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Comment by ihnorton | Hacker News Reader

Lately I've had a persistent feeling of annoyance with several Google products. Each annoyance is small enough to tolerate individually, but in aggregate it seems to me that Google has really lost something in the attention-to-detail department; this kind of persistent annoyance was the same thing that led me to Google from other services years ago.

Two examples:

- maps: new interface is so terrible that I am actively looking for a replacement. It is painfully slow, search results are no longer displayed on the same page as the map (what?), and in general the minimalism has gone too far: the interface requires too much hunting.

- gmail: Previous/Next-message buttons flake out constantly (grayed out - clicking does nothing). New formatting options are hard to use and obnoxious.

And an old one that I ran in to again today:

- there is no (intuitive) way to copy a URL from google search results without all of the google redirect garbage. This fundamentally degrades the world-wide web. For example, I want to email a link to a pdf. If an in-browser pdf reader is not available, then the link downloads immediately and there is no way to get the de-obfuscated link. I clicked the "share" button in hopes that this might give me the link; but no, it wanted me to share on G+.

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There's a reason for this pattern. When I complained to a friend at Google about the new GMail compose, he said that what was driving it was that Larry wanted a beautiful, consistent look throughout all Google's products. That sort of motivation leads to design disasters. The various Google products may have been inconsistent, but each of their designs was the product of long evolution.

Steve Jobs could probably have forced consistency on Google's products without breaking them, but few CEOs have the taste Steve had.

What a load of crap. Plenty of untasteful and inconsistent crap had come out of Apple, under Jobs; it's painfully easy to find examples [0]. Everyone is going to have their opinions, of course, but the compose, unlabeled / iconography buttons, detractors of WYSIWYG emails, etc are _not_ disasters for myself and many others.

[0] http://www.tuaw.com/2011/12/06/on-ui-inconsistency-in-ios-5/

unlabeled / iconography buttons

How do you know what anything does with graphical-only buttons, in Gmail compose UI, Android copy/paste UI, etc., without tapping everything at least once and potentially losing data?

If it's any consolation, if you long-hold an Action Item (anything in the top or botton bars, including the copy/paste UI) in android a tooltip will appear explaining what the button does.

I use keyboard coords to navigate and operate most facets of GMail, and all of the buttons have a tooltip, distinctive icons, and have the ability to undo. I'd be willing to eat crow if there were actually a study showing that users of 2-3 icons without labels don't know their purpose after the first couple uses. Instead, we get a bunch of parroting about how Google and Page have lost their way -- nothing scientific.

As for Android, sure there is no undo, and I wasn't really speaking for Android, but I'd, again, be really surprised if the cut/copy/paste is statistically confusing. I'd only suggest the paste option only be offered in the context-menu above the selection and not also next to the cut/copy icons. I'd also argue that it's really unlikely I'd be doing anything with an Android device that isn't repeatable with little effort or would be undoable and before I possibly had to cut my teeth once or twice. I think iOS did a better job here, as Android offers no means of backing out a change.

If you're going to be so belligerent, at least use an example of something that wasn't developed while Jobs was disengaged and on his deathbed.

More importantly, though, I love that you read 2 paragraphs and then blew your top ("what a load of crap" -- really?) over a parenthetical comment that was already qualified with a "probably."

Here're some, random, examples off a Google SERP...

From an acclaimed Apple-enthusiast: http://daringfireball.net/2004/10/themes

Ever seen the window controls for a full-screen iTunes 10? http://zapp0.staticworld.net/reviews/graphics/products/uploa...

More: http://watchingapple.com/2008/05/how-apples-contextual-menus...

May Jobs rest in peace, but iOS 5 didn't just materialize in a single day, and Jobs presented it, undoubtedly as the next-best sliced bread, at WWDC.

More importantly, though, I love that you read 1 paragraph and then blew your top ("belligerent" -- really?) over a comment. It's really tiring to hear about how "if only Jobs were here" or "Jobs would never let this happen!" pg should know better, and so, I won't hold his hand.

I think you misread pg's point. He didn't say jobs produced perfect consistency.

Pg said that forcing consistency tends to result in bad design decisions. Maybe jobs could do it, page can't.

