Asklemmy

i used to love google.. ive been around since the beginning and used many of their products.

it feels like a friend or family member thats slid into serious meth or other drug use... you can only stick around attempting to help them for so long. at some point you know you have to cut your losses or be further dragged into their destruction.

when they dropped the 'dont be evil' was right around the time i also realized they dont actually support their products, and kill them on a whim. i jumped ship ~2012 when they started fuckin around with google voice and had no real ambition with G+. .

I don't hate Google. I don't trust them and I don't think anyone else should either. Vet the products and services you use. But I don't hate them.

This kinda conflates hate for the unethical practices of the company with hate for the quality of their products, which seems unfair. As a company they're definitely bastards. There was a long, long period of time where their products were pretty unquestionably top-notch compared to everything else out there. However, for a while now everything has been going really downhill. Then recently it's really accelerated, especially with them leaning into AI. These days I hardly even miss them anymore.

Google have done a lot of great things and run some really vital projects that have benefitted the world. Anyone that refuses to acknowledge that is not coming at things honestly.

I don't have feelings about corporations.

"Loving" or "hating" brands, let alone massive oligarchal conglomerates makes no sense at all. I want them well regulated and split down to reasonable size if necessary. Ideally competing in a well populated marketplace and restricted in their ability to cause damage.

That's not "hate". And it certainly doesn't stop me using Google products and services and judging them based on their quality and performance.

Yes, I am a riot at parties, thank you very much.

For me it's a love hate relationship. I love the idea of their products, but hate that often they're the only feasible options in their categories.

I dunno if I hate Google, but I've grown tired of their bullshit. I use their products, but mostly because they've become the default solution being so feature rich and widely used. They've leveraged that to bog them down with ads and Spyware and THAT I despise.

Google made lots of stuff that I used and enjoyed, then slowly made them worse or outright killed them off. Hangouts was imo the gold standard of simple chat programs, their podcast app was excellent and ad free. Both are now gone.

They also have been ceaselessly working to wring every last cent out of their products at the expense of the user experience. The products and services were fine and they were making loads of money even with adblocking and tracker blocking in place but they knew they could make more money and most people would just accept the inconvenience so they said fuck em and ran with it.

I hate all corporations lol

I hate how shit their search is now

I use Google products, at this point they likely know more about me than I do.

Google spies on me, but actually provides useful services (other than search) for free (ish) in return.

Microsoft want money for everything.

The rest of big tech wants all your data for basically no gain.

I don't trust Google, but for now the trade seems worth it.

I wanted to like Google, I bought into the whole ecosystem and still regularly use my gmail account, but they’ve fallen quite far in my eyes. They’ve killed off multiple features I used extensively, Search, the thing they should be good at, just isn’t as dependable as it used to be, I don’t trust using Chrome anymore, and the company overall just seems like a pale reflection of its former self. I just don’t trust them as a company. Not as bad as Meta or anything Musk touches, but still bad.

What's not to hate? They're a monopoly corporation that isn't even pretending to adhere to their "don't be evil" slogan anymore

I'm frustrated because IMO their search keeps getting worse, but most of their other core products (Gmail, Chrome, Drive, Docs) are pretty good. I'm not mad about the lack of privacy because I feel that that was part of the deal I knowingly accepted back when I was an early adopter. I'd rather get free service than pay for impossible-to-verify privacy, especially when the free service has minimally annoying ads (eg. Gmail but not Youtube).

I hate all capitalist enterprises even if I use them.

it's the user experience that makes me hate Google more than anything. "oh hey, come use our unified ecosystem, it's so much better because it's all Google" but as soon as you have a problem with Google Voice on your Google Pixel using your Google operating system, every fucking department tells you that it's another department's problem.

they gutted multitasking after Android 10 because they were afraid it might cut into their YouTube music profits. they're just turning off their shortened URLs next year. they refuse to update Google Voice in any way. every time I've trusted them with something, they've broken that trust

Hate? No, I do not hate Google. I still use a Pixel phone (and photos/assistant on it), my Gmail is still my primary email (I also self-host a few other domains but those are primarily used for automation and a few other one-off things), I subscribe to YouTube Premium, I still utilize my Stadia controller as my primary game controller, I use a Google TV set top box, etc.

I don't use Search (I use Kagi instead), I don't use Chrome (Firefox), I don't really utilize Gemini all that much (I just run ollama for the few times I want to use an LLM).

Really I just use their products that work well for me, and don't use the ones that don't. There's no love/hate about it.

I don't hate Google.

I despise them. I loathe them. Common transitive verbs like hate don't encompass the depth and breadth of my disdain for Google.

It is mega Corp and they are all the same.

Treat them as the enemy of the people. Can't go wrong

The only thing I honestly don't hate from them is YouTube, which I still use often. But I hate how they treat it now, so they lose points there. And Gboard too, but they seem to have abandoned updating it sadly.

I'm happy with most of their stuff and use it a lot (calendar, drive, keep etc) but I know not to trust them not to kill things. I keep an IMAP copy of my emails and a local copy of my photos just in case...

I'm indifferent to them. I use their products, but I'm not a huge fan. I use them because I dislike the alternatives more.

I've been considering trying to degoogle myself, but honestly it would be complicated, and there's a wife-approval factor that likely hinders that. We have multiple Chromecasts, Next hubs, etc around the house, and my wife likes the ease of use. I am slowly building up a home assistant instance, but still tying it into the Google home integration for ease of wife approval.

I use what works best for me, and right now most of those options are from Google.

Made a decision long ago that I’m not going to browse the web, setup a calendar of life events or store my email with the largest advertising company in the world.

