As an ex fanboy (or fanboy lite) who has circled into hater section of recent, I can give you MY reasoning.
For starters theres the whole "we're not evil", and slowly becoming evil with obsessive data mining. But it's a huge company, so only strike 1.
They haven't released any useful innovation in my eyes, despite hoarding all the smartest people. Strike 2.
And the biggest strike to me is the significant decrease in product quality that I use. My google searches suck now, maps has become bloated with ads, and I don't even know what happened to messenger, but its pretty unusable for my friends and I that even the ones that work at google now text. Maybe a lot of this is the fault of companies aggressively marketing irrelevant things to get clicks, but to me, it's a platform problem. Strike 3, I'm a hater.
Me too. I was all in on Google services, owned a Nexus 4, 5, 6P, Pixel, Pixel 3. Even a couple Nexus 7's, and a Chromebook. I was into rooting and custom ROMs, I got people to use Hangouts, I had a Google Play Music subscription, I backed up all my pictures to Google Photos (still do that one), I was learning Android Development and had an app published, etc.
But after so many years of being jostled around and seeing every product I liked and used destroyed and brought back as something worse, I had to get off the train eventually. Google has no long-term plans. They only know how to ruin things that were once good. Android isn't the fun, open mobile OS it once was. It got more locked down with each update and became a cheap imitation of iOS. So eventually I just bought an iPhone. I went through so many messaging apps and renamings and relaunches of various products and services.
At some point you realize Google has no respect for their customers and no interest in making products that are nice to use. They only want to optimize people's attention so they can turn it into ad revenue. I celebrate their failures now, in hopes it'll one day shake something up enough that they'll have to try giving a shit for once.
I had your experience, except when I finally traded in my android for a iPhone I felt like a FOOL. It was so much better on every level. Just fantastic, polished and near perfect in every way. It was light years ahead and I realized that I had Google ecosystem Stockholm syndrome.
Mainly because of wasted potential, in my case. They revolutionized the internet (repeatedly) with a great product and found a reasonably unobtrusive method to monetize it, then moved into creating replacements for Microsoft products (browser, calendar, email, documents) and I thought they would then pivot into cloud as a good competitor to AWS, whilst also spending their copious profits on long-term scientific research projects and helping bring ML advances to the larger community.
It's even worse for me because I worked there for over a decade, was successful beyond my wildest dreams, helped leadership build and launch products, produced papers and intellectual property with my computing heros, and finally, couldn't really work in any of the parts of the company it made sense to, because of gatekeepers and assholes, and repeatedly had to explain to my managers how everything they were asking for (to make the VPs happy) were making Google's products worse. What's really sad is that there is a technical core of people there I truly enjoyed working with and learning from, and few of them get to do the stuff they know would help google, and instead spend most of their time fighting bureaucracy to get even the simplest changes pushed.
I think it stems for their beginning. The Google search page was innovative, in showing that you didn't need to be flashy, just good at what you do. The same for Gmail, which was an awesome product and completely changed how people use email. Even the original Google ads where viewed extremely favorable, as it showed that you could make money on ads, without them being obnoxious.
Google was, for a long time, viewed as the answer to everything that was wrong with search, emails, ads, office work and much more. Rather than changing the world, Google adopted all the things we had hoped they'd save us from, just so they could make more money.
That being said, I just ignore anything coming from Google these days. The only two Google products I use are Google Maps and YouTube. Oh, three maybe as I do like Go.
I remember the first time I saw someone mention Google. It was just so obviously better than what came before. That's rare. Most improvements on technology have to prove themselves over time and slowly build a following. Google was so amazing it grew to IPO through the .com crash and the early 2000s recession. For a time, everything they launched was gold. No one seemed to notice or care that everything was still "beta" years after sweeping each market.
They turned evil when they started putting ads inline with search results. The main utility of that is to trick unsophisticated or unwary users, so basically they're preying on the elderly (among others), but it made the line go up and to the right, so they don't care.
Plus any company with a core business model of "being a super-creepy stalker... but at scale and with an eternal memory" is inherently terrible and shouldn't exist.
They have/had incredible potential. Imagine what a company with Google's resources could do. They have simultaneously the sharpest minds on the planet and a vast treasure chest of unprecedented proportions at their disposal.
What do they do? They invent ever more insidious ways of extract more money from advertising. Yes there are plenty of side shows and feel good projects, but everything is drowned out by systematically abusive behavior in the ad business and a seeming inability to deliver any other product and keep it functioning.
It feels like a terrible misallocation of resources. Maybe it isn't, but it certainly feels like it.
I am not a fanboy, have never been a fanboy and never cared about the "do no evil" marketing motto or any other Google crap. I am bitter against Google because it plainly sucks. Their products suck, they have "soft monopolies" and they have used them to Embrace Extend and Extinguish any alternatives. They are what Microsoft was in the 1990s-2000s. If you are young enough to remember the 90s and 00s Microsoft you will understand.
Note that I not only hate Google, I hate Google, Apple, Facebook and the current state of the web. I guess that makes me an old fart.
Because they started out good ("dont be evil" and all), providing an exceptional yet fundamental internet service but somewhere along the way they lost the plot. They now hoard enormous wealth by shoving ads to our faces yet have done nothing with the money. Not to mention their engineering culture goes directly against the spirit of this site (rest'n vest vs startup's hustle culture). They're the hero turned villain all start ups fear they'll become
They have by far the most awful customer service of any big tech company. One or two experiences of dealing with issues (in my case Google Fi) turns you into a life long hater.
It’s not just Google, but the cause for embarrassment at other formerly prestigious places is different and not relevant.
I used to dream of working on the Windows experience, but I can’t imagine how awful those roles must be. And having to tell someone I had a hand in creating the Windows 11 UI cluster**. I think I’d rather say I work at Oracle.
You're not gonna get me to defend Google at all, but I'm really sick of hearing this parroted over and over because
1. It's not true. Read the [1]code of conduct, it's right there at the bottom: "And remember... don’t be evil"
2. Who cares if they say the words "don't be evil?" The actions are more important than a cute phrase. If they sent Google Ad Bots to every house in America and forced you to sit through 30 second ads every morning or else they shoot you, would you say "well at least the code of conduct says 'don't be evil'!"?
