What was the last new Google anything you added to your daily life? Instead of adding Google Quickshare to share files from my PC to Android I use Microsoft's Phone Link. That is the first time in my life I've picked a Microsoft product over a Google one. It also just works better and doesn't require I have bluetooth enabled on both devices.
Gemini. Maybe you prefer ChatGPT, but either way the product category is a huge improvement to daily life for a lot of people. And transformers were invented at Google.
And Waymo is on its way to being huge. Might eventually make Google more money than everything it's done before.
As far as I can tell, innovation seems alive and well at Google. But a lot of their product categories are simply "mature" by now -- you're not going to see some wild transformation of YouTube, or Docs and Drive, or Android. Same as you're not seeing some wild reinvention of Apple Music, or iCloud, or iOS.
I am never getting into a Google powered vehicle. They aren't 2000s genius Google, they are 2024 'We're getting rid of Google Cache' Google that prioritizes a buck over good tech. I'm not trusting that mindset with my life.
And you still won't get into a Waymo when extensive statistics prove they're far safer than a human driver?
I used to buy in heavily to the Google ecosystem and trust it as a pretty solid go to option for anything they offered, now I'd be really hesitant to use it for anything critical. I have even been wondering if my longstanding gmail email address will someday be a liability.
Those two examples were probably smaller services but had their effects on different populations. When you add up all the things that have been ended by Google it can really contribute to their overall brand image. Some things can trickle down from more technical users to less technical. I think chrome was first adopted by a highly tech literate population before breaking into the mainstream, and if that population starts to mistrust Google it could hurt them in the long run.
I think there has been a pretty major shift in Google culture and product strategy and I'm not a fan of it.
https://killedbygoogle.com/