when you send emails to gmail or outlook addresses. Other than that it's not a huge hassle as stuff like https://mailcow.email/ or mailu or mail-in-a-box exist.
I agree. It's time Sundar hits retirement and they put someone more visionary at the top.
Google has become seriously stale.
I was just remembering how back in 2010 on my iPhone 4S I could receive a text message while driving and tell Siri to read it to me, with no internet connection. And it would, and I could reply by Siri as well
But my current Android phone (I love Android it's really great overall) cannot do that if I don't have an internet connection!
Why??? Why haven't they baked certain basic offline capabilities into Assistant and only need internet for search queries? Makes no sense but it's one of those small indicators that Sundar is not paying attention.
Because they use every reason to bring you online asap. Only then they can get as much data as they want. For example your location, no matter if via GPS or nearby Wifis.
This is consumer abuse for profit and should be regulated, but our country is run by oligarchs that pay the politicians so this is never happening.
And I swear to god, when they released the pixel 6, they said Assistant could do things much faster and without an Internet connection because all the processing for certain tasks (like language recognition, timers and sending messages) was all done on-board.
What the hell happened to that? Assistant has felt slower than ever for everything and more unhelpful every day
Ai summary of the article if you don't wanna click the link:
A recent poll found that 76% of respondents agreed that Google CEO Sundar Pichai is comparable to Steve Ballmer, who led Microsoft during a period of decline. Both men took over from revolutionary founders as business managers focused on profits rather than innovation. However, under Pichai's leadership, Google has lost its dominance in areas like search and AI, with competitors like OpenAI making strides. Many argue Google search has become cluttered with irrelevant results, while former employees say visionary leadership is lacking. There is a sense that Pichai's Google is no longer the innovative company it was and risks losing further ground to emerging technologies if it does not recapture its start-up spirit.
Good bot. I will say Google never had public dominance in AI products, only research.
Sundar is less entertaining though.
Sundar is ballmer with less cocaine
And less sweat
And less mass
And less of my axe
And more hair
It does feel like Google is on a nosedive with all its major products except for Gmail.
Gmail is no exception.
Maybe not but I haven't noticed any worse change at all.
I'm an Apple user, for the most part, and I've noticed lately that in the last 6-12 months Google Maps has deteriorated significantly for me while Apple Maps has gotten better and better. Even things you'd think would be similar, e.g. satellite imagery, for my area Google's imagery is now a half-decade out of date while Apple's is current.
It really does feel like most of Google's consumer-facing products are languishing.
Google Maps has gotten worse and worse.
It's now actively bloating a map with random businesses, making it difficult to use. And worse, it's obscuring random businesses from search. I noticed it a while back if I googled "Chinese food", a few places aren't showing unless I zoom in really really close. And these are places with 100+ reviews.
Yeah it's started inserting "totally not advertisements" like "take a left in 300 feet, past the McDonald's". More enshittification.
Five years ago, I would have said, "Nah, they can throw money at it and make it better. So we should stay."
But now, Google has a massive history of giving up and killing products. Devs and open source are making comparable alternatives. The general public is turning on even Google Search. And even my own job is considering Google alternatives.
The next five years are going to be anybody's game.
Using Google products is starting to feel like watching season 1 of a Netflix produced show - I don't want to invest energy into something that'll just get cancelled.
I still have an existential crisis whenever im faced with the decision of giving out my google voice number vs my normal one.
It's the same for many tech CEO's. Arguably, Apple hasn't had a hit under Tim Cook, although I'd say he's definitely the most successful of the FAANG leaders. Andy Jassy's legacy at Amazon is 18 months of rolling layoffs, missing the boat on AI despite having the most popular consumer AI product in Alexa, and forcing millions into an office in some of the cruelest methods possible. Sundar is much of the same, but including mass enshitification of basically every successful Google product, from YouTube to Search, all while also fucking up severely with AI, RTO, and layoffs. To make things worse, he's turned the most exciting tech company into just another boomer tech company like IBM.
The pandemic has shown that once the visionaries have left, the current crop of CEO's in tech are just really not good at their jobs. Their sole role is to keep shareholders happy, and that's it. As a shareholder, that should probably make you think twice about putting money into legacy tech, and maybe looking outwards to see what those that were laid off have managed to do elsewhere.
None of the CEOs you’ve mentioned have changed before or after the pandemic except AMZN.
I think it’s unfair to say Tim Cook hasn’t had a hit. They started the watch line up, AirPods, the M series chips are some solid products and revenue streams. Also while he may not be a “visionary” I think he is done a mighty fine job of making AAPL one the best brands to exist.
The economic climate changed since the pandemic and the cards dealt now are a bit difficult compared to the low 0% interest rate times.
All I’m saying is, I disagree with your opinion by adding my two cents, but to each their own :)
Couldn't agree more. I went from a Google fan boy to a Google skeptic during his reign.
Same, I completed my de-google process last year.
Does he "love this company!" tho?
A.I.! A.I.! A.I.! A.I.! A.I.! A.I.! A.I.! A.I.! A.I.! A.I.! A.I.! A.I.! A.I.! A.I.!
The thought that comes to mind for me is that all of the tech companies are in a heavy cycle of stock/investor profit mode. It seems like every major company is just pumping the bottom line for stock gains.
I know that can lead to R&D money and advances, but I'm only really seeing that with M$ buying (I mean partnering) ChatGPT for their CoPilot to be the next big thing for Office/Microsoft 365.
What has Apple done new lately? iPhones just get better specs right?
Google, being the subject of the article, they do seem like they're getting their butts kicked trying to compete with OpenAI.
Broadcom buys VMware (which wasn't really doing anything wildly new IMO lately), openly plans to milk it for profit, and has been pretty honest about not giving a shit about customers, until their latest post where they are trying to speak against the obvious aforementioned 'not-giving-a-shit'
Who else?
Any major innovations lately not coming to my mind, or all just bottom line pumping?
