I remember when there was lots of excitement leading up to Google I/O. I don’t get the sense that there isn’t as much excitement now. I wonder how long Google can continue to kill products and let search continue to worsen before they have a large reset.
Part of what was always so exciting was that Google presented open possibilities, an opening world, and was excited about getting developers & others onboard & jamming & seeing what was possible.
Google no longer does this. Since the G+ era, it's more and more about Google and what Google can do for you and Google's ideas, in whatever form they've crafted for you. They launch products, not platforms. There are no APIs. APIs and possibilities are in retreat; the Google Home / Google Assistant ecosphere has gotten smaller and smaller, tighter and tighter and tigher controlled. Most products don't really have APIs.
We've really lost the web2 mojo & humility, where humanity was winning because we all were cooperatively building forward. Now there's no major tech companies left that exhibit that cooperative dynamic, not in the same way. Google is there to present Google's vision, just like every other company is there to present their pre-packaged consumerized vision of how their stuff will run your life.
R.I.P. personal computing era, may you return again. What we have now - across the board - is ultra-massified ready-made consumerware.
Purely in terms of awe and wonder, OpenAI releases seem to rekindle the early 2010s spirit and excitement. And those are just silently dropped one day without even warning!
