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Anyone else feel like Google's handling of Android is genuinely incompetent at times? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago by randromeda@lemmy.ml to c/askandroid
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This isn't an iOS vs. Android thread, although I'm aware this might come off that way to some. I've been using Android phones since the Galaxy S4 and at the time it felt like Android was far and ahead the best smartphone OS at the time. It was objectively better than iOS in 2010 in just about every metric apart from UI fluidity.

I'm not so sure about that any more. I still do prefer Android - the UI, the customizability, the ability to sideload apps, etc. That said, why is it that every single time Android gets a feature that truly makes the phone more usable, Google goes ahead and guts that functionality, only for Apple to actually give a shit about that feature a few years later and do it way better.

Just off the top of my head, I can't believe Google screwed up:

  • Android Beam
  • Google Now on Tap (not to mention all the things it did that Google Assistant can't)
  • Hangouts (not necessarily Android but it could have easily been better than iMessage)
  • Nearby Notifications
  • Android @ Home
  • Bump!

I get that Google as a company is out to make money, but do they really have to shut down any functionality that isn't directly generating revenue?

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[–] lemann@lemmy.one 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hangouts was great. Respond to messages in browser, group chats that worked, and a well integrated video calling feature. It was essentially WhatsApp on steroids. Not to mention being able to reply with obnoxiously big emojis before that was a mainstream thing.

I got a whole bunch of friends to switch over to it only for Google to kill it off and replace it with...nothing? I use Messages+Duo now but they're far from a good replacement.

Google Now was another amazing thing that they killed off. That thing had a card which gave accurate predictions on journey time and notified you if there was unexpected traffic. The weather and news at a glance was really nice too. I changed launchers once it went away.

[–] henfredemars 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't know how true this is, but I've had coworkers who worked at the company and felt that a significant problem was no real reward for maintaining or improving existing projects. If you wanted to get noticed, you had to start fresh, leaving nobody to care for the projects that were actually succeeding.

[–] Resolved3874 2 points 1 year ago

This is the first time I've heard this about Google. Rewards and promotions for people who create successful things but nothing special for maintaining them once they are out in the wild.

[–] randromeda@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

I've heard this a lot too. A few friends who work at Google always say the way to go from Mid Level to Senior, or from Senior to Team Lead is to create new functionality, despite the fact that it sacrifices old apps and feautres