The education space definitely relies on Google (was also big during the pandemic) and the tools are decent.

But I was definitely surprised about the mentions of Chromecast and Youtube TV, particularly YouTube TV. All of the cord cutters I talked to opted for Fubo, Hulu or DirectTV. Good to hear it sees adoption. Is there a marketshare analysis that you're aware of?

Funny, I'm on the other end. I don't know a single person with Fubo or DirectTV and only a few with Hulu for live TV. Pretty much everyone I know has YTTV.

According to this link, YTTV passed Hulu Live to become the largest player in the space in mid 2022 https://nscreenmedia.com/why-youtube-tv-is-the-number-1-vmvp...

Chromecast has somehow become ubiquitous without attracting much attention. I think even among the iPhone and Mac users I know, more of them use Chromecast than Apple TV, since they're so small and cheap. I bought one so I could cast a specific show on a specific trip to visit family, and now my household has one for every TV, for about the same price as a single Apple TV. We always take one with us when we travel.

(disclaimer: anecdata)

I also used to bring a chromecast to connect to hotel TVs, but no longer do. When I stay in a hotel and I see that the TV has a chromecast hooked up to it (or baked into it or whatever), I don't bother even trying to connect to it anymore. The DIAL protocol only allows service discovery on the local network, and in my experience local networks are more or less never configured correctly for it.

The several times I've tried connecting, when the phone fails to discover the TV automatically, the TV offers some kind of pairing code that I can type into the google home app (on ios). Before learning more about DIAL, I had thought that this would enable my phone and TV to connect through some google-managed proxy in the cloud, for just such cases where both the phone and TV can make outgoing connections, but can't open connections to each other for whatever reason.

I can't imagine why there isn't a fallback built into DIAL that lets me scan a QR code on the phone (or have the TV play some audio that the device decodes, if the mobile device doesn't have a camera or for a11y purposes, or whatever) and have both devices communicate through a proxy. Such a proxy would be extremely low bandwidth and would be latency-insensitive, so really really cheap to run. DIAL is predicated on both devices being able to access media URLs, so I think this fallback would only fail in a case where the TV/chromecast can't connect to the internet and is being used to display content from the LAN. This latter case is probably very niche compared to people not being able to connect their devices because of routing issues.

That was my impression too, so I was surprised to read that they are kinda' giving it away by allowing it to be subsumed by Matter. The casting support in Matter will be a mandatory part of the related profile.

But, whatever the explanation, I think this is a good thing.

I agree. I see this as heading back towards something like Miracast, which really birthed Chromecast in the first place.

That said - I'd really like for genuine screen sharing to still exist, outside of the confines of merely opening an app on the device in question and directing it at a specific URL, while sending user input. That's fine for a lot of uses - but is not really a comparable feature set. So far at least - I don't see that in the matter protocol (I've also not spent a ton of time looking - so if someone knows it's there, please point me at it!)

I would also count the following as software successes:

2012 - Google Drive

2017 - Google Meet

> 2012 - Google Drive

The Linux version is lagging a tad: https://abevoelker.github.io/how-long-since-google-said-a-go...

By a huge margin the two biggest Linux clients of Drive are Android and ChromeOS. "Actually linux" is literally 5+ orders of magnitude smaller. Google maintains and updates 99.999% of Linux drive clients every month.

I (and Google's comment, and the quoted link) am referring to deskop Linux, as is perfectly obvious.

For what it's worth, Anbox/Waydroid can run the Android-based GUI quite well. The Android subsystem doesn't integrate too well with native applications, but for things like basic sync and even document editing it works, at least.

In truth I'm not really looking for a solution. I was snarking really. I was a consistent user (and paid for Google One) until they removed the Google Photos integration, which killed much of the point of it for me.

Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

Zoom's audio + video quality is so much better than Google Meet that I almost feel like companies that use it are getting paid by Google to use it? I have no other explanation.

Vice versa. Companies paid for a gmail + meet bundle that came in cheaper than gmail + zoom.

I've been on hundreds of calls for both and have personally had far more issues with zoom than google. I also prefer Google's UI and security model, and Google's pricing is better for companies using gmail.

Quite the opposite. I used Google Meet a few years back and it was terrible. Not even close to being a Zoom replacement.

But recently we've been holding standups with Google Meet, to give it another try and since it was already bundled with Google Business, and I've been very impressed with the lower latency.

Conversations feel closer to "natural" - I feel like there's less talking over each other.

The UI has become polished.

I was pleasantly surprised.

I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by based on my recent usage. I also like that Google Meet is built for the browser by default—no need or pressure to install a desktop app for calls.

Also google voice

I think Voice is great but it seems a bit abandoned from Google

The feature set has not changed much since launch but it's definitely not abandoned.