To disprove that point, you'd need to show an example of forced consistency across apple platforms that degraded usability. Showing inconsistency isn't responding to the argument.

I really can't see the line between the top-most comment, about bugs, pg's special insight into Jobs, and the conclusions you've drawn. What Jobs has to do with the class of issues bulleted, in the top-most comment, is beyond me. There's not even any proof being shown that what Page or Google is doing is wrong; just a bunch of parroting of blanket statements.

I really didn't want to compare Apple and Google or Page and Jobs; that's the point. We're not even comparing the same things, and you don't have to look far to find power users scorning The Apple Way. We can go on all day with issues pertaining to Apple's HIG -- forced consistency -- and the degrading of usability.

I'll try to state it more clearly. I'm just restating pg.

1. Pg says forced ui consistency tends to be bad. 2. Maaaybe a skilled design genius like jobs could do it (maybe), but most people shouldn't try.

His argument didn't turn on Jobs. It was a rhetorical flourish to bolster the idea. If even the best in the field (according to pg) couldn't do it well, then others should be wary.

I really doubt pg would be suggesting, as an entrepreneur and investor in entrepreneurship, to be wary about besting supposed idols. Myths, hearsay, and not scientific.

The top-most comment is fair to point out bugs, but I don't see the correlation with Jobs and his genius, UI/UX brush. Are you suggesting mandates for consistent UI -- whatever that has to do with the article's discussion about the compose window -- creates more bugs? Makes Maps slow? They should fix those things, but it has nothing to do with UI / UX consistency nor Jobs.

I used to work for a software company that had a visualization product with several kinds of visualizations. One of the design philosophies was that all the visualizations had to have the same interaction model. Which of course made very little sense and artificially constrained the visualizations to the point that some of them were next to useless.

Customers liked the consistent interaction model for about the first 20 minutes, until they wanted to do something that was natural, but specific, for the visualization they were working with. When it turned out the product didn't and wouldn't ever support that thing they wanted to do, the entire house of cards came falling down.

Eventually we got rid of the person responsible for that decision and the product progressed rapidly and customer satisfaction (and sales) went up exponentially.

Consistent design is a very hard thing to get right, and very easy to get wrong. I think Apple under Jobs knew how to use consistency as a basic scaffolding for an application, but the actual details could still be quite app specific. The framework kept users oriented, but didn't dictate the functions of the software.

So why isn't any telling Larry that this idea isn't working that well? I thought Google was the kind of place the higher ups could tell the CEO that his idea wasn't so hot?

Fwiw, this search for 'beautiful consistent look across products' doesn't seem to be confined to Google. Yahoo Groups had a decent interface till they introduced a completely broken, unusable new look named "Neo". Just thinking about how unusable this made using Groups, makes me angry.

This was a good comment but the Steve Jobs bit was unnecessary (because people like me will get distracted and flame you for it).

Is your distraction his problem though?

If you want to be understood, you have to make sure your point is clear. Throwing in an unnecessary controversial point, especially about someone as divisive as Jobs, just muddles pg's main point.

It will be interesting to see how the new design of iOS 7 goes with this in mind.

The new Maps interface isn't driven by the idea of making it "consistent" with GMail, it's driven by the same idea that Google Search's homepage used to represent -- simplicity. The Map is the UI.

A single search box. You type in POIs, the Map is constructed around the search results.

The old Google Maps (the tile based one) was based on the idea of a multi-pane map with gadgets and a side panel of 10 ranked search results, but the map was the same no matter the search (pre-rendered tiles). Search results had to be clicked on the map to get a popup to see what it was. The new Maps is based on the idea that the Map itself is the search result The POIs are rendered directly into the map, just like a specialized paper map. It is based on spatial based exploration and relevancy.

There's a difference between a design disaster and "I don't like this because it is different than what I was used to and I don't want to change" IMHO, the new maps is what Maps should have been all along.

It was always a single search box. And it always centered around results. Removing the side panel makes it so I now can't use a browser text search to find the results I want faster.

So, I disagree, and I think the old way was both easier (because I knew it) AND simpler (less complex). What now?

And here is the difference between Google employees and their users. Google believes, and has told their employees, that when they change something, users will always hate it because it's different, and that there is a gestation period during which the majority will "get used to it."

