Edit: wrote this when pissed that I missed an exit adding 20 min to my drive. Maybe too harsh, but gonna leave the rest unedited. Maps recenter button seems like an edge case bug — see thread below. Google products keep getting significantly worse over time. Who are the incompetent engineers who keep fucking up perfectly good products? Is change for the sake of change rewarded over having a stable, quality product that people can depend on? 3 cases I’ve encountered: 1. Google Image Search - I can no longer search for images above a certain resolution or are exactly a certain size. Super useful for finding wallpapers for multi monitor setups. Bing still has this feature. Why was it removed? 2. Google Maps - Recenter button during navigation was removed. Some weird incantation of taps is required to recenter the view on your icon. Really dangerous since I need to fiddle with my phone while driving to figure out where I need to turn. Routefinding algo offers too many spurious routes even when there is no traffic. For example, it will suggest right/left/right instead of 1 right turn on a street grid. Really annoying — isn’t shortest path an undergrad CS problem? Am using apple maps now. Seems like tortoise and hare story — google thought they were so far ahead they stopped caring about the product only for Apple to surpass them. 3. Fitbit - Used to have a charge 2 (released before Google acquired fb). Never had a single issue using it over 4 different android/iOS phones. Long battery life, always synced. Got quite beat up, so I bought a charge 5 (latest model, 3 yrs after acquisition by Google). UI is extremely unresponsive and confusing. Tracker will not sync with the app for days on end. Fitbit app UI seems to purposely obfuscate any useful information (why do I have to click on my profile to change device settings???). Multiple features removed from device settings (i.e. sync frequency). Ridiculous that a much newer product sucks so bad. Prolly gonna buy Xiaomi next time (idc if Xi can see my heartrate and read texts from my mom, at least I’ll have something that works). #google
:(
I’m mostly confused by gmail. I get at least one spam email per day that gets past spam filters, sometimes to my primary box, with ridiculous subject lines that shouldn’t have made it through. So weird.
They’re too busy getting massages, drinking lattes, and complaining on Blind about being burned out. Bunch of 🤡
Recenter button is still there what are you talking about?
Why are all products from Meta is worthless?
Most of our products are leisure products rather than “consumer tooling” (i.e. social media isn’t critical to getting you home safely, monitoring health etc.). This affords more room for experimentation. This is like saying Football stadiums are useless compared to apartment towers. You may have a point, but they wouldn’t build them if they didn’t make money.
Okay did you shut down metaverse? Probably won’t need a football stadium.
+100000 on Google Maps being shit these days. GPS not showing the right spot I'm at, lagging during navigation (2 blocks behind in giving directions), giving WRONG directions, route chosen not optimal, and don't have the option to CHANGE to the optimal route while driving Android Auto mode...... list goes on...... Not to mention multiple UI issues like centering, etc. Slightly lower bandwidth network means half the map and locations details don't load.... On top of this, Google search is getting shittier by the day. Pixel have so many issues software and hardware. All the products I used to love.... It's as if you can see Google dying in real time with the shittier and shittier updates lately.......
No one gets promoted maintaining an existing product.
I'd say Pixel's one of the only things getting better. But yeah they need to fix the hardware rel issues for sure, but overall they've made big strides. The ear buds are legit good. Watch was kind of a joke. Why they keep wanting to keep Fitbit separate is beyond me. Just adds to their incoherent and disjointed brand strategy. Search was getting really really shitty but recently it's started to improve. Let's see if they can keep it up. Nest and Home app it's taking them 10yrs to combine the apps?! Wtf. Youtube needs to bring dislikes back, let you block channels, and search and sort videos by date. Gmail I don't understand why threading causes the most recent email to show up in the middle. And don't get me started on customer support for anything.
Meanwhile Microsoft products have always been bad.
Don’t be mean all those “features “ saved google 83738 SWE/Year and are someone’s promo 😂
Idea: get promo by unlanding these diffs and reintroducing the features.
I’m sure there is someone working on that