"Roman Ivanov" <isroman-...@ete-km.ru> wrote in message news:hjftkk$3u...@digitalmars.com... > Roman Ivanov Wrote: >> >> They get lots and lots of undeserved attention. Even when the final >> products are not that great, and occasionally when the people praising >> them would be hostile towards the same kinds of products from smaller >> companies. >> >> Reception often border on being an outright hysteria. It's mostly the >> fault of the people who react this way, but both companies put a lot of >> effort in creating this effect via various kind of marketing too. > > Also, a lot of Google's recent software initiatives are really weird stuff > with highly questionable value. However, because of the reception > mentioned above, they kind of bend the existing software infrastructure > and culture around themselves. Not in a good way too. > > For example, I really don't like the idea that Wave is going to be a > replacement for the aging email infrastructure. (Which might not happen, > but that's how it's marketed.) I don't like the idea of an 8-gig operating > system that's designed to run one application. (Not entirely true, but > close enough to reality.) Those things might be of high quality, they may > be reliable in their own way, while still having negative effect on > software industry as a whole.
Agreed on all the above. And personally, I'd add a few more points: 1. I'd add "cloud computing" to the list of questionable initiatives (or at least questionable outside of certain niche use-cases that I'm sure probably do exist). 2. Their software generally reminds me of Apple software (no offense, or bait, intended to any Mac-users here) in that, IMO: 2.1. They tend to have lousy attention to detail (Google Code looks clean and pretty, and maybe it's reliable, but trying to use it absolutely drives me nuts. Plus, the stuff I mentioned about google maps in another post). 2.2. They're annoyingly slim on configurable settings (stuff I mentioned about google maps in another post, and why in the world they think I should be force-fed a non-standard custom skin in Chrome). 2.3. For their desktop apps, they like to force useless always-resident services onto my system. 3. Heck, Google is a web-oriented company, and I just hate modern web technology. ;)