Google, What is this crap? (now with more crazy requests)
  • squashedsquashed
    Ok, my curiosity won over my paranoia conspiracy and I decided to check out google.play new store. I want to see what company the size of google would do if they want to sell something. boy was I disappointed. Whatta P.O.S store. Here I thought they only need my profile + 2 songs to create a credible song list offer and snatch my soul. hah... The graphic design is not enticing. content arrangements are all wrong. no thematic guide through the store. It's endless listing of bunch of stuff.  This is K-mart/we just don't care/ do something-anything type of look. I don't expect Italian or British conceptual design here, just a site pleasant to browse items. This is walmart warehouse level of 'not caring'. 

    Do they actually sell anything?

    - front page looks like gas station apartment rent booklet meets grocery stores sunday coupons page., in black .. garg.

    - The music section is completely unapproachable in term of visual design. It's repulsive. No intelligence whatsoever. It's redundant oversize text over irrelevant images... What are they? who are they? It's avalanche of random data all trying to scream.. My brain shut down immediately... nevermind all the screaming text of "new hip-hop" "Play the hits" "$3.99 top albums".. etc.  ugh...

    - The book store front page comes with jingle like "now available as ebooks, starting at $5.99 "... talking about sniffing glue level of stupidity. It's an e-store! I  presume they only sell e-stuff. (wouldn't a sweet short quote makes a better punch? oh that's right,..you really have to read and knows a)what your audience thinks is a nice sales hook. b)you actually have to read the book and c) able to connect the two.)

    - the movies all ends up looking cheap...kinda like  about to close shaddy blockbuster store. dim, shouting bold texts, dusty, give you germ or something.....you know they are all crappy stuff. Why waste 2 hrs of your life watching?

     did your mom help you design this the night before deadline or did you come up with this marvel of below par barf yourself?
     

    image

    (picture of market, but same design as google.play)
    ----------------------------

    Google. Please jump off the bridge and end the miserable experiment already. stop making the internet uglier as it is...
    You just don't care and it shows.

    Spend some money on inspiring / memorable design .. (why would anybody shop in store done by people who doesn't care?)

    PS. and fix that barf ugly music player. It's completely uninspiring. The design doesn't work very well for tablet. So many computing power and design experience to learn from and that's the best player design you come up with ...
  • squashedsquashed
    Whoever come up with this look should submit himself for chemical castration and stop breeding. (did you wear black trench coat during highschool and think it was cool or something?)

    image
  • squashedsquashed

    [Weekend Poll] Does The Google Play Store's Mobile Interface Need An Overhaul?

    image


    A few days ago, a popular reddit post
    (heads up, NSFW language) drew attention to the fact that the Play
    Store looks like an absolute mess these days. And it's true - just about
    everyone on the team agreed with the statement. Liam (our resident
    designer) agreed so strongly he even went ahead and wrote a post about it,
    and even went a step further and by creating some renders of how he'd
    do things. Take a look at the current Play UI (top) and Liam's proposal
    (bottom):

  • squashedsquashed

    Its
    funny because everything else google designs is light, uncluttered and
    generally follows the same design ideas throughout. The app store
    however is a clusterfuck of bad design. Too much on the homepage, dark
    background, followed by a light background on the next page but with a
    dark heading with the "top free, top paid etc" that at first goes
    unnoticed. Having got my first android phone just a few weeks ago, it
    surprised me how un-google it looks, at least for the first few pages.



    Maybe now with the rebrand they will bring it more inline with the
    google way of design. Or just copy ohlife's mockup here, that'll be
    cool.




