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Google Businesses Programming

Google: Stop Making Apps! (A Love Letter) 110

Posted by samzenpus from the tough-love dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Seasoned Silicon Valley software executive and investor Domenic Merenda has written a love letter to Google, and it's filled with "tough" love. The main thesis is that Google, as a company, should stop making apps, and instead focus on using its enormous data assets to make meaningful connections between people and facilitate organic engagement within a rich ecosystem. Interestingly, the article cites Wikipedia's information that Google maintains over 70 apps on the Android platform alone.
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Google: Stop Making Apps! (A Love Letter) More

Google: Stop Making Apps! (A Love Letter)

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  • Who? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02, 2015 @05:25PM (#50036029)

    Who is this guy? Hid most impressive job was a software engineer at Playboy, Inc. Christ, this site sucks. Stop putting these shit articles out.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The Special Olympics are being held in L.A. this year there is still time for you to register.

  • But if they stop making apps (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Then they won't have anything left to kill.

  • a 12-step program App.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by segin ( 883667 )
      As a human being, I'm the highest power known to fucking exist. As we all are. Not some random wizard from millennia-old fictional history books. Or my smartphone, or motorcycle, or beer glass.

      • As a human being, I'm the highest power known to fucking exist. As we all are.

        Except for market forces. Those certainly seem to be beyond the control of mere mortals. For that matter, laws of nature not only determine your environment, but through evolution your entire being: you want things you've evolved to want. Your main advantage as a human is that the process is much quicker with cultural rather than biological evolution, and your culture-derived traits can be updated during your lifetime.

        And one of

      • Mother Nature would like a word with you...
    • But it would be iOS only, because 12-step programs are religious in nature.

  • But the best way to deliver that ... (Score:3)

    by Krishnoid ( 984597 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @05:30PM (#50036063) Journal

    and instead focus on using its enormous data assets to make meaningful connections between people and facilitate organic engagement within a rich ecosystem.

    I think they're working on an app for that.

    • From what he has said it seems like this all fits right in to their Google Now strategy.

      The problem is with the idea that "Google should be connecting the dots between financial transactions, health records, search history, GPS data, app usage, Gmail threads, IM conversations, and more." Which is a pretty contentious issue at the moment, granted many people simply don't care, some do and some are undecided ... already they do some of this but suggesting they track every move you make and every thing you do

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      I think we all appreciate that this person went to b-school and therefore is well trained in using buzz words and maximizing quarterly profits, but Google works because unlike most other dot coms, it does deliver products to generate a profit, not just data that one day may be used for a profit.

      At the time when Google was on the rise, web browsers began to let user manage 'cookies'. This was a new concept to everyone back then, but web companies were learning to use cookies to track users, and end users

  • They keep boning the interface for maps, someone could seriously make a buck just skinning it and giving easy access to the offline caching feature and so on. And googles, why for you no have keywords? I just wind up going to the web interface for image searches. So there's an extra step.

    Inbox is pretty nice, I guess. I didn't get the impression that there was much competition in that space. Am I wrong?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mars-nl ( 2777323 )

      They keep boning the interface for maps, someone could seriously make a buck just skinning it and giving easy access to the offline caching feature and so on.

      Try this: http://openstreetmap.org/ [openstreetmap.org]

    • And Google Groups... so Usenet archives are pretty much gone now? It's a shame that such a large archive of historical data on a wide variety of subjects appears to be just plain gone.

    • GMail is a step back from regular email, and Inbox is worse still.
      As for Google Groups, it used to be good, so good it was my preferred Usenet client, before they entirely ruined it and made it irrelevant.

      • GMail is a step back from regular email, and Inbox is worse still.

        Yes, that's exactly what I want on my phone. I can use whatever I want on my desktop. On my phone, I want a reduced email client.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jisom ( 113338 )

      I tried Inbox, but wasn't impressed. It strips so much of gmail away that it is basically "Gmail for beginners". You want filters, labels, etc, then it is worthless.

      And I find most apps pointless. I generally end up using the actual mobile site more than most apps that said sites release.

      • I tried Inbox, but wasn't impressed. It strips so much of gmail away that it is basically "Gmail for beginners". You want filters, labels, etc, then it is worthless.

        Actually, Inbox is Gmail for power users, for people who have massive volumes of e-mail to manage. It takes a little bit of work to figure it out and set it up, but once you have, it's awesome. There are some features it lacks, like complex filters (simple filters are very easy to set up; you just move a message to a label and Inbox asks if you want to always do that. Click "yes" and you have a new filter rule), vacation auto-responder and the like, but you can always use the Gmail UI when you need to set s

  • Lately I have become so frustrated with my Nexus 7 updating (and becoming essentially useless until update completes) that I am seriously contemplating getting an iPad mini just to escape Android! The only things I do with it are read Kindle books and play mahjongg. I do NOT need Google apps updated on a daily basis. Most of them I don't even know what they do!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Then change the update settings to not update automatically. Was that so difficult?

      • Then change the update settings to not update automatically. Was that so difficult?