Their “eco system” is not the best and their hardware has been hit or miss over the years.

I understand why people do use them and I will use their products when absolutely required. I don’t hate them, I just avoid them.

I've been actively trying to extricate myself from their ecosystem. I hate how incredibly challenging it is.

i hate all tech corps. you can use (and even like) their products and also think they are evil, oligopolies and all.

i cant abandon my gmail because i don't even know how many sites and how many people i have given it to. i like youtube because it's THE slop factory. Maps is also pretty good, love Street View, Chrome is 'ok' but Firefox is a perfectly usable (and in many ways, better) substitute (especially given Google's ad shenanigans).

I at least enjoy their fiber internet service.

There's just so much to hate

Google make some good products. I am just not willing to trade my privacy for it.

I'm not whom you're asking for but I'm obligated to say:

That being said I do very much enjoy their products. Gmail, Photos, Chrome, Gemini, Home, Assistant, YouTube, Pixel phones, etc…

With many of these products, you are the product being sold. I especially don't understand the point about going back w/ alternatives, eg gmail is just an email service; nothing changes for you as the end user if you just use a different email provider. Same for Photos, it's just a cloud hosting service. I only ever used it for syncing so I could replace it with syncthing, although I don't because I don't really care about accessing my photos on multiple devices. If I need a specific photo I'll grab it via usb cable or if I'm getting a new phone I'll copy over all the photos etc to my computer before wiping the phone. But if you need to sync you can just use syncthing, if you specifically need cloud hosting there are more privacy-respecting options out there that aren't by ad companies.

It's not the company it once was, but there are also a lot of outrage-bait headlines about it that don't hold up well to scrutiny.

For instance, there have been a lot of Lemmy posts about Chrome supposedly removing the APIs used by adblockers. I figured I'd validate that on my own by switching to the version of uBlock that is based on the new API. Well... As it turns out, it works fine. It's also faster.

Mind you, figuring out the actual facts behind each post gets exhausting, and people just shutting down and avoiding the problem space entirely makes some sort of sense. That, and it is healthy for an ecosystem to have alternatives, so I'd keep encouraging usage of Firefox and such if only on that basis alone.

FWIW I don't really like tech companies in general. They're monopolies.

That said, I really admire Google's environmental policies. I worry a lot about global warming and habitat destruction. They're doing better than any other tech company on that front.

Other companies will just lie about their emissions. Like Amazon claiming it's 100% renewable (it's not even close). Google has been honest and clear with it's emissions numbers since the beginning. And it has never been afraid to call out when they were wrong. For example, they recently updated their numbers when they realized one of their accounting methods was wrong. No other company has kept themselves as honest as Google on environmental things.

It's a big company with 170k employees. I can name a million examples of it doing shitty things. Like shutting down Inbox. But the environment is far more important to me than some product I didn't pay for.

I hate google's products BUT some of their free stuff like Google Fonts and Tensorflow are really nice

Hate? Ehhhh, no.

At least, no more than I hate any monolithic megacorp. You can't really hate something that empty.

I mean, fuck Google, but trying to hate it is like trying to hate wind. Yeah, we could all get together and figure out a way to keep it from blowing, but you aren't going to do so without a lot more work than people are willing to put in.

Most of Google's apps work fine. Most of their services work smoothly. It's the stuff they tack onto that that makes them hated, and it's why I limit my use of their products. That is, however, a matter of choosing lesser evils far too often because all of the businesses in the same fields are also shitty.

If I was to waste hate on Google, it would be to their ceo and any board members. They're the ones that make the company hateable.

I use a lot of Google products. I still rate their phones as the best, recently I use a Jelly Star instead purely because i was due a new phone from my pixel 3 but every current phone from Google and it's competitors that fit my needs are way too big.

I stopped using Google search because in the last few months I've started realising it's harder to find stuff that i want/need, so i now use ddg, which isn't better than old Google but better than current.

Outside of those though I still use my Google account as my main federated account. Still use gmail (wish inbox was still around for it though), still use chrome, and drive is my cloud storage of choice. On top of that I have 3 Google nest minis and a Chromecast with Google tv.

I may be drifting away slowly but Google still has is teeth in me and at the moment where I'm being bitten I'm fine with it. Doesn't hurt at all

I dislike a lot of what Google has done to their product and how people have screwed up searches with SEO nonsense. Recipes are a prime example of what I dislike about Google. Gemini is way less useful than the Assistant used to be. I'm still waiting for Microsoft to dip their toes back into the cell phone market or see some FOSS alternatives to Android/iOS that are supported by service providers. Ultimately I just have to put up with it.

Hate is a strong word.

I prefer to avoid their services due to privacy, and because over the long term, they're unreliable. Any other for-profit corporation that tries to offer a bunch of free SASS products is going to end up with privacy issues as well; knowing the incentives lets us predict the outcome.

I'm keeping my Pixel 4a as long as I possibly can though.

Hate is a strong word.

I have a dislike for them. Especially in recent years. There was a time I thought they were the cool hip company with lots of cool innovations. When Google docs launched it was so revolutionary that two people could work with the same document at the same time.

Now I see them more for what they are: an advertisement provider. They’re only after our data. Once I realized that my dislike for them grew.

But my dislike for them hasn’t been enough to stop using their products. I’ve tried DDG a few times, but I’ve always been dissatisfied with their results.

I grew up with "hate" being reserved for the very extreme feeling, and I don't think I have hated anything or anyone since I started understanding what it really means. I have no reason to. Not even Trump. But I do wish they hadn't missed.

Anyway, so, no, I don't hate Google. But I am actively trying to find ways to leave their ecosystem. Even paid alternatives.