[Kstarek]

This is such a tired take, they're doing plenty of innovation in AI and bringing them to consumers with innovative products like Google Home.

I really love my Google smart home speaker and it's been extremely useful day to day.

Being able to just say "Google set an apartment in my calendar to meet John for coffee next week at 3pm" is infinitely more convenient than opening my phone or laptop and clicking through the UI to do so. Or "Google remind me to cancel my subscription in 10 days" or "Set a timer for 10 minutes" etc etc.

Likewise Firebase has made it infinitely easier and smoother to deploy a web app. Google Domains is probably the most seamless way to purchase and register a domain.

Waymo is innovating like crazy and possesses the most advanced autonomous driver agent.

Wing is innovating drone delivery in rural and suburban areas.

They are innovating to the highest degree and anyone who claims otherwise is deluding themselves.

(I'm not affiliated with Google in any way, but I do hold stock)

[ajsnigrutin]

So, a speech-to-text and vice versa with a limited set of options, a website to buy domains from and "inovations", that you cannot buy yet, and might be cancelled before they ever come to consumer-ready completion?

That doesn't sound like a lot.

Google had an XMPP compatible chat client, that they killed of and revived with a new product every few years, so from gtalk, to wave, duo, alo, meet, chat, or whatever else it was called.

Youtube stopped promoting independent producers, and is basically just a frontend to legacy media.

Google apps was a great free tool for your own domain, but nope, not free anymore.

Google maps started featuring ads everywhere and is a pain to try to find thing X with lidl logos everywhere.

Google reader, great product, dead.

Google cardboard... great, cheap VR "for the masses"... dead.

Google fusion tables.. dead.

Google search results are 50% pinterest, 50% unrelated.

Google inbox, dead.

The audio only chromecast.. dead.

Google mytracks, great tool, killed by google (luckily an opensource replacement exists).

Picasa.

Google+ was a great idea... create bubbles, share stuff to only specific groups... too much forced integration everywhere, people hated it, dead.

Google nexus/pixel phones were great in the nexus 4/5/5x era.. now they're expesive and "meh".

Android privacy features are broken... no way to change unique ids, and most of the permissions are not granular enough, and people have been complaining for years about that.

The only thing google is really great at, is taking a chat service, making a new one and killing the old one... everything else is building nice prototypes and killing them.

[NikolaNovak]

I mean... You kinda defeated your own point. You listed great number of great google innovations, and are (as far as I can tell) actually upset at people / users / market for not embracing them and allowing them to succeed?

FWIW I'm with you. People just don't seem to like the things I like so they die and I don't have things I like. But I don't find that google's fault or lack of their innovation. They seem to go more crazy than vast majority of companies to try crazy things - and you missed out on as many dead innovative things (Google goggles etc) as you listed :)

[romwell]

Creating a product that operates at a loss (by funding it with ad money from search), effectively evaporating small players in that niche, only to kill the product in several years, leaving a smoldering hole where an ecosystem used to be?

Or, in cases like Picasa buying a product, only to shut it down and force existing users onto a new platform (Photos in that case) with no feature parity.

If that's innovation, it's a rather sad kind. Google could do with less of that.

And as a xoogler: Google is long past trying crazy things. New things — sure, crazy — nope. Crazy won't fly in a project proposal.

FWIW most of the things mentioned in the parent comment (Waymo, Wing, etc) are not Google.

Yes, they're owned by the same holding group. But if you work at Google, you don't have access to projects, employees, and spaces.

[xmprt]

I partly agree. But only partly because Google has tried crazy things recently too. Stadia seemed pretty crazy in my eyes and it's the kind of thing that most people wrote off but I had hoped that Google could prove them wrong. They didn't and have killed it off for the most part (it still exists but I think it's back to the drawing board). A while back Google was working on building a modular smart phone with Project Ara. They killed it before it got to consumers.

It seems like Google still attempts crazy things now and then but the crazy things don't succeed like they used to. Maybe there's just not as much blue ocean for crazy things in tech to succeed like there used to and the crazy things are crazy for a reason and no one's trying it.

[gooses]

Is stadia really that crazy? OnLive existed well before stadia and was basically the same thing.

[smeagull]

It is. The lag for steam play just over wifi is insufferable. Encoding the video takes too long for latency intensive applications like video games.

[Ygg2]

Stadia isn't crazy. It's just dumb.

Is it new? No. Streaming games has been done for a good while now.

Is it exciting? Games on subscription? Already done.

Even exclusive games were done. And done better by Epic store.

Works with existing collection? Nope.

Working on any device? So does GFNow but works with current Steam collection (unless publishers is greedy).

