Why? Is it just trendy to dislike Google? What are the alternatives to Google services? I am curious, I am not ready to dump Google, but I have been diversifying the services I use. Started using Outlook and Skydrive.
Over time several things have happened. We got used to some of the good things about Google and made them our baseline expectation. They got used to all that income and growth. To keep up growth they had to "optimize" and in many cases put profit before aesthetics/ethics. The "unintrusive text links" for high value searches got bigger and more intrusive. 'Contextual links' in Gmail became contextual to your digital life (eg scanning your emails and analyzing your browsing).
You need a lot of goodwill believe 'Don't be evil.' From an average company it sounds phony. A lot if stuff has a tipping point. So when a free service gets shut down or rolled into another service its seen as putting profit first, herding users into profitable products or just generally sucking. Before it might have been seen as failing fast. When they ask users for a phone number now, they react with cynicism.
Google started with a lot of goodwill. Perhaps too high. People react emotionally when you don't live up to perceived promises.
Maybe there is a lesson here about over promising.
In a way, I feel that Google has lost what they "were about". If Google overpromised anything, it was that they were the "open internet company". In many ways, that and "don't be evil" was what defined them.
Which is funny because these things were a smoke screen from day 1. Google is a past master at doing things for themselves, but throwing in a token benefit for everybody else so they look like the good guys.
Summer of Code was primarily a recruiting tool for Google, not a contribution to open source. They spent 0.06% of profit on Summer of Code, and in exchange got access to some great developers and got a mostly-unpaid trial period to evaluate them. That's a HR recruiting gold mine.
Despite their entire operation running on Linux, most years they contributed so little back to the kernel that they didn't even show up on most rankings -- and adjusted for corp size they were barely a footnote. It's only recently that they have started to contribute anything substantial to Linux. One of their largest contribution to Linux is cloning all the GPL code into BSD code so it can be sold for profit.
Sure Google has done a few good things for Open Source, but far far less than one should expect.
I hear this from so many people BUT explain to me a different scenario on how the largest Internet company can run things? I see the push back against the NSA, Open Sourced Android (Closed Google Apps), almost everything that came out better for the customers (Gmail 1GB storage, G+ (you decided in detail who can read your post) APIs that are extremely usable) Google Voice was/is amazing. My beloved Open Source products get millions of investment from Google.
The BAD in my eyes: Killing off of many products (I don't use new Google products normally)
And if one doesn't trust Gmail then why would one trust Outlook or Yahoo Mail?
The one thing I complain the most about GDrive is only one account is allowed to log in and use google drive. I just don't understand why Google engineers haven't fix this issue.
I haven't had an issue with it, and I've been using Outlook.com pretty much since it came out. Before then I was using the Windows Live Mail desktop client and before then I was using Gmail.
A bug I encounter is when I click on an unread email, and if I then refresh the page the email is still mark unread, unless I read that email and hover to another email. Th
Also, I will have to disagree on the design part. I find outlook.com refreshing. For me, that's just about right. Minimal, if any, bells and whistles.
disclaimer I have not used outlook and my opinion is based on this one thing and some other quick looks over the shoulder.
Google can justify the move as being good for users, but I strongly suspect that, in most cases, this agenda is not supportive of the value proposition that the individual properties offer its users. I suspect that Google knows this, but their goals are not consistent with that of most of these users.
In other words, Google is willing to take a hit from angry users in exchange for building a unified user network.
Right now you can search for a video with Google search, watch it on Google YouTube, watch some Google ads preroll, all on your Google Nexus, powered by Google Android, connected to Google Fiber.
Google is AOL's wet dream.
Google has done a lot to shoot itself in the foot regarding goodwill in the developer community, even though they still contribute a lot to open source.
They killed off Reader and a lot of other products, has closed down many open APIs, so instead of enthusiasm when they launch a new product, now they get "oh yeah, how long is this product going to live?"
They are now forcing every service and pushing their users into Google+ whether they want to or not. It seems like Social is something Google is obsessed with winning, and they are happy to alienate some users in order to do that.
Now, Google isn't that bad yet, but they're slowly on their path. Recent "YouTube comments requires G+", "Hangouts in GMail requires G+" are examples of those. And as with the past against Microsoft, the same sentiments are now being replayed.