‘Morale is at an all-time low’: Ex-Googler writes scathing latter slamming layoffs and ‘eroded’ culture::An ex-Googler wrote a 1,500-word letter criticizing the firm and CEO Sundar Pichai’s lack of “visionary leadership.”
‘Morale is at an all-time low’: Ex-Googler writes scathing latter slamming layoffs and ‘eroded’ culture::An ex-Googler wrote a 1,500-word letter criticizing the firm and CEO Sundar Pichai’s lack of “visionary leadership.”
LoL no shit. You don’t even need to be an employee to figure this out. Even as a customer I feel that way. I’m looking to leave Google altogether.
I went to modify my 2018 Google Wi-Fi router to add a simple port forwarding rule, and the functionality is completely GONE from their already shitty Google Home app. It used to be so easy and simple on the old Wi-Fi app. I’m never buying another Google device.
This company has reached enshittification nirvana.
Google home has become an absolute shit show. It has awful UI and UX. Truly an amazing feat.
Worse is that they can’t even do things like set timers anymore.
It’s still there for me in “Advanced networking”->“Port Management”.
If you click into mine, all you see are two options both of which only serve to allow Google to Hoover more of your data.
Looking into this more a couple days ago, it seemed that without IP reservations, you can’t get the port forwarding option to appear. Which I haven’t messed with. On principal I refuse to deal with a router that has regressed in functionality and am instead dedicating my time to de-Google my life haha. I bought an openwrt compatible router this weekend.
I do have a bunch of IP reservations. I don’t really know how you’d do port forwarding without subs static IP address to forward to. I have not seen any of the data sharing options, but it could be that I gave those permissions years ago and forgot…
IIRC the Google Wi-Fi app had some extremely simple selection process in the port forwarding that allowed you to review the device list with IPs and select for port forwarding. The app would then carry the pf rule regardless of DHCP. Seems very simple functionality that now requires multiple steps to achieve. I’m sure in the product management meetings they assumed the new Nest users were too dumb to handle such logic or just overlooked the functionality in general to speed the migration from Google Wi-Fi to Google Home. Seems like a great mini case study for poor product management.
Ah, you’re right. It does work with dynamic addresses.
It works like this for me, currently:
Gotcha, maybe it’s the fact I’m running iOS, I can’t get any type of rule or DHCP assignment options to show up. Just the same two options for telemetry and Nest. Oh well, thanks for the help. I’m getting my new router Tuesday and should be off to the races!
I left Google 5-6 years ago. I do occasionally use YouTube, but that’s about it.
It’s surprisingly easy to get used to once you do it.
What did you do about email?
Protonmail is one of the more popular options.
This is what I’m planning to do as well.
Is the Spam Filtering equally as good?
That’s the reason I went Gmail back in the day.
I get hundreds of emails a day. All filtered out properly.
It’s been much better for me, haven’t had an unsolicited e-mail hit my inbox yet.
Dad? I told you, don’t type your email address in every popup and click every email link 🤣
When you’ve been on the Internet for 20 years it is inevitable that your address ends up on an email list, or two. They all share information with each other
Protonmail
I’m not the same person but I jumped ship from Gmail to Outlook (when that big rebrand launched a decade ago) and a few years ago to Fastmail.
It doesn’t hold a candle to ProtonMail’s privacy and security but I found it handy since it’s a complete mail, contacts, calendar solution with syncing via standards and a large number of available aliases. And since I pay, I’m the customer.
Good options exist now, including proton and skiff. Recommend checking out skiff. Everyone knows proton.
Skiff gives you 10GB free. Proton only gives 500MB.
That said we should be paying for email. If you don’t, you wind up with Gmail, where they read and analyze the contents of your email to build a profile on you and serve you ads. Moment I noped out of Gmail was when I realized they were aggregating sales receipts in my inbox and tracking the products I was buying. Wow, when did I ever agree to that? Guess it was time move on.
I’ve switched to Kagi for search, and Fastmail for email. Though a bit more difficult to escape Google when you’ve got a pixel 8 pro ;)
Let me introduce you to graphene os :)
Whaaaat, it’s supported now? It wasn’t for a bit. (Or maybe I’m thinking of Lineage) Man, I may have to make the jump soon, or at least just test it out. It’s been a while since I’ve played with a custom ROM though, since the pixels are a great vanilla experience.
It’s super easy to install graphene. They even have a web installer.
Rather easier I’d say, as it has an unlockable bootloader, unlike most other phones. I have a pixel 7 on Graphene, but there’s a bunch of other versions you can try.
Only the google edition, not carrier versions.
If you have a pixel phone, there are completely de-Googled android operating systems available for them with full hardware support.
Actually, it’s easiest to escape google with a Pixel, even more than an iPhone with GrapheneOS (only if not a carrier phone though).
I’ve switched to duck duck go and I’m working on leaving Gmail, but damn it’s taking a while to update my email address everywhere, hoping after couple of months I won’t have any Google products left in my name.
Yeah I’ve been using Gmail and Google Drive since the early 2000’s. I have a lot of stuff on there. All my life photos, a whole lot of documents and almost my entire adult life in emails.
It’s going to be a very long and complicated process.