That "gestation period" now seems infinite, and any change is allowed to remain because real user feedback is ignored.

I think we've seen lot of instances of major vendors changing something, and everyone complaining, and then the new design becomes the new normal. Practically every Facebook redesign got pissed on.

Apple famously got ripped for Final Cut Pro X, for many of the same reasons people are ripping the new Maps (bunch of power user features removed)

I personally prefer the map to show the results. They are spotlighted and easy to see. The result box on the side used to annoy me because I'd have to keep moving the mouse and/or eyes from the list to the map and back. The new Maps consistently pops up the Infobox in the same place too.

You can't please everyone, but on mobile and touch devices, having a multi-pane interaction model is lame anyway. So really, the desktop is simply converging with the tablet.

>>I think we've seen lot of instances of major vendors changing something, and everyone complaining, and then the new design becomes the new normal. Practically every Facebook redesign got pissed on.

You might be getting confused. There's a difference between the new design becoming the "new normal," and the new design being tolerated because there aren't any real alternatives to the product. After all, the only reason Facebook users stopped complaining about each redesign is because they realized Facebook doesn't care what users think. (But I bet when major advertisers complain behind closed doors, they listen.)

Google Maps is not like Facebook. While it is currently the dominant maps service, it is not the only one. Not only that, but it also cannot rely on a strong network effect to protect it like Facebook can; if all your friends are on Facebook, then being on MySpace is kind of dumb. Can you say the same about Google Maps?

Here's the idea: you can afford to make sweeping, disruptive design changes if and only if you have a virtually unbreakable monopoly in your market. This is why Microsoft could risk changing the MS Office interface back in 2007. Even if they had screwed up, what would people switch to? There wasn't a good enough alternative. Again though, can you say the same about Google Maps?

No, obviously the stickiness is less based on network effects and more on brand perception. But a brand can also die from staleness.

A new generation of users are coming online whose experience is predominately a mobile one, and on touch, sparse, touchable, explorable interfaces are the norm. If Google simply kept maps the way it has been for a decade, sooner or later, they'd find themselves criticized because it doesn't work like "Apple Maps".

In fact, people seem more willing to adopt radical new user paradigms if the form factor changes. If I change your desktop email, you'll get annoyed, but if I create a radically new out of the box mobile email experience, you'll be more amenable to learn it.

>A new generation of users are coming online whose experience is predominately a mobile one, and on touch, sparse, touchable, explorable interfaces are the norm. If Google simply kept maps the way it has been for a decade, sooner or later, they'd find themselves criticized because it doesn't work like "Apple Maps".

Or, you know, they could have changed them into something better, either incrementally or in one step, instead of the new broken design.

>I think we've seen lot of instances of major vendors changing something, and everyone complaining, and then the new design becomes the new normal.

Sure, because what else are the users supposed to do? Return to MapQuest?

Meanwhile their hatred increases...

Note that Apple, after the user rebellion from Final Cut Pro X, made the previous version available again, and is re-introducing many of the features removed into the new version in a manner consistent with the new (substantially improved) user interface.

I hate that I can't simply place a pointer on the map and ask the GPS coordinates at that point. It's as if it is a walled product. On my Android - the same. Can't simply save a pointer on the map as GPS coordinates to a contact.

Interesting idea. However, my two year old machine that was top of the line in 2011 couldn't run the new maps.

This is not uncommon from what I've read.

Performance issues are valid, the Map obviously taxes machines more because it is using GPU rendering, but I would expect them to optimize it as time goes by.

But why release a version that has performance issues even on two year old hardware without optimizing it first. The new google maps is slow to the point of unusability on my two year old hardware. I can live with the rest of the UX changes, but not with the magnitude of the slowdown.

My particular issue with the new maps is when I search for a new unknown city and zoom out to see bigger area - pointer is gone! Try searching for city Kazan in Russia and try to quickly get an idea where the city is. Pointer or any mark of fhe city is gone when you zoom out enough!

There's still some important stuff missing in the redesign though, like My Places. You can reach it through the settings menu in the top-right corner, but it just redirects to the old layout. I seriously hope they're not considering removing this feature...

