Comment by z2
6 hours ago
This all feels like a race where the model companies try to solve doing work locally in a way that doesn't suck, before the major operating systems companies figure out AI integration into their OS that doesn't suck. It also makes me wonder why Google which has both Gemini and Android can't figure this out, and if there are lessons to draw from that.
Google is historically terrible as a product company (and has succeeded in spite of that) As their technical innovations become less of a moat (we're already there) they won't be able to win on engineering alone (they are no longer winning on engineering alone)
As a person who gets paid to make Chrome (CEF really) do its bidding, I would say Chrome is really as close to an OS as it can get, as in I've found API or service typically an OS or an external tool would provide, that wasn't built into Chrome.
How are Google products anything but outstanding in their categories? What are you comparing to?
Which products are outstanding in their categories?
Gmail isn't outstanding, search isn't outstanding, maps isn't outstanding.
They are all pretty par for the course. Google used to be outstanding... but I'm not sure of a single product they have that is outstanding (def: significantly better than the competition) anymore. On the other hand I rarely use any google products these days, so maybe I'm not the one to be judging.
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The Pixel series outside of security (to which their own flavor of Android doesn't even take advantage of like we see with GrapheneOS) doesn't have any particular outliers that would make it any more or less enticing than another company's phone.
Their ChromeOS hardware was nice but had lackluster software and by the time it was EoL'd, never got the love of ChromeOS-present.
Google TV generally gets outpaced by onn (Walmart's brand) on cost and value proposition.
And also the fact they have shown time and time again that they just kill products over and over again.
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Search for one is absolutely horrendous. It used to be great, but not so in the last years. Nowadays it’s filled with spam sites that they don’t seem to be able to filter out. And don’t get me started on the crappy AI overview that hijacks all queries.
Just today I tried a query for water filters and 1/3 of the results were ads. The other third were product pictures, or businesses in close proximity based on my ip. Then there was a box with related products/services, which was completely irrelevant to my needs, a second box with places, yet more product images and so on and so forth. Practically 70% of the real estate of the page was occupied by things I didn’t ask for. All I want is a list of relevant sites to go there and judge for myself. I don’t want Google to spoon feed me.
Other than search, in its heyday of the early 00’s, every google product success was either a 20% time project (e.g. Gmail) or an acquisition (YouTube) or a direct clone of someone else’s working product (android).
I think both can be true. Google has a history of annoying churn while still being good enough (or just … being large enough) that switching to competitors is still too high a cost for most.
For example, their "chat" app has churned 3? 4? times now? Their assistant app has churned from whatever the OG assistant was to now Gemini. Wave churned to "+" in the social category, and that's dead now.
The default placement in Android probably helps a lot, or other things, like forced signups into adjacent products (e.g., like + was doing for a while).
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Have you tried to admin a large team using Google's admin? :(
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Arguably, "exceptional" products are not ones that can vanish on a whim, like a great, great many of Google products have. Or they actually compete with other products in the same space, like a great, great many of Google products have not. Also, one would argue a good product is not one that is bought out and then deliberately destroyed to prevent its expansion into or development of a market for itself. Google is an advertising company with tremendous reach because of a handful of very aggressive and very fortunate business decisions that successfully exploded. It now uses its massive influence to exert market pressure, but the market does not always bend to its whim because sometimes it does things wrong, some of those products it pushes fail, and I can only assume some products are slaughtered because of projections on their performance regardless of their quality or utility.
https://killedbygoogle.com/
An email client (Gmail app) that is 500mb? What’s _outstanding_ about that? Almost everything Google makes now is terrible. Try some alternatives.
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Maybe you are not counting the products they kill.
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The about 7 different text chat applications they had?
At some point GoogleTalk was one of the leading global text messengers, and then it was basically destroyed by Google itself.
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Outstanding?
Well ...
https://killedbygoogle.com/
On a semi-related note, I bought a Pixel phone about a month ago, and I'm shocked by how unpolished it is. I've had so many little annoyances pop up, issues I never had on other android phones. Keyboard hiding/appearing when it's not suppose to, bluetooth dropping, WiFi dropping, network switching taking forever, screen becoming unresponsive... It's mostly all small things, but they really start to add up after a while.
Interesting. My pixel experience has been the opposite; very polished and pleasant. 10A. Wonder why the variance?
They are releasing AluminumOS with their Googlebooks, which is a AI forward OS. If its good or not we have yet to see.
It's looking like a slightly updated reskin of chromeOS with gemini features built in.
Definitely not a developer machine based on how they presented it in google IO. So if you write software, it's not looking like it'll be relevant whatsoever. I hope to be proven wrong.
If everything is in the cloud and you are just prompting agents to code for you, what exactly is “a developer machine”?
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"What do you mean, an Aluminum Falcon?!"
"WHO'S 'THEY?????'"
Microsoft has Copilot and Windows. Look what happened.
Google is probably already doing and releasing the most actual research into this (like the work that went into Gemma 4)
The only lesson I'm taking away is that we are still very early in the AI era. AI workflows look entirely different today than they did 18 months ago and I wouldn't bet on them looking the same in 18 months from now.
Folks that are interested in a way of doing work locally that doesn't suck, but which integrates LLMs, may be interested in [Barnum](https://barnum-circus.github.io/). The TLDR is that it's a programming language whose frontend is a DSL in TypeScript that is well suited for managing async and parallel work, focused on control flow, from which it is easy to invoke LLMs, and which is easy for LLMs to write. I use it to autonomously ship a very large number of PRs.
> why Google which has both Gemini and Android can't figure this out,
Not the first time an incumbent has four aces in hand and appears to be entirely unable to make anything of it.
> and if there are lessons to draw from that
Lesson 1: doing shit is hard
Lesson 2: money rules so milking the cow wins over taking the slightest risk
Don't you read HN? Nobody wants AI in their OS, especially in Windows. Common complaint that Microsoft is forcing AI into every corner of Windows.
I absolutely want AI in my OS. I just want it to be one I can trust to serve my interests, and not the company's. I'm literally in the middle of baking one in as I type this.
You can’t have one without the other. Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but any AI baked into the OS will be so in favour of the company, not you.
Microsoft implementation of Copilot is bad. It’s like they’re trying too hard and the reason they’re probably trying too hard is that they have no real presence in mobile computing, like Intel they have a hard time competing when the playing field is level.
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