Re:Google delays phasing out ad cookies on Chrome until 2024
by kmeisthax on Wednesday July 27, 2022 @11:42PM
(#32260251)
I have a pet theory for this: it pisses off the Open Source Tea Party.
So, one of the problems with power users is that they not only demand weirdly specific features, but that they all want different features from one another. And they will be very loud about how that particular feature is critical to their workflow. So the net effect is that they overcomplicate software.
Let's say you're a developer and you want to uncomplicate your software. How do you do that? Well, yeah, you could cut features, hide them in a junk-drawer menu, or redesign your UI to guide people to the most common options. But here's the problem: how do you know what the common options even are?
Telemetry.
You put in something in your software that counts up how many times users actually use each feature, and then it pings your server with the counts. You count how many active installations there are and bam, you get the data you need.
Then you release your fancy new redesign only to get assaulted with all sorts of abuse that could only be charitably described as "negative criticism". Oh my god, how could they have removed the "heat CPU when spacebar is pressed" feature!? They have telemetry, don't they know how many times I hit the spacebar?! Everyone else is just happy the app no longer flattens their battery, but the power users shout over them.
If you're a power user, telemetry has zero upside for you. Why the hell would you want the 7zip developers to know that you're the only person who has ever used the "Compress directory and e-mail" shell extension? You don't want the software to be easier to use! You already know how to use it, and screw anyone else who doesn't!
"Professional" software runs the risk of accumulating garbage in their designs and interfaces for exactly this reason. This goes for everything from Photoshop to git to MySQL.
(And yes, there's totally an inverse of this where the developer rounds off all the edges to the point where the software is more useful as a practical demonstration of gaslighting than an actual app.)
So, one of the problems with power users is that they not only demand weirdly specific features, but that they all want different features from one another. And they will be very loud about how that particular feature is critical to their workflow. So the net effect is that they overcomplicate software.
Let's say you're a developer and you want to uncomplicate your software. How do you do that? Well, yeah, you could cut features, hide them in a junk-drawer menu, or redesign your UI to guide people to the most common options. But here's the problem: how do you know what the common options even are?
Telemetry.
You put in something in your software that counts up how many times users actually use each feature, and then it pings your server with the counts. You count how many active installations there are and bam, you get the data you need.
Then you release your fancy new redesign only to get assaulted with all sorts of abuse that could only be charitably described as "negative criticism". Oh my god, how could they have removed the "heat CPU when spacebar is pressed" feature!? They have telemetry, don't they know how many times I hit the spacebar?! Everyone else is just happy the app no longer flattens their battery, but the power users shout over them.
If you're a power user, telemetry has zero upside for you. Why the hell would you want the 7zip developers to know that you're the only person who has ever used the "Compress directory and e-mail" shell extension? You don't want the software to be easier to use! You already know how to use it, and screw anyone else who doesn't!
"Professional" software runs the risk of accumulating garbage in their designs and interfaces for exactly this reason. This goes for everything from Photoshop to git to MySQL.
(And yes, there's totally an inverse of this where the developer rounds off all the edges to the point where the software is more useful as a practical demonstration of gaslighting than an actual app.)