    That
    was exactly what I thought when first bringing it up (and again when
    Play came) - this is so not like Google. They're like the minimalist
    queens of the design world, what the hell got into them? Even the
    mock-up (although good looking) looks a little over for Google. Although
    admittedly, they've been getting some creeping featurism going on in
    their other designs as well (search, gmail, voice, etc). I don't really
    mind - I'm the classic techie "Lets put buttons for all the things in
    one window so the user can see everything at once" even though I try to
    stop myself - but in those cases it actually adds features. Play seems
    to just be cluttered just to be cluttered, none of the front page
    options look like anything I'd actually be likely to tap on except
    perhaps search.

    http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/r7gp4/google_market_homescreen_is_a_cluster_fuck_these/



  • squashedsquashed
    Short review of google.play bookstore and google book reader. Book reader IMO is the least annoying app from google book/muisic/movie.

    1. store content. (I don't read recent fictions. so no idea if their selection is worth browsing. from the quick "come on" teaser, none entice me to even click. Same with top listing/recent arrival/top selling. ..just random list of words and tiny book cover. whatever.

    2. top free listing. The only redeeming value of google book for android system. If you are into scan of early turn of century book print. Largely a scan from Harvard, columbia, stanford library.  (and occasionally see someone's thumb and finger) But very much readable on 10 inch screen. It's beautiful in fact. several slanted or distorted scan, but add to entertainment value. can't complain it's free.

    3. Overall, the store only give list scrolling if you want to browse. (as oppose to amazon, user recommended listing, several hierarchy directories, mini stores, editorial corner, etc.)

    4. Review is non existence or very much useless. (outside few top selling books, but for books where you really need review to decide $500-$1200...etc. It's zero, you are on your own.)

    5. search is horrible. You have to know what you look for (precise keyword) and prepare to scroll hundreds of items and weed through a lot of bizzare and unrelated item. You have to know exactly what you want. So much for google being the premier search engine company. Amazon has far superior store search engine for browsing around.  Store navigation is also prickly. click wrong link, you have to repeat things from the top.

    6. the book reader software. It looks gorgeous on 10 inch screen. I like the white background + primary color book cover. It's very German. (negative: no feature whatsoever, no ability to manage your book listing, no font control, no way to manage/move your file, no way to tell book size to manage memory space, no sideloading, rudimentary zoom, highly depended on connection to google store...etc. ) You feel like wearing straightjacket. You read what google tells how to read it. It's bolted shut to the bookstore.

    tldr.
    Google bookstore is useless for any purpose except casual reading. The classical title scan is highly recommended. I wouldn't spend good money there on books that you depends your life on. Reference materials. I am not sure how reliable their  "cloud storage" is. You won't have personal back up aside from the one in your wirelessly connected device. Basically... pretty much useless. It's mickey mouse book store. I guess if you are google engineer stuck in office with huge connection all year long, the shop is worth having. or if you are at home want to read a book or two. That join still need a lot of work and proves itself. It's just another e-store with google gimmick. Next google executive comes in, having crotch itch and rearranging everything, your reading material will be gone. Nevermind reading a book after earthquake in the year 2050 trying to rebuild civilization.

    It's not a place done by people who cares about reading and reading experience.
  • squashedsquashed
    review of google.music.

    F U and drop dead. Your human race membership should be revoked with music store like that. No redeeming value whatsoever.
  • squashedsquashed
    google movie..

    the player is useless. It doesn't play subtitles. It gives you the run around "teaser icon - clicking will open Web store application - the web store page have youtube player as preview - which naturally open a you tube app ......3 pop ups ! ........ in the meantime you already forget what you are trying to do and surf  youtube instead.. (it was some random movie suggestion ..the image is so small, I don't even bother to remember what the title was...

    Who design such stupid and convoluted scheme? Wouldn't the normal way be:
    since I begin with an icon teaser in player, clicking it will show a text/sells blurb + video preview all in the same window.

    anyway, not worth it. This definitely smell like "run around/pop up"  e-store. You give that credit card number, all a sudden you have to show up in court or something as stupid.

    removing this movie app for sure.

    btw. the  movie player stutters when playing some video file type. bad... any random freebie video player does better job than this player.
  • squashedsquashed
    The way I see it, google's biggest problem with their stores are these:

    1. Google will never be able to surmount public concern on privacy. (what you are searching, reading, buying, sharing, talking) these are all in one account tied to credit card, entire internet profile and private communications.  I don't know who is stupid enough to fall for such scheme these days and age. Maybe apple cults members.  I sure as hell am not going to put my media consumption pattern, financial data and personal communication in one single company with known tied to dubious people who steal and kill for a living.  hmmm.

    smartphone confiscated or stolen across border and you have to face mambo jumbo psychology questions about your account..just because. (from the design, process and how you use it, did you see google making sure personal data are protected from most powerful intrusive force? They are the number one entity who keeps pinging phone for all sort of details ..heh..  ..)

