Subscribe to discover Om’s fresh perspectives on the present and future.
Google Is Mind-Bogglingly Bad
A few days ago I wondered aloud, “What would happen if Google CEO Sundar Pichai decided to sign up for Google Cloud using a secret identity, without getting help from any of his staff?” I added, “Every single CEO should try to use their service as if they were a new customer that the company is going to try and win over. That alone will be a 10x boost in tech products!”
It’s too bad Sundar isn’t going to do this, because if anything his company needs a real kick in the pants. It makes so many bad product decisions that it’s mind-boggling.
For example, I am a customer of Google Workspace and host my email with them. I use Google’s Webpass as an internetservice provider. I am also a customer of Google Cloud (for their AI-related offerings). Yet, when I use Google’s web email client, I find all the relevant and important emails — invoices, bills, and other alerts — automatically classified as junk and sent to the junk folders. Then I get a message threatening to cut off my internet, delivered to the junk folder of course. I shudder to think how many of my emails don’t reach their recipients and vice versa.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that there’s no one with any real “product” chops at the company. It’s a perfect example of a once-great company trapped in the “management spider web,” where everyone is essentially there for a few years to cash in their stock options.
This is bonus culture 2.0, where no one wants to risk having any product opinions and thus make any real decisions. Why upset the apple cart? Why not keep agreeing with meaningless metrics instead of fixing the problems? Google is not the only one, for this affliction infects almost all large Silicon Valley companies. Sure, there are rare exceptions, but they are notable in their rarity.
It is just that it is more noticeable in the case of Google, as we touch their products daily. Google doesn’t excel at anything anymore — not even search, which has become abysmal. It’s unfortunate to see the once-mighty Google become such a middling version of itself.
8 thoughts on this post
Comments are closed.
Outside of their original search product, I don’t know if they have ever been good. I think back to ~2012 when I subscribed to Google Maps APIs for work. This was peak Google prestige where they were hiring the top graduates from the top schools. The issue is that the supply of top teir talent out paced the available projects so they ended up having over qualified people working on the support teams. Every year when it was time to renew my subscription, I had to start begging someone on the support team that cared enough to take my money months in advance before my service was automatically cut off.
Mike
Those days are long gone. I wish I could show the comms I get for being a Google cloud customer- about 50 emails for every day. I am busy turning off notifications instead of trying to use the cloud and make them money. It is a terrible experience and going to switch to AWS. It costs more but it is easier to use and less headaches.
I’ve noticed recently nearly every time I check my gmail and attempt to select the latest message an ad pops in and I inadvertently open it. I’m convinced this is not by accident.
Indeed it is all about to goose the revenues to meet the goals to keep the stock flying high
The recently shared video of Steve Jobs at the Aspen Design Festival is apt here. Jobs describes four levels of management — five if you count the Pope of St. Jobs.
Obviously this is a challenge in a large company, but as soon as the customer is no longer the primary lens by which one looks at the product, organizations revert to group think. I’m looking at EMRs at the moment. What an absolute mess of use cases, many of which have changed healthcare for the worse.
Ah, that video 🙂 I should embed this in the piece 😬
I am not a heavy tech user and maintain a functioning computer by avoiding Google products for the most part, but do have to wonder what their priorities are these days. Google’s intrusiveness is unnerving. I still can’t get rid of the “switch to Chrome” window that pops up every time I sign in to gmail.
I am Google-averse. I’ve always loved me a good ad blocker and used to feel like an enemy of the Google state most days. I dumped them as my search option when DuckDuckGo happened and have never looked back. My computer would freeze frequently at the most inopportune times.
My next step is to swap email providers and be done with gmail. That’s going to take a tremendous effort but I’m pretty sure I have much to gain.
Since his name has been invoked, I have a hard time believing St. Jobs wouldn’t throw a fit at Google requesting that I download the Google app every time I search using my iPhone’s default Safari browser. The browser is part of the phone, it feels like search is an extension of it too, but instead half of my screen is covered by a dark pattern asking me to download an app when I’m looking for the hours of the corner hardware store.