I feel like the quality of articles on Ars Technica has deteriorated. Back in 2011 when I first discovered Ars Technica it consistently had in depth high quality articles in a sensible tone of voice.<p>Over the past several years its output has more and more seemed to be driven by clickbait titles like this and the tone of voice used in the article seems to be more about provoking rage regarding various subjects than the sensible even handed tone it used to have in articles back when I started reading it.
No - Seriously, an article with a title like this is unhelpful. First, hating Google seems unproductive because Google created many successful products people love, or like to use. Examples include Android, Google Search, GMail, Chrome Books, Google Cloud, etc. Second, I can understand why people prefer non-Google products, but I cannot see hating Google. Google is a business which has not killed or harmed anyone.<p>At worst, Google has a few persistent problems. 1) It creates dossiers on people so it can show more relevant ads. This is not good but it is also not a reason to hate Google. 2) It tends to be somewhat dysfunctional. Examples include recent declines in search quality, and the refusal continue to invest in business which are not instant successes (the exception to this rule is Google Cloud). 3) It is very hard to get any customer support. The solution here is to go to a company which has more accessible customer support if you do not like Google's approach.<p>I have not seen any reason to hate, or even dismiss Google. Google has created a lot of good products. We would not have modern search without Google. Hating Google seems like an unhelpful extreme behavior. Ars Technica should not publish articles like this.
I feel that eventually people will hate every commercial product and the company. The interests of users and the company have a fundamental conflict because one is trying to get as much money as possible from the other with the least possible cost. The only honeymoon time is when the company is still trying to win customers by sacrificing their profit.<p>People probably should hate every mature company.
This is a joke right? Ars is the leader in shitting on Google. I will say this, Ars has absolutely mastered the Fox News/Tucker Carlson ersatz outrage generation and quick pivot to actively denying their part in what they spent months engendering.
I’m not sure when I started to hate Google, but I remember the day I broke free of them.<p>I was a hardcore Gmail fan- had everything organized in perfect folders. I used it since the invite-only days. I survived the migration from folders to tags and eventually decided tags were better. Then one day I read about inbox… it was just a new interface. It required no commitment or migration, why not try it out? It was amazing! It broke me free from the shackles of organizing and let me treat email like a todo list instead. I was hooked. I used inbox for a long time- long enough for me to hate Google, but I knew I was hooked with email. It looks like I used inbox for around 4 years. Then… Google killed inbox. Well, there was no chance I would ever go back to awful Gmail after experiencing the glory of inbox, so that was just what I needed. I have my own email domain now and can switch providers as I see fit- no more will I be hooked into a product via email. Thank you Google for killing inbox!<p>I don’t search with Google. I don’t use chrome. I don’t use android. I block as much of Google as possible. I very rarely use YouTube. I NEVER say ‘Google it’. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an Apple fanboy either, but I don’t hate them like I do Google.
People claim to hate Google but they don't want to use other search engines - Google has above 90% market share despite other options being a click away.