No arguments there. They're still trying; just not hard enough.

I mean, once you are past the free tier.. GSuite is close to the monthly cost of Office365, and Google sheets is not even close to Excel. You can basically program mini applications in Excel vs a basic spreadsheet app for medium sized spreadsheets that multiple people can edit in their browser with version tracking.

I have Excel, and of course Sheets. I actually find Excel to be too full of features (same with Word). It's just too hard to figure out a simple thing like having the top row be column headings (yes, I do know how to do it, but it was not immediately apparent).

"Someone, somewhere, might want to do this, so let's put it in" is obviously what's happened with Office for 30 years now.

Excel is the #1 programming language by a wide margin, and it evolved rather than was designed.

I remember when all reports were crystal reports which you don't see as much anymore? Excel is on the way out.

My summary view of much of Microsoft, and more of tech, is that, while a lot of the software is really good, too often the corresponging explanations and documentation are not.

There seems to be a theme that the user should learn to use the software via experimentation. To me, that too often results in too much clicking, and when finally I do see I take notes, i.e., document some of the software.

I keep pulling data into Google sheets because of this >=REGEXEXTRACT("My favorite number is 241, but my friend's is 17", "\d+")

I just wrote a quick regex vba function when I was last in a job on Office.

They're still trying; really really hard. But they are just not good enough.

Maybe like Zuck they are / were a one trick pony. Perhaps becoming a multi billionaire is not proof that you can invent and monetize something anytime anywhere in any industry on demand.

I think in some ways its the scale of the problems Google X / Other Bets / Alphabet went after being rather hyperbolic.

Apple / Microsoft just take what they are good at to move into adjacent spaces in consumer/office tech. Apple has made some failed forays into corporate while Microsoft has not done terrible well in consumer other than gaming and maintaining their existing Windows base.

I wonder if Apple leaks about stupid stuff we never see like their car and their AR is just to put other less well disciplined firms onto the trail of expensive dead ends.

If you think of automakers and their "concept car" approach in which they present beautiful improbable vehicles they never ship.. Apple seems to LEAK "concept cars" they never ever preview, while Google goes all-in trying to actually ship a "concept car" no one wants, like Google glass.

Apple is the result of judicious application of the word "no". Google looks like a lot of "yes" with weak knees that quickly turn into "no".

I still don't understand what Google's strategy is in almost any space - messaging, social, home automation, audio, AR/VR, other than "yes... actually, no".

A good analysis of Apple: capture the news cycle with your whiz bang thingie, and then forget about it.

> I still don't understand what Google's strategy is in almost any space

Not just you. The "strategy" is "ambitious product manager creates a new 'vision', sells it, gets promoted, then quickly moves on to something else."

> A good analysis of Apple: capture the news cycle with your whiz bang thingie, and then forget about it.

I kind of don't agree there. Apple really only officially announces, demos and talks about products they have to sell you right now.

About the only vaporware I can remember from them in the last decade was that stupid dual charging puck thing they just quietly walked back from.

The only released & quietly abandoned product in recent memory would be the iPod Hi-Fi dock boombox thing.

So when Apple announces something I'm 99% confident it will make it will be released within days/weeks. And when it is released, I'm 95% confident the product line will exist in 5 years.

Google, for me, those numbers are like 70% & 20%. Which is why I rarely waste my time to look at anything new from them. Odds are its either not something I need, or if I need it.. won't be long for this world, so why bother.

I think they clearly feed rumors to journalists about stuff that is further back in the development pipeline, to the point that the conspirational minded might think its to throw off competitor from the right course..

iCloud is funny because it's just storage and an e-mail address compared to GSuite which can be actually used to do a bunch of hobby level stuff.

ChatGPT AI is overhyped, just like full self driving was five years ago. Yes, it can do stuff, write articles, code etc. until people realize that what it spits out is useful stuff mixed with made up gibberish and has to be checked by a human. It's going to be just great for ad spam and propaganda though.

ChatGPT generated code has the interesting property of looking like it should work, but is subtly completely wrong.

Yes, its funny when people post what is obviously cherry picked examples of it working.

So far the code I've seen is the same level of word salad as its text writing. I gave it some really easy ones that it responded back with 1-liners that would produce runtime errors, let alone actually produce correct result. I find it interesting since its really just synethesizing new content from existing content it has trained on, yet it produced simple one-liners that were wrong.

Lorem ipsum.

iCloud is an example of what happens when you actually try to sell a product.

Obviously GSuite does far more than iCloud, and yet..

Does GSuite have Hide My Email?

Their api offerings are a hot mess to setup.