The feature set has been reduced from the days when voice was still it's own company called grand central.

I had more than one phone number but some time after Google came in they said pick one and the rest have to go.

You can actually have more than one number still. I do at least. This happens if you add a number by porting your USA cell phone number to google voice. This gives you the option to keep both, although it’s $20 and you have actively elect to make your original google voice number permanent.

Meet and Drive are big successes in the enterprise space. Google successfully made Workspaces a compelling alternative to Microsoft’s business productivity suite.

I think with that in mind, the fact that Google doesn’t develop their own Slack clone to fit into Workspaces is completely bananas [edit: they actually did do that this year].

Other new product successes listed in this thread are things like Chromecast that only make Google money indirectly and/or represent an essentially meaningless slice of their revenue.

They have one it's called spaces. we have it set up as a back up to slack. It's not that spaces (shutdown 2016ish), it's a subfeature of google chat.

Oh interesting, I never explored in there. Indeed it looks like a Slack clone. Seems to have support for interactive apps similar to Slack as well.

Of course, it still took Google all the way until this year to roll it out.

I'm curious if my company will ever fully ditch slack. Meet got good enough that we sorta ditched Zoom. And they keep adjusting our slack tier.

As I understood it, Google Drive was mainly just the storage that was previously free with Google Docs (from 2006 or something).

For the moment, the Pixel phones are the largest family that supports an independent ROM that implements VoLTE.

A vast swath of LineageOS supported devices have been retired for this reason, and Pixels are the largest family remaining.

Oddly enough, if you want control of a device that minimizes Google's influence, then you probably want a Pixel.

Actually that would be the Xiaomi/Redmi/Poco series.

I see 12 devices from Google on the LineageOS 19 announcement page.

Motorola/Lenovo has the next largest share, with 10.

The eBPF subsystem is described as the main driver for ending so many devices, instead of VoLTE.

https://lineageos.org/Changelog-26/

Pixel Buds, particularly the new Pixel Buds Pro as well. They are fantastic.

> Google Classroom has a lot of users in the ed tech space.

As a parent of a kid with ADHD and a Chromebook, I'm appalled at how wide open access to everything on the Internet is on Chromebooks. Trying to keep him on track when there's the constant temptation and ability to alt-tab over to YouTube means my wife and I have to be ever vigilant that he's actually working.

No, his ADHD isn't Google's fault, but they're designing and deploying tools for lots of kids who have impulse control issues.

I'd argue that's not really something Google have wrong - parental/education control blockers aren't few and far between.

There are copious and extensive managed access control technologies available for Chromebooks (and windows, and everything else). I mean, it's true that by default it's just a laptop-running-chrome and can get to anything. But that's not how my kids' schools deploy their Chromebooks, nor is it how we have their personal devices set up. Have you looked at Family Link, which is the default choice for this sort of thing? We've used Bark too. Both are sort of annoying to administer but do their advertised jobs pretty well.

I mean, yes, the internet is distracting, but...

full disclosure: never used a chrome book.

That said, isn't there some nanny software available to install and block websites except the ones you whitelist? They should also have ability to set access time schedules so you could let them have a free for all after school time is over.

Others commenting are, I think, missing the point: Chromebooks are school-issued and locked down to where I can't install software (or they're just not capable of it regardless of locking down). Even if I could, is it the expectation that every parent now has to monitor their kid's school-issued device? This should be handled at the Google or school district level, not at the individual device level.

And yes, I use Family Link and Android controls. Not great, but also not applicable to a device over which I have no control.

It should exclusively be handled at the school district level, assuming Google provides the ability to do so. Some schools, including private one, may want to allow full Internet access, and some not.

I wouldn’t consider the pixel a success until they truly fix the emergency call issues[1]. I wouldn’t recommend anyone buys one, and anyone who has one should demand action.

[1] https://reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/y039zn/i_compiled_...

Edit: Downvotes are a little confusing here, are people supposed to accept a phone that can’t make a call when you most need it?

I'm curious how exactly would an emergency call fail. How is it different from any other phone call, from the phone OS level?

Isn't it a bit of a stretch to call these “recent” though?

You're right, I definitely forgot the Pixel Phone, Chromecast and Chromebooks, all of which seem to be doing well enough to get regular support and a decent userbase.

Google Photos is that silent offering that wasn't a big deal initially, but just slowly grew into easily the best option to store your years of smartphone photo memories. I pay for it and will always pay.

Chromebooks were also the thing that started out slow, but now are pretty ubiquitous.

GCP

Google photos started inproving around 1 year ago (maybe two? With covid, it was a blend).

Bugs gone and new features popped up.