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Comment by ams6110 | Hacker News Reader

I'd put Google Drive/Docs/Sheets in there as home runs. They just keep getting better and better. I hardly ever think about using a desktop office suite any more. Remember when collaborating on a document meant emailing copies and revisions back and forth to each other? Unthinkable now.

But Allo? My thought was "oh, another Google product I never heard of is shutting down."

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No way do I put all my personal documents in the cloud of a company that doesn't do customer service, gets rid of whole product lines without warning whenever it feels like, and has no recourse to actual human help if you're locked out of your accounts and can't get authenticated.

You would want to back up your google documents offline or on another server constantly, which defeats the whole purpose.

You can pay for G Suite, it's not that expensive. I'm on a grandfathered plan (free) - so no phone support but email support is available, and the agent even called me to check if I was able to resolve my problem.

They have to, otherwise Microsoft will trample them with their SharePoint/Office online offering.

Apple is currently trampling Google in messaging.

I don't think that true in the broad messaging space (speaking of martekshare), mostly because apple limits itself to the portion of the market that happens to own apple products. Facebook is, though.

Meh, everyone I know uses Telegram. I haven't used Facebook messages in years because the feature is apparently not on the mobile website and I'm not willing to install an app that requires suspiciously many permissions.

Here’s a lil trick: if you have to, you can access your Facebook messages on mbasic.facebook.com.

(And on to the point, Facebook has also, of course, WhatsApp, which is massive)

In the comparison of the two companies, Apple is crushing Google in any context. In the US, it's the same if you include other players. Worldwide is a different story.

I doubt it - like most Apple things, it probably only works with other Apple things. Most things in the world are not Apple.

Drive and Docs/Sheets make for an abomination.

Each one is good in isolation. But for a company whose primary user facing product is searching for things, Google sure haven't bothered to make the that work in drive. The search in GDrive is just plain atrocious.

At work we need to frequently ask someone working on a document or a set of documents to paste the sharing links, because GDrive's search will not surface the document or the drive folders you are looking for. Even with exact words or phrases.

And don't get me started on the latest incarnations of GSuite admin (slow) or Gmail (slower). But at least in those the search feature works.

I think that helps explain the puzzle. Drive/Docs/Sheets probably do have a strong mandate from senior leadership and a coherent vision: beat Microsoft. So these products have effort and focus that most Google offerings lack.

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