Another issue: there doesn't seem to be a way to go to your current location, which is especially annoying because Google Maps decides to show me the US at the beginning (I'm not in the US).

I am not sure how consistent they are... Beside the obvious learning curve to learn the new composer, I still find the old composer faster to use and more productive than the new one. Unless you know all the keyboard shortcut, now to use bullet points you need to click on the _A_, move the mouse on the bullet point icons and then clicking. Before one click was enough.

Larry wanted a beautiful, consistent look throughout all Google's products. That sort of motivation leads to design disasters.

Of all the mantras from 37signals over the years, the one that I agree with and adhere to most is "context over consistency" for exactly this reason.

Everything about the new Google Maps besides the maps themselves is so mindbogglingly bad that I have no idea how they thought it was ready for public consumption. It seems to be missing most of the features of the classic Google Maps, and those that are present are far harder to use. The UI for the public transit schedules is pretty much the only thing that seems like it could be an improvement once I get used to it (but for now it's mostly just really awkward).

I've especially been missing the ability to make directions with multiple stops (I used to use that feature about 50% of the time). Also, the interface is a lot slower - it's tolerable on my 1 year old computer, but it's close to unusable on my 5 year old laptop.

It works just fine for me in chrome on my six-year-old laptop. What browser are you using?

I'm not op, but I used chrome on a fully upgraded 2011 13 inch MacBook air. New maps was so slow it was unusable. I used chrome.

Also not OP, but on my 2012 Macbook Air I had to turn off the maps preview because it was making my machine very warm, reached over 98C before I switched it off. Only took a minute. I was very disappointed.

Chrome on a 4 year old desktop. And chrome on a low end 1 year old desktop. Slow for both, not to the point of being unusable, but slow enough to be annoying.

Even on my new i5 laptop, it's not quite as snappy as the old version.

> I've especially been missing the ability to make directions with multiple stops (I used to use that feature about 50% of the time)

Ah, so it's not because I've gotten dumber and my eyes have gone worse, they really removed it.

Bloody hell...

The New Android map app is bad too. Rip the menu button, no way to get other routes suggestions anymore, I didn't find a quick way to switch from navigate view to route view.

All that is still the move toward less and less control for the user, initiated by Apple. I hope Google can revert soon, now that it is actually Apple which is coping with Google.

Other routes are there:

When you have searched for a destination, click on the bottom right where it shows the commute type (car, bus, bicycle, walking) and estimated time. From there you'll find a list of three suggested routes (at least I do). When clicking on any of the the suggested routes, it'll show all of them in the map and you can also choose a route by clicking on it in the map.

Additionally, I get back from navigation to route view just by pressing the back button. Works just like it should?

Just tried it and it is like you say, thanks. Influenced by the previous version, I thought pressing back button would exit navigation.

Then one more complain: in the previous version I could get a metric scale from the labs, which I think is not there anymore. I think a map without a scale is a toy-map.

The latest version has a scale by default. Turn on auto updates in the Play Store or see if you have a manual update ready for Maps.

I really hate the lack of ability to show street view and a map at the same time. How is that an improvement? It is now very hard to know where you are looking at.

Let alone know where you'll be able to get a street view or not. The blue overlay is great in the old maps, now I spend 10 minutes randomly clicking around on roads to see what has one or not.

This is the worst ! I used to drag and drop the yellow character to view exactly the place I wanted to see, now I have to go back and forth between maps view and streetview until i get to the right place...

Plus, the switch between views (public transport, bike, traffic) being hidden in a hover menu that disappears when I make a search... Now I have to first think about enabling the mode I want before making my search. How is that a progress ?

When I got in to the beta, I thought it looked great, but after I tried to use it, I quickly reverted back to the old maps

Same here. I used street view combined with find directions, to find how the streets at each exit point in the route look like. Now it's impossible to open the street view of a route point.

I've filed it as a "commentary" (it doesn't allow bug reporting) through the feedback tool; if many of us do the same, maybe we'll get them to listen.

I can't even figure out how to get a permalink in Maps anymore. Nightmare.

It's the chain button next to the printer button just to the left of the map. It's... right there. What would you prefer they do to make it easier for you?

[EDIT] Oh, looks like I don't have the new version yet. Oops. Thanks for the correction.

