It's lazy and greedy and arrogant. It's catering to the lowest common denominator, pushing users into a cycle of manipulation and constant change, preventing any nuanced use of software, forcing users to increased dependence on a walled garden.
It's a dark pattern - don't let people use the software in unexpected ways that might take potential profit away from another service or future feature. If any use gives more value than was intended, that use will be curtailed, then properly monetized elsewhere, or simply (and more often than not) shut off.
If combinations of available settings reveal an actual bug, sometimes it's easier to take away the options than to fix the bug. But if it's simply a case that the software is doing things the developers don't want for any of the above reasons, they claim users are too incompetent to be trusted, and that they're removing the option for the good of the user.
It's a gross and vapid perverse incentive endemic to FAANG.
Good solutions exist for complexity and user configurations, like snapshots, reset to default, and so on. There's no excuse for mature software to lose configurability.
Google does have a history of specifically avoiding exposing settings to users.
See: some of the Chrome feature requests about making things user-configurable (off memory, related to download / execute behavior for enterprise web-launched apps), which Google closed with "Adding a setting would be incompatible with Chrome's design goals"
I think Occam's Razor, when it comes to Google's enterprise tools, suggests that nobody who is important to Google has complained about this. The understanding being that you can't get your voice heard unless you're a customer with 10,000+ seats.
You just have to be a workspace customer at all. I have ~80 seats and the feedback menu in the Drive for Desktop interface has gotten me direct replies from the product team, which has helped them collect the info they need to diagnose issues in the app.
It's fairly well documented that many projects in Google happen because that's pretty much the only way to move up the career ladder, and once the promotions have been doled out then the project loses its original stewardship...until someone else is looking for a promotion and sets their eyes on rebuilding that project. (Case in point, the numerous failed attempts to deliver or even brand/market a messaging app).
Naturally, as is it is these days, any new product or redesign is conceived in terms of an MVP. You could argue that the industry as a whole has taken this concept far too literally over the last decade, to the point of being cultish about it.
I don't dispute the parent poster's point in general, I just think it's more indifferent than lazy/greedy/arrogant, unless it comes to search or ads. That's arguably worse, but Google's reputation for delivering increasingly mediocre versions of its products (or shitcanning them entirely) does precede it.
Maybe: as opposed to companies that exclusively rely on income from happy users of their software. As long as users are locked into Google's platform it doesn't matter to their bottom line if an individual product is at best "good enough". Google can make money out of the user's engagement in other ways.
Configuration adds complexity and is a huge source of confusion for users. Google drive strikes me as something that should just work and be so simple that you do not have to configure it.
There does not seem to be any genuine reason to make this change a setting because the main objection is just "I don't like it" rather than "it stops me from doing x" or "it makes x harder"
It would be much less painful to just have users get used to the new behavior than to support a setting for forever. For people who want full power, custom clients exist for google drive which can work however you want.
We see a constant trend where users move towards products which just work rather than require manuals and configuration. Seems only sane that general public products like google drive should cater to this and if you want full power over everything, you have 3rd party clients, nextcloud, ftp, etc.
I don't think it's safe to reason from what the "main" objection is.
I see one of the comments on that page is:
« I just installed the new Google Drive desktop client (Win 10 pro) and the new virtual drive it creates triggers a non-compliance issue with ClearPass OnGuard that my employer requires (because the drive is not encrypted) and thus prevents me from connecting to their VPN. »
Maybe this OnGuard thing is being foolish, but that's no comfort to the user.
Maybe, but if corporate policy requires all storage to be encrypted and the tool to enforce that policy can't verify that whatever Google's software is doing is compliant, maybe not.
Different policies might be appropriate for software that is used by non-experts in a personal capacity and software that is part of professionally managed IT systems used for business purposes with regulatory compliance obligations. A lot of the modern trends from the likes of Google, Apple and Microsoft might make sense for the former group but they are a significant concern for the latter and for prosumer or small business users who might want to operate more like the latter but are stuck with software aimed at the former.
> Configuration adds complexity and is a huge source of confusion for users.
Sometimes confusion is the appropriate state. Companies (or at least products) often have to choose between retaining the most users (or worse, customers) and catering to a subset who know what they want and are willing to learn to use it.
Sadly Google these days always seem to go with the former, and not to care about the latter. This completely turns me off their products and ecosystem.
I guess companies are more interested in mainstream users than in technical users. The former are a larger group that seems easier to attract and retain, they mostly use defaults and don’t care that much about dark patterns.
Google has been following this approach for years now, simplifying the UX in a way that both 1. makes the product easier to use and 2. in a way that benefits Google.
Google has merged the url bar and the search bar in chrome, they force defaults on google search, and not long ago [1] we were discussing removing detailed cookie controls.
I would like to posit the idea that all feature changes target #2 far more than #1: to benefit Google as an org.
What if the emphasis of mainstream users is overstated? I find it more likely that an organization could be shaping features to coax its users into submission to make the org's life easier.
"Yes, mainstream users want this simplification. No, we can't share the data or methodology in which we surmised this. Yes, this makes our life vastly easier, but we want to excuse it by pinning it on mainstream users."
I've seen power apps (so by definition all the users are very technical and should not be patronized) that use the same reason to cut features instead of saying outright that it's too much to support. Maybe for a big org like Google it would be an admission of embarrassment.
I've come to accept that it's just a cost cutting measure for larger tech companies, why offer users an option when you don't need to? It costs extra to document, test and offer support for.
I can't really think of any software from a major tech company that I use frequently and that's been updated to give me _more_ toggles to customize the app. It's always to take things away.
For example on a small company we had one user that needed RTL support, this ment we create backend code to store his perferences, front end code to add UI for it and testing the feature.
We implemented because for a small company each user is important where big companies or projects(Firefox,GNOME will force this minorities to go elsewhere)
Sure, but as I said I was in a small company, 2 developers only that this was the first time we worked with RTL. The project was not targeting a global audience or a casual home user, it was something about helping with your job, only supports english... my point was that we did not answer with it is just 1 customer we can ignore them , we decided we can do the work, gain a new customer this week and maybe a few more in future , every one is important. If we code the things right we don't need to touch this code at each update.
Apple actually does really well at this where it matters. Their accessibility settings allow a huge amount of customization for making the devices easier to use for disabled people. They just don't have android rom style settings like changing the unlock screen to swipe down rather than up or turning the battery indicator in to a circle.
It's just... easier for engineers. Less to test, less code, less to think about. And right now, all software is being built at the pleasure of the software engineers - this is why you're also seeing shift towards things like Electron apps and less options and worse UX. It's just easier for the guy programming it and noone really cares about user experience because there's no real competition.
I mean, what are you going to do, use a 3rd party client for Google's services? You're not allowed to - at least not on the same service level.
It's a dark pattern - don't let people use the software in unexpected ways that might take potential profit away from another service or future feature. If any use gives more value than was intended, that use will be curtailed, then properly monetized elsewhere, or simply (and more often than not) shut off.
If combinations of available settings reveal an actual bug, sometimes it's easier to take away the options than to fix the bug. But if it's simply a case that the software is doing things the developers don't want for any of the above reasons, they claim users are too incompetent to be trusted, and that they're removing the option for the good of the user.
It's a gross and vapid perverse incentive endemic to FAANG.
Good solutions exist for complexity and user configurations, like snapshots, reset to default, and so on. There's no excuse for mature software to lose configurability.