alt Hacker NewsWhy the surprise, they do the same with search, they do the same with their Google workspace (the degree to which they are pushing AI is really hurting the product).
Google stopped being aware of their customer's needs a really long time ago, they are so arrogant they think the audience is now fully captive.
Replies
> they think the audience is now fully captive.
the audience is captive. Do you have a choice to move from android, if you didnt want to have an apple device? Do you want to use a different search engine other than google? Is there another email provider than gmail (for the non-technical person - i know you can run your own). Is there another browser other than chrome (and dont say firefox or edge - because both don't compete)?
Google behave in ways that they think makes them more profit. When users cannot migrate (nor even threaten to), then it simply means they can do this.
Google's AI in their docs suite is so bafflingly bad. I wanted their AI to automate a sheet for me and it just choked. I switched to Claude for making a sheet that I ended up hosting in my local NAS using Microsoft Excel format.
> Google stopped being aware of their customer's needs a really long time ago
Google's customers are advertisers. They cater to that segment very well. They only need to attract users with "free" and cheap services so that advertisers think their campaigns are reaching enough eyeballs. Whether or not that's the case, and whether or not the end user has a good experience, is hardly relevant.
> they think the audience is now fully captive.
It is, for the large sub-$800 segment of the smartphone market.