Google seems to have started on a mission to annoy the fuck out of me the past 6 months or so. For instance through the neverending popups and dialogs that enthusiastically tell me about some feature and require a response from me to ask them to please fuck off.
Not to talk about the amazingly stupid animations on Google+ that makes it impossible to scroll fast on an iPhone 4. I was making an effort to use Google+ more ... and then Google gives me that shit.
Look Googlers, I know that you suffered under the reign of the Cupcake Princess and were unable to release anything cool because dealing with her was more painful than watching an entire episode of Sex and the City. I know that. But that doesn't mean you have to go out of your fucking way to add frivolous, pointless, wankery to your UIs.
If you want to do something productive: fix the Gmail UI.
OK, I'm not usually like this -- perhaps this time is just because I didn't know who the "cupcake princess" is and had to Google it out of curiosity, and trust me, I think Google is the epitome of the power hungry, sinister, duplicitous corporation, that makes the robber barons look like no more than slightly annoyed kindergarten teachers -- but I think you're being sexist.
Anyway, I found this: "Mayer, a long-time Google executive dubbed the “cupcake princess” after she constructed detailed spreadsheets weighing up the benefits of various cupcake recipes". Now, compiling cupcake spreadsheets, is, uhhh, frivolous maybe? But I wouldn't be surprised to learn that male executives at software companies do the same for beer; or bikes; or Star Wars. I don't think they get such nicknames.
Anyway, there's an unpleasant bro scent to your comment. If we care about our freedom and independent agency, the Google corporation must be broken up, and sooner rather than later. But even the largest heap of banal evil in the known universe can be dealt with without unnecessary bigotry.
There was someone who was (is?) running a spreadsheet in which they attempted to "drink it all" - that is, try every possible drink in the microkitchens. Then they rated them.
I'd say "guess the gender", but given the company, you probably already know the answer.
The remark was not intended to be sexist. It was intended to reflect that I don't think Mayer was particularly easy to work with, that her elitist values were contrary to much of the Google culture.
(That being said: I think she is good CEO material. In fact, when she took over Yahoo! I bought stock in the company).
If you really can't imagine that it wasn't a sexist remark then I'm sorry for you: it must be hard to be so easily offended.
What does intention matter? No one is trying to tell you you're a bad person, just that you inadvertently said something destructive.
And please don't bring the concept of "offense" into this. No one is offended. I'm disappointed that you're hurting other people, and I'd like you to stop. But I'm not "offended". Taking offense to things is a waste of time.
Things have really been getting out of hand here, lately it seems almost anything that even has the faintest trace of 'usually being associated with female gender' is interpreted as being sexist. Some people have been taking the good Samaritan attitude a little too far I think, are we supposed to restrict everything we say to gender-neutral language or what?
It is not a good samaritan attitude. It's simply pointing out when someone is being, probably subconsciously, sexist. I showed the original comment to my girlfriend, who said, "what's new about that? I get this kind of attitude from men every day".
If you call Donald Rumsfeld, "Rumsfeld", but Condoleezza Rice, "Condoleezza", or President Obama, "Obama", but Hillary Clinton "Hillary", then there's something going on. Sexism is so entrenched that we often don't even feel that we're being sexist; that doesn't mean that we're not (just like Google, that set out with the best of intentions and even explicitly adopted a motto of 'don't be evil' -- which is fascinating, and brilliant, on so many levels, BTW -- and yet unintentionally became the most privacy invading, soul-killing consumerist company in the history of mankind). So, the easiest litmus test in this case is to ask yourself, "would I have said the same thing (as often) about a man?" If the answer is no, then there's at least some soul-searching to do.
Donald is a common first name. Rice is a not so uncommon last name. I might seriously think of Jerry Rice first if you say "Rice" and I'm not a huge sports fan.
Aren't Michele Bachmann and Nancy Pelosi referenced by their last name as much as Donald Rumsfeld is?
I am just using anecdotes and select data after all so I don't think I'm definitely right or you're definitely wrong.
In Hillary Clinton's case, her supporters also call her Hillary, for the very sensible reason that someone else with the same last name is very famous and important in the same general sphere of endeavor.
Hah. I was so sure you were exaggerating these claims. But in these examples I automatically complete the person's last name in my mind yet for Hillary Clinton, I don't.
I don't get what's so weird about making a spreadsheet as part of the recipe refining process. I've made lots of recipe spreadsheets. Honestly, I don't know how you'd track the large number of variations required to make a great recipe without a spreadsheet.