Does it solve any interesting issues? No. But adds non-repairable console. Basic issue can't be fixed easily - Network congestion, speed of light.

On launch it was universally panned by hardware reviewers like Gamers Nexus, and others.

It's not like Google graveyard was a secret at that point.

[romwell]

>But only partly because Google has tried crazy things recently too.

Our definitions of "tried" and "crazy" clearly differ.

>They killed it before it got to consumer

By that definition, I "tried" building a spaceship yesterday. I just killed it before it got to the launch. Crazy, huh?

>Maybe there's just not as much blue ocean for crazy things in tech to succeed like there used to

Or maybe a company abandoned by its founders that ditched its "Don't Be Evil" motto for something incomprehensible ("Respect the opportunity", pardon me? Should I also "Be nice to profits" and "Revere stock value"?) isn't the shining paragon of innovation it used to be.

There is plenty of space for crazy things, more than ever before. And both Alphabet and Meta are doing crazy things. Just not as a part of their main businesses (Google/Facebook, respectively).

[claaams]

Does anyone have any good alternatives to google maps? The new sponsored content is extremely obnoxious and god forbid you accidentally mouse over it while looking at the map.

[ajsnigrutin]

OsmAnd on android for an opensource solution - downloads openstreetmaps and renders them locally, but can also use web maps if needed

Here maps from nokia for a commercial solution

[YarickR2]

Any of those with as complete list of local businesses as Google ? If I want to find an ice cream parlor, or an engine oil dealer, or a sports equipment shop in my vicinity , would all three have similar results ?

[galbar]

I use OSMAnd for navigation a and location-related stuff.

Sadly, the only complete business listing I've found is Google Maps... So I use it just for that, with all permissions revoked.

Lately, I've started to add my favorite places in OSM, directly through OSMAnd. So my personal experience has gotten better

[NGRhodes]

Google maps is useless for local results form me, I live in a village on the edge of a small town with a few dozen local businesses and 4 chain businesses and all my search results are polluted by 2 cities 30 minutes and 45 minutes away by car, which is really annoying as these results are useless to me as my disability prevents me traveling that far or amount of time.

[thayne]

Probably depends on the area. Where I live, OSM doesn't really have anything beyond just streets. But I've heard other areas have much better coverage.

[NGRhodes]

Yes, complete opposite for me, loads of single track roads and whole 4sq miles of woods/Forrest missing, including numerous public paths .

[ajuc]

I used osmand in Poland and Ireland and it's great. Better for walking and biking than Google maps. And it's fully offline.

[FpUser]

I use OsmAnd for cycling navigation. It is very good at that. At least in the places I was.

[matthias509]

You can try HERE WeGo. Add free and you can download maps for use offline.

Disclaimer: I work for HERE Technologies.

[NGRhodes]

Magic Earth is a good map/navigation app that uses OSM data and has a decent search tool. IMHO it does car navigation well, but I prefer Organic Maps for hiking/walking, so I keep both on my phone.

[durnygbur]

> Google maps started featuring ads everywhere and is a pain to try to find thing X with lidl logos everywhere.

It makes me wonder who at BP, Shell, McDonalds, Aldi, Lidl thinks that obscuring the map with their obscene logo is a good idea. They do it everywhere - Garmin devices, Google Maps, other providers. The moment you have maps, there is a queue of sales and marketing people from these companies with invitations for "conferences". Then PM/PO/manager after coming back creates turd tickets for "premium POIs".

[Frost1x]

I wonder how many people are on a mapping service like, "oh wow, Aldi, why didn't I think of that" and go to Aldi. Or perhaps they're searching for gas and don't want to optimize on route or cost and go "aha, a BP, thankfully I can actually fuel up now." I imagine it's next to no one but the way people advertise I have to assume it's not.

[kmbfjr]

Try out GCP sometime…lemme know how you feel when they want you to pay 3% of your annual spend for the privilege of being able to email them as to why their (pick a service, but BigQuery is usually my source of frustration) is degraded. The response and escalation for that 3% is essentially whenever they feel like it.

Stay away from Google. AWS has its issues but not with that level of hubris and indifference.

[highwaylights]

You should try Azure sometime. It’s a cloud service run by some scrappy upstart in the Pacific Northwest.

I heard they have some of the best support for developers, despite not having the name cachet around HN that the bigger players have.

[smeagull]

I did not expect to hear their support lauded by anyone. They prevent solutions to problems from ending up on their forums, aren't widespread enough to have solutions on stack overflow, and have documentation that is often simply inaccurate (i.e. they've changed the names of things, or moved options, etc.)

