136
Sorry, Google: After Assistant's chaotic evolution, I can't believe in Bard
(www.androidauthority.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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Android
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I still code with the mindset of "I need my software to be good or my clients will leave."
Google no longer operates like this. None of what you listed has any financial benefit to Google. You're not going anywhere. All they stand to do is make more money off of you. If they can simplify the software, from being handcrafted by humans perfectly for you, to, instead, generated by an unsalaried AI, they'll do that. They stand to lose mostly nothing and gain by reducing their workforce.
The competition for quality doesn't exist because the money they save by moving to AI is apparent across the industry. Everyone is looking to use it meaning the only competition is who can provide better cheap AI, not who can make a better product for their users.
Why? I dropped maps completely as soon as they started enshittifying it with elements I don't use that can't be removed from the UI; now I use only OSMand. I dumped Chrome when they announced manifest v3 and use Firefox. I dropped Google Play store when they made it difficult to see the exact version and it turns out f-droid has everything I need. I also dumped gmail for k9; their sms client for an open source one; I removed their Youtube client and use Newpipe. I always search with Ecosia or DDG before trying google.
I'll be honest, as much as I love how well it does, it's still leagues behind Google Maps. Would I be fine if Google Maps were to shut down? Sure. Just like how in theory, Apple Maps on DDG serves as a usable map system on the desktop. In reality, I see no reason not to use a competitor as superior as Google Maps, as long as I can. This isn't a Chrome-vs-Firefox situation where in many regards Firefox is the superior choice even on features, Google Maps is, for all it's woes, incredibly ahead of the competition.
Which makes sense: It's used so broadly, and can accumulate so much data about how people move about, it has access to a host of knowledge about motion and movement that other map system cannot match, be it out of choice or not. With OSMAnd+ it's a choice of course, but even if that weren't the case they just lack that ability. They cannot know how right now foot traffic in a certain area of downtown is quite slow due to a demonstration just having ended and a lot of people moving through a few adjacent streets back to the main train station. Google Maps can. Because like 75% of people in that crowd have it on their phones and enabled.
The issue with this is that you're contributing to a never ending feedback loop.
If a product is successful enough to enable convenient features that everyone likes, that means that nobody will give competition a fair shake because they "just don't have those features that I need".
I know that most customers would argue that it's not their responsibility to give up on superior services just for the sake of giving competition a chance, but then whose responsibility is it?
In the end, products can only grow if you allow them to grow. Same thing with arguments like nobody using Peertube because YouTube has more content creators, or how nobody would use kbin or Lemmy because reddit has a much larger contributing userbase.
If you don't give competition a chance, you're only contributing to a monopoly. And then you're as much to blame as the company that's doing the monopoly
The competitors? If they had customers without adding those features they also would have no incentive to add them.
Yeah, but sometimes certain features can only be added when the company has a lot of money to back them.
Stuff like extremely fast buffering speeds due to good internet infrastructure to datacenters or elaborate DDoS protection for building entire clusters to cushion against huge data flows.
Or, if those are too technical, just think of the content creators on YouTube, who don't want to upload their videos to other platforms because YouTube is effectively a monopoly now, and so it would be pointless to give other platforms the time of day.
If not enough content creators give competitors the chance, then how can they be expected to grow enough to stand a chance, in the first place?