I understand where you are coming from but we really need to focus on the bigger picture. Let us all just get back to hating Google for being the most evil company that has ever existed and live in peace.
It is absolutely sexist. It is meant to marginalize Mayer because she was analytical about recipes, despite the fact that we're all often analytical about a lot of ridiculous things. Ridiculous claims that it just coincidentally referred to her as a "princess" about "cupcakes" innocently shouldn't pass the smell test of anyone smart enough to navigate to HN.
Really the whole comment you replied to is just bellicose noise, and it's unfortunate that HN would be a place where that would sit as a top comment. Though I suppose in some way it's a selectivity bias because everyone with a grudge about Google+ (predominately people who don't use it, as an aside, but who seem to feel really passionate about not using it, though I suppose the same happens among many non-Facebookers) is highly likely to look at this submission.
> It is meant to marginalize Mayer because she was
> analytical about recipes, despite the fact that we're
> all often analytical about a lot of ridiculous things.
I love how you tell me why I called her Cupcake Princess.
Veering dangerously close to sexist behavior there—make an extra effort to think about what you're saying when you talk about women in our field. Regardless of what you think of her, it's demeaning to reduce her from a CEO on par with any male in the industry to a "Cupcake Princess"—LOL, they aren't qualified to lead!
Seriously, though, don't be a douchebag, there are more than enough in our industry without this shit leaking onto HN.
You imply that we can't speak ill of Marissa Mayer because she is a woman. I've had the misfortune of finding myself in several meetings with her to experience first hand that she wasn't a very good VP. Or a very nice person. Or even embodying Google values.
On the other hand, I do believe in her as a CEO. I think she is precisely the kind of CEO material Yahoo! needs. I don't think she is VP material. The day Marissa Mayer took over as CEO I sold my Amazon stock and bought Yahoo! stock. And I don't even like her.
Now, you, on the other hand, reduce Marissa Mayer to a gender. Someone weak that needs to be protected and treated with care in comment fields.
>You imply that we can't speak ill of Marissa Mayer because she is a woman.
No, you can speak all the ill of Marissa Mayer you want. Effectively saying, "She's a woman," as a way to speak ill of her is bogus, though.
>Now, you, on the other hand, reduce Marissa Mayer to a gender. Someone weak that needs to be protected and treated with care in comment fields.
Nobody is being "protected," least of all Marissa Mayer. Women who aren't in the industry because of pervasive sexism obviously can't speak for themselves to combat that sexism, so other people have to do it.
No, having to double check that whatever I call her is gender-neutral to not offend overly sensitive people who look really hard for sexism, is bogus. And sexist. It fosters the impression that any female professional is a damsel in distress dependent on acts of chivalry from people who go to china and call the people there "asian-american" because they have grown up in a culture where more and more words are dangerous, frightening and forbidden.
To be quite honest, I really do not give a damn about your mental hangups and I am truly sorry if I have ever given the impression that I do. But it does bother me when people have the cheek to tell me what I meant when I said something. I know what I meant and when I say that it wasn't meant in a sexist way, then only an idiot would persist in trying to tell me what I meant.
Thanks for taking the time to stand up for yourself. I probably wouldn't have called Mayer a cupcake princess in my comment, but people are taking it a bit too seriously. The comment was mainly about frivolous Google UI changes, which have also been irritating me recently (and I imagine since you brought it up, many others). Why can't we keep talking about that rather than point fingers and try to out-PC each other?
> Why can't we keep talking about that rather than point fingers and try to out-PC each other?
Because ultimately I care more about sexism than a social network UI, and people in this field care shockingly little about it compared to most fields.
> Nobody is being "protected," least of all Marissa Mayer. Women who aren't in the industry because of pervasive sexism obviously can't speak for themselves to combat that sexism, so other people have to do it.
Presumably Marissa has better things to do—being the CEO of Yahoo and all—than wandering around the internet defending her reputation. I'm confident she needs no protection, I'm trying to protect HN from becoming as misogynistic as the rest of the industry is.
I'd like to stop using GMail, but there aren't worthy competitors (free, large, mostly reliable). My ISP (which is a major one) sucks at mail compared to Google.
If you fast-forward the evolution of the GMail interface it is like watching a drab green Jeep being turned into a chromed Jeepney. Complete with three tiers of honking-subsystems, 18kW worth of blinkenlights and a whole dash full of Virgin Mary bobble heads.
