What is going on inside Google? Far worse search results recently, verbal ads during Maps navigation directions, and stuff like this. Do they see some writing on the wall (eu pressure?) and they’re squeezing as much as they can while it’s an option?
They are trying to diversify into business services and hardware, but those are struggling even though often heavily discounted. Their tarnished reputation is making it harder for customers in those markets to trust them.
It's worse than that: It's YoY revenue growth targets that really matter to the stock price, hence the never-ending push to put more ads into places you never expected to see them.
FWIW I've pretty-much given up on YouTube due to the aggressive ad insertions.
This is the price of participating in an irrational market.
"I never really understood the ideas in economics, in fact I almost failed to graduate from college because I couldn’t stand going to economics lectures. Hate, hate, hate the stuff. It’s like studying Bible stories or pseudoscience—economics has so little connection to daily reality. For instance, it’s completely obvious that companies can’t in fact grow forever, year after year, without hitting some debilitating limits. But the so-called value of a company is based on how much they grow from quarter to quarter. Economics as practiced by bankers is complete horseshit, but they’ve bought out all the politicians, so nothing reasonable ever gets done. In the long run, of course, the situation will resolve itself. Meanwhile we’re seeing a resurgence of the dystopic SF novel!"
[1] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/13-354.html
They are in panic mode since they realize growth will be over. Search has stagnated, they missed on social (repeatedly) and they have nowhere to improve. Ventures like the self driving car etc. were all an expensive detour.
Google is the new Microsoft (or worse, Oracle). It's just a matter of time until the rest of the world figures this out.
I wonder how long it will take to happen.
The only two that pay for G Suite migrated it to Office 365, turned it off, and never looked back.
Gsuite is the underdog here and I wonder if they’re having trouble with retention and new customer acquisition.
Edit: Oughta start taking bets on how long until this makes its way into Waze, and then how long until Google prevents us from turning Waze's voice nav off.
We're getting closer and closer every day.
Waze is already serving very aggressive modal-type ads mid-navigation.
I got a pop-up for a car repair shop 20 minutes out of my way, _mid-navigation_ with a big "add to route" option. Could not swipe it away, had to press a small 'x' button to close the ad. All this while driving and trying to figure out which way I should go the next intersection.
Edit: ah, yeah, as reustle says, banks have made multiple appearances. Far less than fast food though.
Honestly they're a usually reasonable landmark choice, they tend to be at corners and are intentionally eye-catching and recognizable. But I hate it. And I'm pretty sure that's just being used as justification for why the "feature" as a whole is acceptable (it's not).
That’s why ads are so profitable for Google. The entire system is highly automated, which lowers costs.
Big businesses absolutely have inside access to get things done that are not generally available. Heck, that's practically Google's entire support strategy - know someone who knows someone, otherwise deal with the automation which just repeats "no" in a loop. Sometimes it's just because it's not ready for wider onboarding (big customers get tapped for trialing big new features (like Uber/Lyft/etc's rideshare integration in maps), not all of which ever go further), sometimes very clearly not. E.g. current Facebook/Google legal battles, like https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/14/google-facebook-ceos-oversaw... , and that's far from the first. It's just the latest and greatest and stands a chance of actually going somewhere.
Sure, they may not be phoning up a friend and passing $$ directly to dodge using the UI's pricing. Instead they get automation built for them, so they don't have to do that. Because you're right, it doesn't scale.
I would translate it as "turn at the next left; where there is a ______."
The ______ is often a convenience store. hmmmm!
And turn at the corner 2-chome 4-ban 5-gou isn’t a helpful thing either.
A series of startups will begin to cut away at the fat and the cycle will continue.
(upon thinking about it, the above is not incompatible with your POV).
Say what? I've neither experienced nor heard others mention this, is this recent?
Coincidentally, as a result of an HN post earlier in the day (wifi required for GPS) I installed Osmand+ to try out for navigation.