Here's an example. We have an issue, find other people on their forums that have also had it, but no solution is visible. We file a ticket. They say it's a known problem with a known workaround and tell us the workaround. Why isn't it shared? Because they wouldn't share the solution unless you're paying for support.

Some of their systems are a mess too. There are multiple ways of getting logs out of function apps, and only the most pain in the ass way that requires the most configuration is going to contain all the logs. Other viewers and ways of reading the logs will be partial.

Resource groups are a great idea though.

[mschuster91]

Azure's UI is so shockingly bad, confusing and complex it puts AWS to shame.

[highwaylights]

Seriously?

I thought it made way more sense.

I kind of wonder if this is a case of what-I-already-know bias for both of us.

[smeagull]

I found similar. Their documentation often refers to things that simply don't exist. Pictures of how menus used to look and no longer do. Multiple ways of doing the same thing that give slightly different results, with no real reason for the difference.

I have heard though, that it makes more sense for people coming out of sysadmining Windows Server networks.

[samb1729]

They also unfortunately have some shockingly bad issues with securing their services

[ghusbands]

Also, as Google seems to have a habit of summarily cancelling people's accounts across every one of its services at once, each time you add another Google service to what you use, you're increasing your risk of suddenly having your online life or business destroyed at their whim. Basically, use only the Google services you absolutely have to.

[gcbirzan]

How is that different from what AWS does? The pricing is similar (even higher at some break points, but I guess for very high spends GCP is slightly more expensive as AWS charges you 3% for more than 1M per month, vs 4% for the whole thing in GCP), and the support experience in AWS is also utterly crap. We have to go to our TAM if we need an escalation, or anything that doesn't involve blaming us.

[cornel_io]

BigQuery is so many light-years ahead of Redshift, though, even everyone on AWS still tends to use BigQuery.

[iqkznnft]

> I really love my Google smart home speaker and it's been extremely useful day to day.

There's lots of uncertainties on my life, but the fact I don't want a "Google smart home speaker" isn't one of them.

In fact, I just had a realization. If you have to say something is "smart", then it's shit. Then reason is, when a product is useful you don't need to call it smart to sell it.

[meibo]

Discounting that... "Smart Speaker" is the class of product being sold? A "speaker" still is a regular old box that you hook up to your phone or HiFi.

People clearly get something out of these and they've been around for a while.

[realharo]

The term is mostly used for speakers with a built-in assistant (Google Assistant, Alexa, etc.), where the assistant is one of the main reasons for wanting a smart speaker.

It's great for things like setting alarms, kitchen timers (don't have to touch anything with your hands, just talk), checking the weather, and controlling the other smart devices like lights, with just your voice.

[kortilla]

Your list is:

- item they are at parity with on Amazon (Alexa)

- worse cloud product struggling to compete

- a registrar without any up-sell. Literally no innovation, just a sales funnel into google @ work

- waymo is innovating, this may be one of the only spots, but they seem to be behind cruise as far as difficult scenarios

- how is wing innovating? I’ve heard no news here

Google is a bloated beast that has grown headcount by 90% in the last 5-10 years and it wasn’t by suddenly finding a trove of people that met the bar set when Gmail was a 20% and search was useful.

[ghusbands]

The voice assistant stuff is fraught - phrases work for a while and then stop working, and you have to work out the new phrase they've chosen. Like, recently, "Walk to [X]" stopped working a majority of the time, so now I'm not sure what phrasing to use when I want it to show a walking route. Same goes for adding things to a calendar or starting a timer - it works until it doesn't. As with search, things just change so much that you just can't trust it.

Almost none of the other things you mention are likely long-term significant. Firebase is going to continue at low popularity until it vanishes. Waymo can't make much progress when the current zeitgeist is that everyone can produce self-driving cars. Drone delivery keeps getting tried by lots of companies and never delivers. Google Home is copying Amazon's (Alexa) success just as Android was copying Apple's (iPhone).

AI is the lone exception in what you mention - the sheer size and scope of their AI projects has been impressive. As with Google Translate, though, the output is now polluting the very data sources that they use, making future efforts harder.

[reitanqild]

> "Google set an apartment in my calendar to meet John for coffee next week at 3pm"

(emphasis mine)

Was this what you meant or did you just get a taste of what Google has been doing to me for over a decade, autocorrect words to something ridiculous without telling me?

[rossjudson]

Check out https://imagen.research.google/

[pjmlp]

I lost count of the "innovations" that don't last more than one Google IO.

[smeagull]

So they've caught up to Apple and Amazon, and are making it easier to register a domain, something that was already incredibly simple.

And they have some other products in areas that won't see the light of day for years.

Cool.