I really liked many of the Google services and lived comfortably and happy with them, Android as well. I think I went all in on Google. And it was fine until now.
But now I am pretty fed up with Android and Google. The increased invasiveness and how I can't disable features that I don't want anymore or the incredible persistence of asking to activate something I declined multiple times until they make it required, really put me off.
Another thing is that many of the shiny features don't benefit me at all. Previously Google offered services anyone could use. Search, GMail, Android. But now more and more services are locked to countries, languages and devices which only a subset of Google users can benefit from but everyone is expected to deal with these features.
Some features simply don't work reliably at all (e.g. Google Trips and most of Google Now related to GMail, Hangouts before it got killed) and some features are pretty much useless to me as they are bound to either the USA or a language I don't casually speak (e.g. as a Swiss-German speaker the whole Google Assistant stuff is just not fun at all as I have to either speak High-German or English. Both of which is not as natural as my native language. Many Google Now cards seem to show way less info compared to the USA or show way worse data.)
One benefit might be the "ecosystem" of everything working together perfectly but to me they still have a long way to go to achieve this. I think I see a direction in their messy portfolio of services, apps and devices but currently it's a terrible mess. Devices being abandoned as soon as they launch. Services migration to way less capable ones. That's not a seamless ecosystem, that's just a burden to me.
So to me it feels like Google expects me to let them invade my private space more and more, give them more and more of my life even though they offer very little actually intuitively useful things. For me it has long been that what they offer is worth it but now that balance has tipped towards offering very little for a lot of me.
But now I am pretty fed up with Android and Google. The increased invasiveness and how I can't disable features that I don't want anymore or the incredible persistence of asking to activate something I declined multiple times until they make it required, really put me off.
Another thing is that many of the shiny features don't benefit me at all. Previously Google offered services anyone could use. Search, GMail, Android. But now more and more services are locked to countries, languages and devices which only a subset of Google users can benefit from but everyone is expected to deal with these features.
Some features simply don't work reliably at all (e.g. Google Trips and most of Google Now related to GMail, Hangouts before it got killed) and some features are pretty much useless to me as they are bound to either the USA or a language I don't casually speak (e.g. as a Swiss-German speaker the whole Google Assistant stuff is just not fun at all as I have to either speak High-German or English. Both of which is not as natural as my native language. Many Google Now cards seem to show way less info compared to the USA or show way worse data.)
One benefit might be the "ecosystem" of everything working together perfectly but to me they still have a long way to go to achieve this. I think I see a direction in their messy portfolio of services, apps and devices but currently it's a terrible mess. Devices being abandoned as soon as they launch. Services migration to way less capable ones. That's not a seamless ecosystem, that's just a burden to me.
So to me it feels like Google expects me to let them invade my private space more and more, give them more and more of my life even though they offer very little actually intuitively useful things. For me it has long been that what they offer is worth it but now that balance has tipped towards offering very little for a lot of me.