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What’s Gone Wrong With Google? (Part 3)

6/26/2013 3:45:26 PM

Chrome and Away

In the same vein, Google recently made changes to Chrome’s interface without offering a concrete reason why, causing similar irritations to its users. Appearing more or less at the same time as the latest change to Google Mail, Chrome’s latest automatic update, to Version 26, brought with it a slight alteration to the menus within Chrome. However, as we know, even the slightest change can prove problematic

Google Chrome Version 26

Google Chrome Version 26

The updated menus have changed color, moving from a standard Windows light grey to a more Google-inspired white. Fair enough, that’s just brand aesthetics. At the same time, the menu options have become more spaced out, with entries now so far apart that the longer menus tower up and down the screen (good luck to anyone running in low resolutions). Furthermore, the changes mean that options aren’t in the same place anymore.

 
The menu options have become more spaced out, with entries now so far apart that the longer menus tower up and down the screen

The menu options have become more spaced out, with entries now so far apart that the longer menus tower up and down the screen

This is an annoyance. It’s easy to forget, when designing an interface, that muscle memory plays a part in how people use it. We don’t necessarily read the menu every time we click it, especially for more frequently-performed tasks. Change where the hotspots for those tasks lie by more than a few pixels, and people will miss them. They’ll work slower, make mistakes more frequently and slowly become annoyed with the product. This is what’s happening to Chrome users, with Google’s own forums filling with complaints, and discussions about how to turn this new menu style off.

Again, the reasons for the change are hard to fathom. The consideration, but the larger activation area for each option makes this look very much like a feature aimed at devices with a touch interface. Which is fine, if you’re using a touch interface, which many of Chrome’s desktop users most certainly are not. There must be, one would hope, a larger ‘idea’ behind this change, but it doesn’t seem to align with the needs of the average Chrome user. Instead, Google is pressing on with changes that are irritating its user base without adequately justifying them. In a way, it’s disrespectful, but it’s also a path that they can’t continue down indefinitely. It’s only going to take a few more changes like this before people realize that Google’s silent – steamroller approach to interface design and user choice isn’t going to change, and for them to start looking elsewhere.

Closing Google Reader

The previous failures we’ve talked about in his article could be put down to a mixture of accidental mismanagement and a dash of corporate arrogance in a rapidly growing company. The first that really feels like an ideological shift, however. Now-one’s benefitting from this, surely?

As a company, Google has had a history of launching products which up-end its competitors, forcing everyone else into catch-up mode. Gmail was one. Maps were another. Google Reader? That didn’t just up-end competing RSS readers; it virtually annihilated them with its simplicity, convenience and ease of use. Naturally, with Google having so comprehensively dominated the RSS space for years, there was more than a small sense of outrage when the company announced that it would be retiring Google Reader on July 1st. outrage is perhaps too genteel a word. People were livid. Angry. Having created a product so good that no-one else could compete with it, Google was now shutting down something that thousands rely on to curate their information. Why? It’s not really clear.

 
Having created a product so good that no-one else could compete with it, Google was now shutting down something that thousands rely on to curate their information. Why? It’s not really clear.

Having created a product so good that no-one else could compete with it, Google was now shutting down something that thousands rely on to curate their information. Why? It’s not really clear.

“Having created a product so good that no-one could compete with it, Google is now shutting down something that thousands rely on”

Google explanation notes that in recent years usage in Google Reader has declined, leading to the decision to close it. A decline in usage is hardly a surprise, given that the service hasn’t received any major attention since the turn of the decade, and the removal of the Adwords for Feeds product killed any chance it had of making money out of RSS. By its own admission, Reader still has a loyal following – and a sizeable one, it would seem, given the strength and breadth of reaction to the news of its impending closure. So, if there are still people using Google Reader, what’s the real reason it’s disappearing? Those are eyeballs that Google should be able to use. Why can’t they?

In part, it’s probably due to the decreasing interest in RSS, which is no longer the not new technology it was in 2005 when Reader launched. In part, it’s because they were never able to monetize the service as effectively as its advert-ridden siblings. However, one suspects the real reason is that Reader, despite being a popular and well-used product, just doesn’t fit into Google current plans. Plans which seem to involve turning Google Plus into the place to go for syndicated content.

After all, if a content-creator can have its blog post read through Google Reader, and content-consumers can get access to it through the same service, why would either of them turn to Google Plus? Remove Reader, and there’s a small chance that the content will go through Plus instead.

Again, there’s no reason to shut a perfectly good service down unless that closure can benefit Google – and since minimal resources are being expended on actually maintaining Reader as it is, the motives must run deeper than that. This is a symptom of Google’s fundamentally changing culture, and it’s not a happy sign for its users.

And The Rest…

There are yet more service closures we could mention. We haven’t talked about Google Health, the admittedly obscure product which fell prey to a ‘spring clean’ in June 2011 and was permanently shuttered in January of this year, with all data systematically destroyed. We’ve glossed over the end of iGoogle, the personalized and modular portal version of the Google homepage which is being retired later this year, gadgets, widgets and all.

Google Health

Google Health

Such closures tell us something about Google’s current mindset: for every Google service that stays open, there are others being launched and pulled due to unpopularity. With each closure, a little piece of goodwill towards the company is lost as well, though. With the exception of Google Plus, Google’s current operation seems to rely on a big initial push transforming into self-sustaining momentum. If that doesn’t happen, their features and products will disappear sooner rather than later.

An interesting consequence of this came mere days after Reader’s closure was announced: Google’s willingness to wrap up old products is starting to hurt the launch of new ones. The launches of Google Keep, a note-taking service and web-app, was greeted with the downtrodden complaints of Reader users. People weren’t talking about the possibilities of the new service. They were asking why they should bother signing up, only for Google to close it, and calculating the average time it takes for Google to launch and retire a product (just under four years, if you’re wondering). This is a process Google likes to call ‘sunsetting’, a term which makes the process it sound poetic, natural and – most importantly – inevitable

The launches of Google Keep, a note-taking service and web-app, was greeted with the downtrodden complaints of Reader users.

The launches of Google Keep, a note-taking service and web-app, was greeted with the downtrodden complaints of Reader users.

This inevitability is something that has typified Google’s approach to its portfolio of products over the years. Notably, whenever a new feature is introduced to a major service, they’ve learnt not to simply slap it on and force people to get used to it. The give users the ability to ‘temporarily revert’ – a stop-gap consolation measure not intended to return your beloved features and appearance to you, but to give you time to get used to the idea that they’re going away. To spread the outrage and anger over a longer period.

At the moment, it’s possible to temporarily revert to the old-style Gmail replies, Google’s language makes it clear: one day, they’ll change to the new ones, get used to it. Likewise, the amounts of weight it’s putting behind Google Plus makes it clear that, in the long run, you’ve wither got to get on board or get lost. The difference is clear: Google doesn’t want to help you do what you want anymore; it’s now doing its best to make sure you do what it wants.

It’s not unique in this, of course, and perhaps it’s unfair to hold Google to a higher standard than some other companies. After all, many organizations will yank a product or feature without so much as an explanation, let alone allowing you to get used to the idea that it’s disappearing.

Here’s the thing, though: Google based its success on being smart, free, and friendly. It wants you to use its services, because if you’re not, it’s not making money. The problem, of late, is that it seems to have forgotten that it can’t simply dictate terms. Make enough people angry, and eventually they’ll leave, and they won’t come back. Just ask Yahoo! Or MySpace. If Google doesn’t see the problem with the way it’s operating, in a couple of years we you may not be reading articles about what’s going wrong at Google –you could well be perusing post mortems on how a once-great company managed to fall so completely from grace.

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