No, it is not. The new maps does not have a print button:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/vLT6DzwLd...

Unfortunately you are looking at Classic Maps. Classic Maps was perfectly usable, I agree.

Youtube:

* Buffering was nerfed/broken some time ago. I can no longer watch 720p+ videos on youtube at all.

* Changing video quality now has a long and unavoidable delay, and often fails outright.

* Google are evidently uneasy about the profile name that I signed up with, and have been repeatedly nudging me to change it. I don't know how to reassure them about my choice.

* Advertising. Everywhere.

There's ads on youtube? I wouldn't know, I'm using adblock

A trick I use when I change quality is immediately clicking on the time bar, it enforce the change right away.

I agree with all the annoying points above!

I can watch 720p+ videos but I have definitely noticed recently that loading is slower and sometimes more inconsistent.

The subscription feed is a mess. Before it was a grid and now it's in a list. The only reason why I know there are more videos uploaded than what's in my feed is because video authors title their videos in parts. So if I see "Part 3" I know that Part 2 and Part 1 are somewhere, just not in my feed.

YouTube keeps insisting I merge my legacy YouTube account with Google+. Then YouTube insisted I use two-factor authentication (to watch cat videos) and made me choose between giving them my phone number so they could send me a text message or giving them my phone number so they could robo-call me.

I think the last time they bugged me about it there was no choice to opt out (because I have some uploaded videos on it IIRC). I clicked around and somehow I now have a new G+ account which is different than the one linked to my Google account which is linked to my Youtube account.

Brillant.

Luckily you can fix the buffering behaviour with a browser extension. Look for "SmartVideo for Youtube".

I hate that Google "created" a youtube account for me, just because I use Gmail doesn't mean I want a youtube account (I don't). One day I forget to sign out of Gmail, I browse to Youtube, and bam, now I have a Youtube account, I'm signed in, and my video history is tracked, and I have to manually turn that off. I didn't ask for that.

If you're not on Google+, you can delete that.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/55759?hl=en

adding to this:

- google voice: selecting 'all' only selects displayed items (calls, missed calls, voicemails, etc) so to delete items, you have to click 'all', then 'delete' then 'all' again. If you have 1000 items in your history, it takes 100 clicks to delete them all. Compare that to gmail - you can select every single message not just those displayed.

The "new" Google Maps is essentially an opt-in beta. The "replacement" is to continue to use classic Maps until it is done. It is obvious that most of the old features like multi-stop directions will return, but Google needed external testers because WebGL is very dependent on machine performance and GPU, and they indicated as much when they limited the initial users to an explicit signup form.

I find the new Maps interface incredibly better than the old one. Search results appear directly on the map so you can see spatial relationships, easily highlighted and clickable. It invites exploration. No separate Google Earth plugin needed, seamlessly move from 2D to 3D, no separate Flash plugin for Street View. The way the map spotlights important roads and related places when you click on a particular POI helps with planning.

The only downside is it is slow, because it is a very complex web app, probably the most complex one ever written, but I'm sure they'll optimize it by the time it is ready for public consumption.

  It is obvious that most of the old features like 
  multi-stop directions will return

IMHO that is far from obvious.

I'm not sure they will optimize enough to make it as fast as the 'old' on an old machine. They won't put that much effort and just require machines supporting accelerated css/webgl and fast enough to run complex javascript such as this.

I hope they manage to keep the "old" maps accessible after switching to the new, since the responsiveness is so low it negates all the new features.

- in Google plus, scroll down the steam, then decide you want to use j k to navigate, pof! you are back on top.

- in Google plus, you need to play maze to avoid the pop ups.

- contacts takes ages to load, when I usually use it only for a little tweak that should take 3 sec.

I just figured out that last point about google URLs today.

I wanted to copy/paste a link in a chat window but the google redirect url is so long it takes up the whole chat window and more! Instead of the domain.com/word I wanted.

If you're using chrome, you might want to check out this extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/remove-google-redi...

Thank you. Installed.

Exactly what I wanted.

For Firefox, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/google-no-tra...

I wrote a pair of shell scripts to deal with the URL encoding. I've also switched to DuckDuckGo for virtually all my search.

