Full disclosure: I am full blown Google fanboy. I have been using Google free account, Google Apps for Domains (grand fathered into G-Suite Free version) for the last, 10 years or so (not sure about the actual years, but feels like this is something I practically grew up with).

I have been accustomed to certain loss of privacy, exchanging it for productivity boosts when using Docs, Sheets, even Google Calendar (= I am the PRODUCT). I will continue using most of the Google services for sure. I have no issue in paying a little for them too, but not much – after all, I am taking care for all my backups, I need the offline functionality and finally, I need precision in editing (think Microsoft Office).

What are my gripes with Google? I checked – most of them cannot be solved even if you are a paying customer.

First and foremost, they are closing their services, not providing support for long-standing industry standards. The standards may be bad, but still. The glaring example is calendar – you cannot sync with Outlook natively anymore. This an old issue, but nevertheless – it was just killed. At this point, I don’t care who’s to blame – Microsoft or Google – but the fact remains, Google shutdown the service and is now offering it through an application, for paying customers.

On the other hand, if Google is going the enterprise way, I would like to ask them if they have ever seen any task management solutions and how they are connected with the calendar. Namely, tasks are currently still practically useless and visually unappealing. Syncing Google tasks with different end-points is still a pain.

Let’s consider internal integration (something that venerable Evolution, Outlook have) – how to make an email body of the calendar appointment. This was a no-brainer – but now, you can’t do it anymore. For many managers, this directly breaks the workflow.

Let’s finish this section with another classic – threading in Gmail, or lack of it. Many use-cases actually require following who said what. This is much faster than digging through the actual emails and decoding all those indents.

What about Google Drive? For me, this is a game changer, but not without faults. Glaring problem – no Google Drive client for Linux? This has been a problem for many years now – no response from Google. On the other hand, InSync works like a charm, on all operating systems.

When you start using the Drive, notice the sharing pains – the problem is any aspect of it, to be honest. Changing rights of a group of users, removing a user from a shared folder, managing the transfer of his files … all unsolved issues for many years now.

Let’s finish with some straight blunders. Google Talk, a brilliant product, working, ahead of its time. It became Google Hangouts, which sucks. Now, Hangouts is being weirdly dissolved into Allo, Duo, something. Compare that with transformations of Skype.

Oh, and Chrome is hog :P.

P.S.: No links. Just Google It 😉