alt Hacker NewsRelated to this, I hate how aggressively Google pushes Gemini and all of the privacy implications involved with that.
1) Lots of features got moved around and there are now many "Write with AI", "Generate image with AI", etc buttons polluting user interfaces even though I don't use them and don't want to use them.
2) Actually, I would use some of these features if I didn't have to do a full opt-in to Smart Features for Google Workspace. If I'm writing a blog post and want to generate a cat picture, that doesn't mean I want to turn on invasive AI-enhanced features in every Google App under the sun. Gemini's chat interface is similar from I can tell: either I can see my search history but Google can train off of it, or if I don't want Google to train off of my chats then I can turn History off but then I can't view it myself. Why isn't there an option for me to see my history but not Google?? They're just the worst at caring about UX.
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It's the same on phones. You can't use Gemini as your default smart assitant without it also then becoming your default smart assistant for Android Auto, where it is useless.
It will happily find you some restaurant reviews for a town you are going to, but useful stuff like "Send a whatsapp to Jane Smith saying I will be 10 minutes late." or "Play XXX from Spotify" it totally fails at.
Their AI push is what convinced me to leave gmail and go buy my own domain. I don't want it.
That chat history dark pattern is the main reason I never use Gemini. Its a shame.
I've had similar complaints about GCloud, they shove Ai callouts everywhere, there are pages with half a dozen of these. Completely unnecessary, just need one button, not in every form and multiple callouts how "ai can help with..."
They have over indexed hard and turned off (formerly) loyal customers. I'm on proton + vivaldi + digital ocean + opencode-go now, replacements for almost every product area. Still need to make the switch to GrapheneOS
It's like Google Plus buttons and integrations everywhere but with AI.
At least they reverted the shitty mobile Keep integration that was not only an insanely distracting UI but made the whole interface laggy as hell.
They've always been this way. I think until recently Google Maps would refuse to save your home address unless you enabled location history, so you had to type it in every time.