alt Hacker NewsGoogle does not hate us... it is worse than that - it is indifferent to us. Hate requires some sort of recognition. I mean this single incident may not mean anything but overall google is heading to an _interesting_ place. In short, it was state of the art but in 20 years it became just another conglomerate sacrificing quality for shareholder gain, I think?
As a search engine, it does not work for me. I see promoted links above the thing I actually search for. Moved to Kagi and didn't look back.
As an AI it does not work for me. I am seeing an arbitrary usage limit, refreshing in 5 hours and a weekly quota given in a percentage. That is as opaque as it gets. Again, to give Kagi as an example I look at my usage details and I see how much is remaining in a clear way. Not working for Kagi by the way, I am just a happy customer.
As a cloud storage, it does not work for me. Probably some shared folder I am working with others has a spam user and/or a hacked account and they periodically spam x-rated notifications. And that's not only me (https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/1azf25v/myster...). Moved to apple iCloud and done with it.
Mail is fine. After 22 years of usage, I kind of delegated it to a non-important stage in my life. The important bits have relocated to European providers anyway.
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I found that if I search Google Maps for a specific restaurant, it assumes I must just be hungry in general. Just now, I looked for A&W and also got results for Tim Hortons, Popeyes and McDonald's.
Apple Maps never does that. Still, I usually use Google as I want an accurate idea of whether a business is actually open and what its hours are.
Kagi is great
That being said a giant corporation like Google releasing free but amazing research like AlphaFold or (less so) something like Gemma is still cool. They're the ATT PAC Bell or IBM of our age it seems
The promoted links have gotten insane, the first 5-6 links often appear to be ads
How do you use Kagi AI? I have been paying for their search service for a year now but I haven't looked into their AI offerings
> Google doesn't work
I can relate. Just today I was working on my car and I asked Gemini how to remove the Steering ball joint. It all started well, wrote a lengthy answer and then suddenly wiped it all and instead wrote 'i can't answer that, try to ask about another subject'.
For the love of God, talking about cars are now also being forbidden by Google.
And it's not a one off, I asked multiple questions about other parts because I had a lot of issue and it was the first time removing the Gimbals and replacing the Gimbal head on that car.
Google is beyond infuriating, they are a tech company and behave like some old fashioned administration lady. Completely out of touch with real life.
On this last part, I'm convinced that it's because Google management must be completely out of touch with real life. Tech world is special, add millions on top of that..
The best that could happen to this company is to break it's monopoly so that they are forced to get rid of these lunatics.
The 'mail is fine' is an impending apocalypse that most people don't think too much about. Google can dump you at any time for any reason or no reason. Your chances are small, but if it happens its incredibly disruptive. I don't know the durable answer, but I definitely need to complete that step of degoogling, the job just seems huge.
Mail is terrible. The central conceit of Gmail, and unfortunately what made it immediately popular, is that you should not have to care about deleting emails because you “have enough” storage. Over time this evolved into an awful incentive structure that results in 100s if not 1000s of spam/useless/irrelevant/garbage marketing emails a day and a reminder that the next tier up is just $1 a month (for now). In the end, the state of mail is emblematic of the whole problem with that company.
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I feel like a crazy person, but I've been using Yandex as the last resort and having positive results in finding stuff that I know is out there but Google has decided to stop letting me see. (I tried DDG but for my use it's been worse than Google).