I’m curious because I see a ton of Google hate on here daily. It’s certainly not all unwarranted, and I do agree with some of the privacy concerns.
That being said I do very much enjoy their products. Gmail, Photos, Chrome, Gemini, Home, Assistant, YouTube, Pixel phones, etc… I’ve tried out many of the alternatives but always come back to their ecosystem.
Curious as to how many of you here on the fedi use Google products without the common associated angst from the FOSS community.
Google made lots of stuff that I used and enjoyed, then slowly made them worse or outright killed them off. Hangouts was imo the gold standard of simple chat programs, their podcast app was excellent and ad free. Both are now gone.
They also have been ceaselessly working to wring every last cent out of their products at the expense of the user experience. The products and services were fine and they were making loads of money even with adblocking and tracker blocking in place but they knew they could make more money and most people would just accept the inconvenience so they said fuck em and ran with it.