        It's much more cathartic to gripe about the problem than to listen to a practical solution that fixes the issue at hand. What are you, some sort of... man?

      • Or disable all the apps that you have no use for. He'll probably be happier without them cluttering up his app drawer anyway.

      • Nexus 7 only allows you to delay the update. But after a hard cut-off date, the update *will* happen. I learned that the hard way when I didn't allow it to update and it turned on cellular data and downloaded a gigabyte of updates that didn't amount to any improvements, and charging me money too.

    • Have you considered getting a kindle and a mahjong set?

  • Google apps getting slower and more bloated (Score:4, Insightful)

    by caseih ( 160668 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @05:42PM (#50036119)

    Lately, every time I've allowed a google app to update I've regretted it. I was just fine with gmail the way it was. The latest incarnation I just don't like. For one I really hate how they are starting to ignore the menu button on phones that have them. I like having a menu button down at the bottom of the phone, close to where my thumbs are naturally. If I wanted an iphone I would have bought an iphone.

    In any case I've learned to never update a google app that I like. One of the biggest problems with the Google Play walled garden is the complete lack of version history. Once a new version is out, the old version is gone forever. Always backup your apps before upgrading I've learned (and forgotten too many times).

    But the real problem is that google apps are getting bigger and bigger and slower and slower. I don't install very many apps, and I finally ran out of space on my older phone, due to mostly google apps getting so huge. And over time my phone is getting less and less responsive. It's not like I have a lot of apps installed, and I never automatically update them. I do it judiciously, after looking at the changes list.

    As I mentioned I don't update google apps much anymore, but the Google Play app and infrastructure update automatically and silently, and I have a hunch this is part of the slowdown. Sometimes I get a ton of "google play services has stopped" error messages until I reboot.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The 2010s will be known as the decades when applications were lobotomized. Features removed, crappy interfaces, and decisions that make trouble for people abound. No OS is safe. From the MS Office Ribbon, to Mozilla crippling Firefox, to Google phone apps. It's all a symptom of the same "we know better than the user" disease.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Lately, every time I've allowed a google app to update I've regretted it.

      Do it, UXtards. You really want to A/B your fucking shit? Let users roll back your "upgrades" to the previously-installed .apk.

      If your new trendy UX design is really as "elegant" and "intuitive" as you proclaim it, give the user a choice after "upgrading" to decide which version he/she prefers and show your boss the fucking metrics. Put your fucking career on the line, or don't you have the fucking balls/ovaries to do it?

      Bosses:

    • For one I really hate how they are starting to ignore the menu button on phones that have them.

      That's not a Google Apps problem, that's a manufacturer problem. Google depreciated the menu button for Android devices back in Gingerbread. Their design guidelines basically said to stop using the menu button as an input back in early 2011 and to use it only for legacy purposes favouring instead a context sensitive action button symbolised by 3 vertical dots.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by N!k0N ( 883435 )
        Still a pain in the ass changing the UI around in that manner... I still muscle-memory to the task-manager (formerly, menu) button.

        • Well it was supposed to be a transition to limit the muscle memory issues, but the problem is that:

          a) most app developers don't follow the guidelines unless they are forced to.
          b) most phone developers don't follow the guidelines unless they are forced to.

          The idea was a transitional introduction with Honeycomb. The "overflow menu" buttons were specifically hidden by the OS if the phone had a menu key in Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, and Jellybean. The menus were always shown even if the phone h

  • Google the All-Knowing (Score:4)

    by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Thursday July 02, 2015 @05:47PM (#50036151)

    Combined with information from your Gmail usage, your search history, your GPS locations, and even your medical history, Google can make meaningful and timely recommendations of articles, experiences, and products that you would be excited to engage with. This is the future of the virtual assistant. Google should be connecting the dots between financial transactions, health records, search history, GPS data, app usage, Gmail threads, IM conversations, and more. If you book a flight to New York, Google should be suggesting not only contacts you might want to re-engage with when you land, but also a list of restaurants or activities that match the preferences of both parties. And perhaps some curated topics to bring up when you get together.

    Wow... so this guy wants Google to know absolutely every private detail of your life so it can "connect the dots"? Financial transactions? Medical records? Google knows what food you and your friends like best so can recommend restaurants? Is this sort of hand-holding really something people want? Do you really need a computer algorithm to tell you to look up a friend in New York if you're traveling there? Can you not just ask your friend to find you a great local place to eat (hinting at a few of the types of places or foods you like)?

    There's a lot that Google can do that would be really hard to do on your own. If you're in a strange city, the ability to ask "Where is the nearest Italian Restaurant?" is awesome, and it can guide you there in your rental car step by step (this was exactly what happened to me a month ago). Google doesn't need to know my food preferences. I can decide for myself that I'm in the mood for some deep dish pizza, thank you. And financial transactions or medical records? No, Google, you're not getting them from me, at least if I have anything to say about it.

