Everyone knows the tale of Brand X getting bought out by some faceless global conglomerate and going to shit, but does the opposite ever happen?

      • RGB3x3@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’ve been feeling lately that Google has lost the plot. Material You is an ugly, inconsistent mess, usability is worse, and you can’t expect any feature to stick around because Google is so unreliable.

        Android 11 was the last version that felt refined and stable. It was clean, usable, and organized.

        • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I’m going to say 10 because I think 11 was when they first started making it difficult to move apps to SD card external storage and for me that was the beginning of the fuckery.

          • Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            It’s hard to justify keeping a feature around that potentially breaks new features for such a small population tbh.

        • Dark_Blade@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Honestly, it feels like Google lost the plot (for the most part) almost a decade ago. Android was really the only product that was consistently chugging along; most of their projects have been nothing but premature cancellations, even if the product was actually good (I’m looking at you, Inbox).

          • RGB3x3@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’m currently really mad at them for setting up to cancel Google Podcasts just so they can move podcasts into YouTube Music.

            Why do these companies keep having to consolidate functions into ever-more complex apps? What happened to the separation of function so that they do one thing really well instead of many things poorly?

      • CMahaff@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Looked up the history and they bought it so early on that effectively the whole thing was developed by Google.

        They bought the startup in 2005 and the first phone came out in 2008.

        • rivingtondown@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          What do you mean by this? What did Motorola Droid phones have to do with Google owning Android or Android being it’s own company back in like… 2003? The first Droid used Android as developed by Google in 2009. Google had aquired Android years prior to Droid being a thing. Most Android devices are not created by Google, even to this day.

          • papalonian@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I didn’t realize that Google owned the company at that time. I don’t remember the advertisements blasting Google’s name like they tend to do now. I know that most Android phones aren’t made by Google, I was mistaken in thinking the Droid was a popular android device prior to acquisition

            • notatoad@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              “droid” was actually a verizon brand, not motorola or google. any droid-branded phone was a verizon rebranding of a phone that was sold as something else outside the US.

              but yeah, android never existed outside of google. Google bought out android before their first public release.

    • Dark_Blade@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      YouTube too. For all the shit we give Google for it, there’s no way it could’ve grown into what it is if it didn’t have all that spare cash to burn.