this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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Asshole Design

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Nothing comes before profit -- especially not the consumer.

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[–] [email protected] 192 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's really that simple for much of their products. I really don't understand why people still insist on using chrome, in particular. Google is a horrible company that would literally sell you into slavery if it was legal and they thought it'd boost their ad business somehow.

[–] Sabre363 32 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Part of the problem is that Google has an entire ecosystem that is ridiculously useful and is designed to hook people and keep them around. And once they're hooked it's really hard to move away from, even if it's in their best interest.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unfortunately, parts of that ecosystem start deteriorating as they slowly abandon the product, until it reaches a point of being borderline useless. Then, they just deactivate it with little to no warning. Sometimes they just shut things down even if they're popular (such as Google Poly).

For example, their line of home security cameras are getting worse in quality and usefulness. I feel like it's only a matter of time until the Nest service shuts down.

[–] Captainvaqina 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think Google will shut down nest anytime soon. They gather very useful telemetry about their "customers" and use that data to train models, and ah-hoc send your front door video to law enforcement whenever they want it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Perhaps, but there is absolutely no development or bug fixing happening on their software. There hasn't been a software update in years, and the hardware has been a crapshoot for just as long.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Everyone says Apple's walled garden is a problem.

Google built something far more insidious. higher walls but glass, no garden just a swamp of ads.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Google has lots of problems but "a walled garden" it absolutely is not.

There's an open source version of Android with hundreds of forks.

There's an open source version of Chrome with dozens of forks.

You can install literally any APK you want on Android without any workaround shitfuckery, rooting or jailbreaking.

All Google apps are available on iOS and MacOS.

People use Google products because, from a pure user standpoint, they're a compelling option.

You can sign up for a Google Workspace account and have virtually everything you need to run a business at a compelling price. And it all works quite well.

None of that means they aren't using their domination nefariously but it sure as shit is not a walled garden.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This reads like a Google ad. I know you're not a Google marketing shill. They don't need it. Their users will justify their own choice to the point their literally lose the scope of the thread.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Not so much a Google ad as it is shitting on Apple

[–] Sabre363 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They are all part of the same walled shit hole disguised in a veneer of shiny new products and empty promises.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sure. It's just funny to watch people pick Google because Apple is bad.

At least Apple isn't selling every price of your data to advertisers.

Apple hatred is mostly people who have never used it.

Everyone has used Google.

Google is inarguably worse but people get religious about it. As long as they can think of one thing Google does better, they will justify the abuse.

Sort of like republican voters.

[–] Sabre363 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Apple is almost certainly selling your data, perhaps not to same extent as Google, but personal data is literally these companies biggest commodity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yep. That's the justification I was talking about.

People have a blindness to Apple so they let Google take their data.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Eh, I think it’s pretty simple to move away from as there are plenty of ready made alternatives. There are a million different email services, many web browsers, many note taking/saving apps, many other map services, and so on. The only ones there aren’t really replacements for are YouTube and parts of google photos.

Apple and Microsoft for example both have alternatives for everything google has.

[–] Sabre363 1 points 1 year ago

There are certainly a great number of alternative, but the average person doesn't seem to want to put in the effort to switch. Nor do they appear to particularly care about privacy or the prevalence of ads. Google puts a lot of effort into making sure people don't care enough to leave.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Meth is useful for keeping me awake but I still don’t use it