But mind you: the rims on the thing have a carefully selected hue of blue that was found among 39 others to be the one hue that gave the best ct rate on ads, so it isn't like the process was random or anything.
I have a very simple test for product usability: it must not confuse the hell out of my parents. Gmail makes my parents shot profanities at the computer. Test failed.
(Okay, there I probably managed to offend at least one ethnic group, one religion and I said something that is almost certainly ageist. Feel free to be offended while I shall busy myself not giving a fuck)
I waited 2 hours for an email yesterday only to find it hidden in a new "Promotions" tab instead of my inbox, which meant it didn't get pushed to my phone for some reason.
Man, waiting on Steam Guard to send me an email with a confirmation code got pretty hairy during some of the recent sales. When there's 15 minutes left to say 75% on a game I really want and the confirmation email gets sent to Promotions and therefore never seen... thanks Gmail.
Spam made me give up running my own mail server and start using Gmail.
Gmail is slowly making me give up email altogether.
I am not saying that email perfect and doesn't need innovation, but there should be greater sensitivity towards complexity and friction on Google's part. It is bad enough already that various functions are spread semi-randomly around in different buttons, drop-downs and links so you have to click around to get things done. There's really no need to try to get too clever about things.
I'd like more predictable behavior ("where did that email I looked at just 5 minutes ago end up?") and I would really like a better filtering system. They should have a look at the scoring system in Gnus and then think long and hard about how you build a sensible UI atop that kind of expressive power.
For the iOS gmail app you can choose to be notified for all new mail or "primary" only. I'm not sure about using a built-in client like the Mail app though.
FastMail isn't free, which is a plus in my book (clear business model not involving ads). It is comparable or better than Gmail in all the other ways that matter to me. See my post for more details.
Not sure what Marissa Mayer has to do with this. But please don't blame an entire company for the decisions of a single person: Vic Gundotra.
There's plenty of engineers at Google who feel incredibly frustrated every time one of these decisions is made and remember the good ol' times when Google used to put the user first.
The remark pointed to the impression that when Mayer left the floodgates opened and lots of UX changes happened.
She had been holding things back -- for good and bad. It was very hard to get new things done while she was the gatekeeper for UX. There were a lot of things that didn't work too well when it came to the process of developing the user experience. A big part of which, as far as I could tell, was Mayer's inability to conduct UI reviews in a meaningful manner. I was present at a few of them. It was like attending a meeting being presided over by the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland. Sadly you wouldn't find many people willing to speak up about it, because that could potentially be Very Bad For Your Career within Google. So people would just tolerate her childish, spoilt behavior.
The good thing was that very little frivolous nonsense was shipped. The bad thing was very few positive changes were made as well.
So when Mayer was "reallocated" (and eventually resigned) there was all this pent up frustration and pressure to get work done on UX. And I think the pendulum swung a bit too far in the other direction because of it.
In the beginning most of the changes that came out were incredibly positive. For instance I think the overall look of Gmail and the move to a flatter overall design was a good thing.
But eventually things started to go a bit pear-shaped. For instance I have no idea what made the Google+ people think that the mad scrolling animations was a good idea. I can't imagine how it enhances the experience, and if you are on a smart phone, it is a really slow way of flicking through your feed. Slow is not a Google value. Google products should never be slow.
In Google+ I wish they would have focused on usability rather than embellishments. For instance: why the hell is it so awkward to start a hangout on Google+? Why is the UI for this so fucked that it takes people a dozen uses to learn how to do it without mousing around for ages? Seriously, if I were the PM for that product I'd nail down fixing that problem as the top OKR for the next two quarters and focus on getting just that done. Hangouts is the single most useful feature Google+ offers, and the key thing that differentiates it from Facebook; yet the user experience for getting a hangout going between a group of people is fiddly.
I'm still a Google fanboy. Most of what they do is better than what the competition does. But there seems to have been a pendulum-effect with regard to UX that I do not particularly care for.
Haha, I find the ads annoying as well. Sometimes I just want to go read my email and it's a full page ad for some Google product like Wave or Google features I don't want.
Not to talk about the amazingly stupid animations on Google+ that makes it impossible to scroll fast on an iPhone 4. I was making an effort to use Google+ more ... and then Google gives me that shit.
Look Googlers, I know that you suffered under the reign of the Cupcake Princess and were unable to release anything cool because dealing with her was more painful than watching an entire episode of Sex and the City. I know that. But that doesn't mean you have to go out of your fucking way to add frivolous, pointless, wankery to your UIs.
If you want to do something productive: fix the Gmail UI.