Google's Go

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Roman Ivanov" <isroman-del at ete-km.ru> wrote in message 
news:hjftkk$3up$1 at 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. ;)