Apologies as HN's quoting is line-wrapping and I can't seem to fix it. I'll pastebin this.

http://pastebin.com/YvsAPm5u

> Apologies as HN's quoting is line-wrapping and I can't seem to fix it. I'll pastebin this.

Try indenting by four spaces. Like this:

    Apologies as HN's quoting is line-wrapping and I can't seem to fix it. I'll pastebin this.

I had. For whatever reason, code with linebreaks was getting wrapped ...

Oh. Duh. That's my CSS stylesheet. I'd gotten sick of seeing unwrapped long lines requiring horizontal scroll, I've got:

    pre { white-space: normal; }

... set in my Stylebot stylesheet.

Re: maps, you can revert to "classic" by clicking on the gear.

I tried this, but it keeps forgeting the choice to use the classic maps and I always have to go to the options and pick it again. It's not such a big deal, but yeah, it's annoying.

Web apps and me are constantly at odds because I run all sorts of privacy extensions, I disabled Local Storage (via folder permissions) and I don't let cookies persist. So, I just stopped using web apps wherever possible in favor of native ones. It pisses me off too because the web (and the Internet) could be so much better than this.

Anyway, for the longest time - even with a bare browser (no extensions) - YouTube wouldn't save certain settings (annotations disabled, video quality), even while I was logged in.

Aren't you more uniquely identifiable on a native app, though?

Most of the native apps that I use don't serve ads and they don't pull in third-party resources from the web.

When you get back to the classic interface there's a yellow message at the top asking if you want to make the change permanent.

For now.

Hopefully, it will work like Google Groups. Meaning that for the next two or three years, we will be told that "The old Google Maps will be going away soon," but it won't actually happen.

It's so nice of Google to give their users so much advance warning of incoming suckage. I guess that's part of the whole don't-be-evil mission statement. Kudos to them.

The new Google Maps on Android is disappointing. I can appreciate the clean, minimal interface, but with it are gone:

1. Zoom buttons. Now I have to hold the phone in one hand while pinch in and out with another, instead of a tap with one finger.

2. Offline maps. I suppose it's part of the "cloud strategy".

3. Secondary streets at common zoom level. Now I have to really zoom in to see them. A tad out and they're gone. Sometimes it shows them just fine, though. Perhaps, it's a bug.

It's not intuitive at all, but for zooming, you can double-tap-and-hold, then move your finger up and down to zoom in and out (or is it out and in?). That way you don't need two hands to zoom.

maps: I love the new interface. The only thing missing is re-adding rightclicks for additional options. For what I use maps nearly everything is easier than it was before. But as you want a replacement, what about OSM [1]? It's becoming better every day and a lot of areas have better data than google.

gmail: It became slower and more bloated all the time, the interface changes looked nice but were, as many said, horrible UX. I know the lack of tags is a dealbreaker for many but as I can live without them, fastmail.fm [2] is a replacement that does pretty much everything else better and faster.

search: Yeah, the lack of easy linking is extremely annoying and has been for quite some time now. My problem is still that I need the bubble to get relevant results for me. Every time I try to use DDG [3] or other replacements, searches result in way too much noise over signal. And with those boxes on the right side google now has what was one of the best features of DDG.

At least calendar is still useable for now as I haven't found a replacement I really liked.

[1]: http://www.openstreetmap.org/ [2]: http://fastmail.fm [3]: http://duckduckgo.com

>- maps: new interface is so terrible that I am actively looking for a replacement. It is painfully slow, search results are no longer displayed on the same page as the map (what?), and in general the minimalism has gone too far: the interface requires too much hunting.

I can't for the life of me figure out how to show street view on android's google maps. I know it used to exist, but did they really take it out?

Exactly, lot of UI features in GMail, Maps and Google plus are starting to piss of me. The UI used to be nice and comfortable to work with before, but now it is plain horrible. I read somewhere that Marissa Mayer used to control the UI of GMail and Maps(she apparently used to depend on metrics to get things right). Does this have to do something with she leaving?

> the link downloads immediately and there is no way to get the de-obfuscated link

If you go to your downloads list you can right click and do "copy link address" (at least on chrome and firefox)

Or use "wget" for the download, which lists all the intermediate address steps as it resolves them.

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