    I don't consider myself privacy nut. I use G-mail, and don't mind the targeted ads I see. I don't really care all that much about Google tracking my search results - fairly boring stuff to anyone but myself. I can always switch to DuckDuckGo if I need privacy there. But the extent to which some people are willing to give *everything* to Google sometimes surprises me.

    • Google already does this. Didn't you notice they send you a notice on your phone of the type "you should leave now for the airport to be on time, we recommend this itinerary" even though you never told Google explicitly that you were taking a flight? It automatically detects where you're going based on your emails and can also automatically deduce where you live and where you work based on your GPS.
      It can also automatically make recommendations of restaurants when it notices that you're not in an area you'r

      • Actually, I didn't notice this on any of my last trips. It wouldn't have been rocket science to figure out on my last trip either, as I use Google Calendar to leave notes for myself about times and dates of my trips, and the trip arrangements were made via my gmail account.

        I actually had to explicitly search for that sort of stuff myself when I was away from home, and it wasn't hard to do. I literally just asked my phone: "Where is the nearest Italian restaurant?", and it responded with a list of them wit

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jammz ( 55986 )
      Google already knows everything its customers share with it in all of its services. The trick is mining it and analyzing it for the most benefit. They're the largest advertising-funded company on Earth and their plan has been to maximize the value of the data assets they own, that's the primary driver behind Android for them: the massive amount of data they get on users and the corresponding screen time and space they have for targeted advertising.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by neumayr ( 819083 )

      +1

      That said, "[...]fairly boring stuff to anyone but myself." is at least the old defeatist "I've got nothing to hide" attitude when it comes to privacy intrusion, and chances are that Google can get interesting information from what you consider to be boring.

  • Finally a thread where his gibberish is absolutely 100% relevant, and there *isn't* a post about how app appers app apps yet? Come on! It's practically *begging* you to write about apping apps so you can app apps while you app, or whatever the crap. That'd be like a thread that's actually about using hosts file with no hosts file gibberish guy.

    Seriously, though, this is dumb. Why the heck would google want to stop writing apps for their own ecosystem, and why would we want them to? I mean, we want them to s

    • Yo, dawg! I heard you liked apps, so I apped an app apper's app, so you could app your appers apps!

    • Where have you been? It's all about "You're a cow. Cows say MOOOO!"

      Sheesh, get with it.

      P.S. I have no idea why the cow troll exists, it just is. If anyone can explain it, please do.

  • Some of those apps are probably really profitable. If you're somebody who likes to listen to lectures and you're not one of the 0.00001% of nerds who use xposed [xposed.info], to turn your screen off while YouTube plays costs $120/yr for a subscription (the feature is non-technically tied to Google Play Music).

    There might some apps that have in-app purchase fees higher than $10/mo to keep going, but I haven't run across them. I realize you can't give everything away forever, but Google's got a lock on that market and b

  • You lost me when you mentioned financial records and health record. the health stuff is locked down by law, under HIPAA regulations. Google has no business in that space, especially not in a manner for pushing advertising recommendations to us. the last thing i want is to get *targeted* ads to me over my...not saying what my problem is. Get the drift?

    Financial records are the same, though with less legal protection. The main inference they can get from that for advertisers is "are they rich"? Targeted ads b

    • the last thing i want is to get *targeted* ads to me over my...not saying what my problem is. Get the drift?

      Cheep V1agra!

  • >Google can provide the data-rich API platform, the interconnectedness, the big brain calculations in the cloud. Instead of investing more resources in apps smaller teams could build better, let's free developers do what they do best: leverage Google services to build new and engaging experiences across a variety of platforms. Eh? Well, there's Google Cloud Computing and tons of other bunch of API that Google provides to developers, the question is why is the author not using them to " make meaningful co
  • I haven't found any use of their other functions. Doogle Now, Doogle Orifice, Dootube is okay, the rest is bunk. I tried using Doogle office but my pad kept having to wait for docs and that literally killed it for me.

  • "using its enormous data assets to make meaningful connections between people and facilitate organic engagement within a rich ecosystem"

    Huh? And they would do this by what, a mind meld? Maybe they should do this by creating...apps!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      "using its enormous data assets to make meaningful connections between people and facilitate organic engagement within a rich ecosystem"

      Sounds like a drunken data orgy with the NSA.

  • Third party apps tend to be loaded with adware. Google may not make the best apps, but at least they don't constantly spam you with blinking, dancing ads!

  • Are you kidding me? (Score:3)

    by Krokus ( 88121 ) on Friday July 03, 2015 @12:35AM (#50037537) Homepage

    Nothing so emphasizes that I am living in the 21st century as when I'm driving somewhere out in the city and speak "Take me home" into my phone and my phone vocally guides me there step by step. To me, in this day and age, Google Maps + Google Navigate are incredible apps that honestly fill me with awe every time I use them.

  • focus on using its enormous data assets to make meaningful connections between people and facilitate organic engagement within a rich ecosystem. Interestingly

    As far as I can tell this translates into English as "all ure privacies are belong to us".

  • The OP loves to spew buzzwords and bullshit as bad as Bennett Hasselton does. :(

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