This post is not about privacy concerns against Google, but my raising concern on their many products and services.
Google is constantly discontinuing their product lineup. Luckily (for me) I never gave Inbox any interest, which recently announced is being killed end of match 2019.
Earlier I’ve replaced Google Reader with Tiny Tiny RSS. Blogpost here.
Remember Answers, Buzz, Code search, Goggles, Health, iGoogle, Labs, Page Creator or Real-time search ?
Now, what about services that is not discontinued, but simply do not work?
Google Keep
Keep is a note taking app similar to Evernote and OneNote.
The beauty with cloud services like this is that you can easily share your notes with others.
I use Keep mostly to share grocery lists with my wife. Past week the sharing option is broken. We’ve tried several attempts sharing both ways to no avail.
Google Status Dashboard shows green light and no mention about problems.
Google Photos
Remember Picasa ? A great application for organizing your Photos. It was replaced by the cloud alternative “Photos” in 2016. While Photos still not have all the possibilities Picasa had, it has other advantages like easy backup and sharing.
Past few months the Desktop version (not mobile) has become terribly slow to load thumbnails. Sometimes even impossible. This is how it looks like:
Luckily the Norwegian cloud storage company Jottacloud has a very similar service that seem to work great as a possible replacement.
Hangouts
Google Hangouts was my main Instant Messenger tool until it stopped giving alerts when new messages arrived (yes I’ve looked into settings more than once).
Obviously, when you don’t get alerted with sound and/or icon, it’s pretty useless.
Movies…
Even if we need a “Spotify” for movies, I think it is far away due to incredibly complicated movie rights. Meanwhile I have decided to purchase my movies on Google Play. It seems like a viable alternative as I’m using Chromecast, and Google should have plenty bandwidth to provide stutter free HD video.
The problem I have with Google Play is that the movies often is missing Norwegian subtitles, also on the movies where they claim to have.
Surely, if I have bought a movie and report a claim, I instantly get my money back with their automated claim handling, but I really bought the movie for keeping it in the first place.
Google Search
(new tab Chrome Desktop)
The Microphone button has never been possible to press. It could be related to Norwegian language, but maybe not show it if it doesn’t work Google ?
What is going on?.. and who to contact ?
My intent is not make a rant post about Google. They have still a lot of good things going on, however my issues is real and frustrating, and frankly I don’t know who to turn to except looking for alternatives.