Anyone else getting bored of people whining about Google products they never paid for when there are alternatives, both free and pay-for?
That is to say, I'm not at fault for using a freely offered (and long standing) free service and it is worth noting when the quality of such a service starts to suffer.
Lastly, if you're doing it right, free is not "free of value" to the provider. Google, the search and information company could easily be gleaning something important from what people are using alerts for... and for what they click through on, etc. etc. and, as such, just because it's "free", it doesn't mean I'm not mindful (or entitled to the benefits) of the value I am providing.
Years of listening to mindless defenses and personal attacks for pointing out the obvious fact "that they are just as bad as any other company" ...the taste of sycophantic tears warms my jaded heart just a litte ;)
Fewer people would bother posting a blog about a Microsoft product that sucked (or used to be good and now sucked), or a Microsoft decision that was bad for users but good for MS. Or if they did, nobody would pay attention.
But, yeah, agree with you, I'm kind of glad that it's obvious that Google is quite capable of having crappy products or 'doing evil' -- in part it's smug satisfaction, in part it's because it makes them _less dangerous_ if people catch on to the dangers of their near monopolies.
I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment (bitching about free services feels like entitlement), but Google presents an interesting challenge here because the free services die without even trying or offering a paid version. I wonder what would happen if, instead of just axing services, google started charging.
If a free Google service had either the volume of users or the instensity of use that would make it seem viable as a paid service, it probably would either become a paid service or, if Google had a strategic reason to keep it free, continue as a free service.
A free service that gets axed is almost certainly one that it doesn't appear likely enough to Google that it would be worthwhile as a paid service to justify expending the staff time required to design a pricing structure and integrate billing.
And would-be concurrence dies a quick death as they can't compete with a price of 0 and can't compete with a search index and processing power of essentially infinity.
We do have native clients, but we also have a web and mobile version available. We'll soon be available right from your iPad too.
Sounds like a fun project, actually. Thanks, I'll add it to the queue with side projects!
Next I tried mention.net: 4 results not even related to my search, the rest were all overview sites instead of the article. For example it showed a kickstarter category page as recently updated because it had the search term.
I would love to see a free or paid alternative that works.
That said, it sounds interesting anyway so I'll give it a try :)
Drop an email at support@mention.net if you want us to help you.