Slashdot Mirror
Google: Stop Making Apps! (A Love Letter)
An anonymous reader writes: Seasoned Silicon Valley software executive and investor Domenic Merenda has written a love letter to Google, and it's filled with "tough" love. The main thesis is that Google, as a company, should stop making apps, and instead focus on using its enormous data assets to make meaningful connections between people and facilitate organic engagement within a rich ecosystem. Interestingly, the article cites Wikipedia's information that Google maintains over 70 apps on the Android platform alone.
Who is this guy? Hid most impressive job was a software engineer at Playboy, Inc. Christ, this site sucks. Stop putting these shit articles out.
and instead focus on using its enormous data assets to make meaningful connections between people and facilitate organic engagement within a rich ecosystem.
I think they're working on an app for that.
They keep boning the interface for maps, someone could seriously make a buck just skinning it and giving easy access to the offline caching feature and so on. And googles, why for you no have keywords? I just wind up going to the web interface for image searches. So there's an extra step.
Inbox is pretty nice, I guess. I didn't get the impression that there was much competition in that space. Am I wrong?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Lately, every time I've allowed a google app to update I've regretted it. I was just fine with gmail the way it was. The latest incarnation I just don't like. For one I really hate how they are starting to ignore the menu button on phones that have them. I like having a menu button down at the bottom of the phone, close to where my thumbs are naturally. If I wanted an iphone I would have bought an iphone.
In any case I've learned to never update a google app that I like. One of the biggest problems with the Google Play walled garden is the complete lack of version history. Once a new version is out, the old version is gone forever. Always backup your apps before upgrading I've learned (and forgotten too many times).
But the real problem is that google apps are getting bigger and bigger and slower and slower. I don't install very many apps, and I finally ran out of space on my older phone, due to mostly google apps getting so huge. And over time my phone is getting less and less responsive. It's not like I have a lot of apps installed, and I never automatically update them. I do it judiciously, after looking at the changes list.
As I mentioned I don't update google apps much anymore, but the Google Play app and infrastructure update automatically and silently, and I have a hunch this is part of the slowdown. Sometimes I get a ton of "google play services has stopped" error messages until I reboot.
Combined with information from your Gmail usage, your search history, your GPS locations, and even your medical history, Google can make meaningful and timely recommendations of articles, experiences, and products that you would be excited to engage with. This is the future of the virtual assistant. Google should be connecting the dots between financial transactions, health records, search history, GPS data, app usage, Gmail threads, IM conversations, and more. If you book a flight to New York, Google should be suggesting not only contacts you might want to re-engage with when you land, but also a list of restaurants or activities that match the preferences of both parties. And perhaps some curated topics to bring up when you get together.
Wow... so this guy wants Google to know absolutely every private detail of your life so it can "connect the dots"? Financial transactions? Medical records? Google knows what food you and your friends like best so can recommend restaurants? Is this sort of hand-holding really something people want? Do you really need a computer algorithm to tell you to look up a friend in New York if you're traveling there? Can you not just ask your friend to find you a great local place to eat (hinting at a few of the types of places or foods you like)?
There's a lot that Google can do that would be really hard to do on your own. If you're in a strange city, the ability to ask "Where is the nearest Italian Restaurant?" is awesome, and it can guide you there in your rental car step by step (this was exactly what happened to me a month ago). Google doesn't need to know my food preferences. I can decide for myself that I'm in the mood for some deep dish pizza, thank you. And financial transactions or medical records? No, Google, you're not getting them from me, at least if I have anything to say about it.
I don't consider myself privacy nut. I use G-mail, and don't mind the targeted ads I see. I don't really care all that much about Google tracking my search results - fairly boring stuff to anyone but myself. I can always switch to DuckDuckGo if I need privacy there. But the extent to which some people are willing to give *everything* to Google sometimes surprises me.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I think that 'organic engagement within a rich ecosystem' is something that you usually have to visit a tropical medicine specialist to get cleared up; horrid parasitic infections, that sort of thing.
@anon: "Yeah, you've got to love the pseudo-intellectual jargon he's spewing."
...
'focus on using its enormous data assets to make meaningful connections between people and facilitate organic engagement within a rich ecosystem'
agile, business-available, components, elastic, elastic-capacity, environments, extensible, front facing, leverage, methodologies, MVC, public cloud, resources, solutions, teams, test-driven, touchpoint, versioned API services
Nothing so emphasizes that I am living in the 21st century as when I'm driving somewhere out in the city and speak "Take me home" into my phone and my phone vocally guides me there step by step. To me, in this day and age, Google Maps + Google Navigate are incredible apps that honestly fill me with awe every time I use them.
I think that 'organic engagement within a rich ecosystem' is something that you usually have to visit a tropical medicine specialist to get cleared up; horrid parasitic infections, that sort of thing.
I assumed it meant having sex with the local wildlife.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it