You'd think that a company with a $2T evaluation and on a long honeymoon with shareholders is thriving, launching successful products and nurturing an enthusiastic workforce.
Quite the opposite instead.
#Google Search has become a pile of garbage that only rewards SEO and affiliate links. Successful products get slashed on a monthly basis, with Google Fit being the latest entry. 12,000 jobs have been cut last year alone, and the company is in a turbocharged cost cutting mode despite its evaluation going higher and higher. And the employees who still work there are unhappy, have no prospects for growth, have to work with arbitrary deadlines slammed on them by sales teams instead of nurturing bottom-up engineering solutions, and have no more direct communication channels with the leadership team.
Google is one more living proof that market success doesn't mean product success, and that what shareholders want is almost never aligned with what everybody else wants.
Google’s mobile platform will have to look a little different to compete in the AI era. And, Allison Johnson writes, “If the past 12 months is any indication, it’s going to be a little messy." Read more from @theverge. https://flip.it/xwIUGs #Tech#Technology#AI#Google#Android
Chromium update fixes 5th zero-day exploit for 2024
In Google's release notes for the latest Chromium 124.0.6367.201 source code it is mentioned that this release fixes a zero-day vulnerability. Beware: this is already the 5th zero-day which was reported and fixed in Chromium in 2024.
This vulnerability is already actively exploited in the wi
"Consumer AI is just the new search" anecdote: [1/3]
Casual non-techy coworkers yesterday were talking about using excel reports to analyze data & turns out two of the people use #ChatGPT to know how to do something in excel.
So, before this #AI stuff, if you were like, "how do I do X in Excel" in google, you'd get a bunch of hits and then have to wade through the results to see which link was actually what you were looking for, then test out if their solution works.
"Consumer AI is just the new search" anecdote: [3/3]
There are over 1 billion websites with over 30 billion web pages out there on the internet and regular search absolutely sucks now. It's no wonder normies are seeing #ChatGPT as magic when it can take 30 billion+ results and give you one answer that's most likely what you are looking for.
It would be better for #Google to do one mass layoff than engage in this year-long layoff strategy, as the latter is a moral killer (since you do not know who is going to lose their job next).
Google refuses to create a specific role for someone to oversee the issues of older users, who depend on #Google for so many things but so often get the shaft and lose everything when something goes wrong with their accounts. Google should AT LEAST (I still think the role is crucial), be providing focused help resources and a recurring (at least monthly) blog to help this class of users ("Google for Seniors", "Google Seniors Blog").
This would all be specifically oriented toward helping these users deal with the kinds of Google Account and other Google problems that so often disproportionately affect this group.
This would be good for these users (who Google unreasonably and devastatingly considers to be an unimportant segment of their user base) and frankly good for Google's PR in a highly challenging and toxic political environment.
I'm so tired of having so many people in this category approach me for help with account and other Google issues because they never understood the existing Google resources that, frankly, are written for a different level of tech expertise and understanding.
I have more detailed thoughts on this if anyone cares. No, I'm not holding my breath on this one.
Ever since I quit Google I've stopped receiving junk emails, used to come about 10 a day and would end up in promotions folder, or updates, or socials, which google created. Now, I get nothing. Only newsletters, some of which are industry related so I don't mind them. #email#google#webdev
Alright, so my work is switching to Google Meet. I want to grill the IT team on Google harvesting biometrics and using it to train AI, but I need proof?
Comms on Google Meet are apparently "encrypted", but I call bullshit.
It appears that #Google#Chrome employs some kind of scoring logic on user browsing to determine if they exhibit secure browsing patterns. My guess is that they just see if the user visits "http://" URLs less than certain threshold and if true enable https-first.
@arstechnica Perhaps they are better off spending their resources and developing search, pixel phones, G suite, licensing and Android OS to other OEMs. Aren’t these the services that are consistently being updated? Stick to what they have always been best at #google
Everyone should immediately stop contributing to the stack overflow and its network. The human touch is what made it unique. Delete your profile from SO AND all your answers. Freeloaders are making money out of human contributions.
@nixCraft
Take a look at #Facebook for 10 minutes and you'll see what a true #AI web looks like. It's a barren wasteland that no one interacts with. Let them have their fun with these sites knowning its just going to be bots talking to AI. #google search is whats dead not the #openweb.
@pluralistic Cory, this might be of interest, taking up your ‘Too big to care’ post. GMX licenses Google results. GMX results are superior to Google’s (without paying for Kagi’s metasearch).
As the blockbuster antitrust case against Google enters its last day, @CNN considers exactly what’s at stake when Judge Amit Mehta makes his decision, following the gruelling 10-week trial, later this year — and it’s much more than just money.
“The outcome could have far-reaching effects on the tech industry, serving as a bellwether not just for the billions Google pays to Apple, wireless carriers and other device makers but for a veritable pipeline of tech antitrust cases moving through the courts.” Here’s more.
Google has dominated the search market for more than two decades, accounting for as much as 90% of all global searches. But OpenAI could be about to take on Google at its own game, with the launch of a new search engine based on ChatGPT tech.
Rumors began when a domain name and security certificate for search.chatgpt.com was found, with an AI influencer later hinting an announcement was coming on 9 May. Here’s more from Tom's Guide.
PassKeys seem like a bad idea. Google backs them up to the cloud, so if your Google account is compromised then all your private keys are compromised. I don't see how that's an improvement over password+2FA at all.
Now security keys I get; keep the private key on an airgapped device. That's good. Hell I even keep my 2FA-OTP salts on a YubiKey.
If you're looking for an explanation of what's happening at Google with the current layoffs, just watch this video. Steve Jobs' reflections about what happened at Apple provide the best explanation. It's something you'll encounter in all corporate companies. #google#stevejobs#layoffs#entshittification
Several former Google employees who were fired from the company for protesting against its cloud contract with the Israeli government have filed a complaint with the U.S. labor board.
The single-page complaint claims Google’s termination of their contracts was illegal and interferes with their rights to advocate for better working conditions, with one former employee claiming he was fired for simply watching the protest. @techspot has more.
I'm frequently asked to explain #Google's Privacy Sandbox that is supposed to replace third party cookies and why the former is more privacy-positive.
Unfortunately, though I like to think that I understand it, I've still found this to be nearly impossible to explain effectively to nontechies. And nearly impossible to explain to other techies.