    2.   from what the store looks like, the people who build it couldn't careless. Just another corporate assignment, result of long boring power point presentation and mind numbing meeting. (at least this is positive, since it shows Google is not effective at predicting, collecting interesting private data at store level) Content offering, presentation, editorial, marketing technique, UI, apps are all a total mess and largely amateurish. No soul, no intelligence. Another piles of multi gigabytes of crap.  (you can also see these from Google apps UI, app setting arrangement,  detail of graphic design, selection of pictures, proportion, how you have to touch them, content arrangement, overall finish, etc.) ..

    3. It follows, very obviously, Google has no vision how content, device and platform should evolve over time. What new exciting things are possible on android smartphones and tablet. What to research and invest. Give it 5 years from now. It'll still be crappy scan of books from 1918, dime stores arcade app, rehash of windows era software, last season movies, and top 40 billboard remix crap. It's cheap motel TV channel effect. Basically, google cannot answer basic question': WHY THE FUCK should anybody spend $500 bucks on powerful tablet with high resolution screen when lo-res  $80 bucks tablet can do nicely. All their content offering are reimplementation of medium created mid to last century. 5 yrs from now, Google still won't know how to approach excited middle schoolers , hesitating grandma, or blase 20 something college students.  

    Google does not understand what consumer wants, what future research is crucial, what content should be develop, etc..   it's just ns@/panty sniffer type of listening post, corporate hack with no soul. Can't teach nor buy soul.  

    Kinda disappointing anti climax.  Probably, they should close shop and be done with it. why bother. total waste of electricity.
  • squashedsquashed
    Google reader feature request:

    - in device book list: indicator if a book is inside device or only in cloud list. minimalist "o" or "*" would be enough)

    - size of book file (I keep running out of space, need to juggle. These book scans are 10-15MB a pop)

    - bigger (back to library page. top icon) It's too small and tucked in the corner. claustrophobic for 10 inch screen.

    - way to manage/reorder/put a divider on book list.  Having more than a handful books that keeps changing order after each read makes quick glancing the library painful.

    - more fonts
    - sideloading books.

    ----------------
    - store needs clean up. (a lot of title, year of publication, publishers, rating are wrong, incomplete, truncated, or absent)
    - have better store editor to give better front page / category recommendation.
    - crowd source to clean up imperfect scan?

  • squashedsquashed
    Another example is what Google allows a company to do to a device.
    Bloatware is just part of the software industry, but locking a device's
    ability to uninstall things like a music store is very different. I know
    I should be blaming Samsung for this, and I know that I can flash
    another ROM (or even just root, freeze, and generally show them who's
    boss) to do something about it, but that's not the issue here. The issue
    is that Google, as the maker of Android, is putting too much power in
    the hands of device manufacturers. It's what Apple does with itself,
    just to a much lesser degree. I understand that uninstalling some things
    would be bad, and I'm not suggesting that device-harming actions should
    be allowed, it's just a simple matter of saying "no, you can not put
    Social Hub on the never uninstall-list." If that's not acceptable to
    Samsung, it can go make its own OS. In my personal, subjective opinion,
    Google isn't always acting on behalf of the users, and in my book,
    that's one of the top requirements for calling anything "open".

    http://www.pocketables.net/2012/04/switching-to-android-three-months-later.html

    crapware is a serious problem since they call back to mothership. (amazon app, kindle app, B&N, several device comes shipped with these and can't be removed. And they calling back home despite never being activated.)
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