Originally Posted by
coip I used to be a big Google user: Gmail, Voice, Maps, Search, Android, Google Docs, Google Drive, Chrome, YouTube etc. But I really dislike what they've become as a company and have slowly been switching away from them: Outlook, quit Voice, Bing Maps, Bing Search, Windows Phone and RT, Office, Skydrive, Internet Explorer, Bing Videos (although, many of them link to YouTube), etc. I am actually quite surprised at how easy it was to switch and, actually, I now find all of those services by Microsoft to be better than their Google counterparts (except for Google Maps, which is admittedly still better, but Bing Maps is still fairly good, and no good substitute for YouTube). Anyway, I'm done with Google and I feel great about it. There crappy Android OS, for cell phones and tablets, needs to die. It's just awful and it's ruining the industry.
I'm still a strong supporter of Google since they're at the forefront of a lot of technologies, mainly with Maps, News, Advertising, Search, and Google Now. The latter being one of the biggest reasons because although we might not be seeing it on WP anytime soon, evidence suggests that it will be coming to Chrome still, which I still do most of my browsing on and also is arguably the best browser out there. The fact that Google has been collecting my usage data for 10+ years since opening a Gmail account with them means that they know a lot about me, and to be quite honest it shows when I'm using their services-- it's almost eerie sometimes how it's like my mind is being read.
Another thing, as much as we like to loathe Android it's still a very solid system by design and it also happens to be the only truly open platform out there which it has only benefitted from. It may run into performance issues easily but that's just testament to how powerful of an OS it really is. Having been out for so long also means it has a robust library of quality apps, with it's own being some of the best out there and constantly raising the bar for it's competitors. You can't sit here and tell me that the native mail app on WP8 is better than Gmail, which boasts tagging and archiving support and is also directly linked to services like Google+, YouTube, and Hangouts. As much as I enjoy WP and find it as a breath of refreshing air, Android is still a great platform in comparison and the numbers aren't really lying with this one.
Waze just means yet another useful feature I'll be missing out on on the best free mobile navigation software there is, which I can live without but where's my Books? Where's my cloud music library? Where's my magazine and movie library? Where's my NFC payments? We have alternatives out there but I find in most cases that a lot of these things are still missing. You can downplay and paint Google an evil corporation all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that they're host to a ecosystem of incredible services that are only getting better with time and that I enjoy being a part of. Until my excitement with this company subsides, I'll be insisting that they track my usage and personal data and even regret when things like this post I'm typing isn't being included somehow.
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