A tech story that I think has been underplayed: Google’s collapse into incompetence. There’s been widespread frustration with the worsening quality of web searches, but in addition:
- Search in Gmail often fails utterly, turning up no results even when I am looking right at an email containing the string that I’m searching for;
- On recent trips, Google Maps has failed to find prominent destinations and has sent me on strange detours (I’ve had to delete it from my phone);
- Gemini is still offering the kinds of comically inaccurate, hallucinatory answers to questions that Claude and ChatGPT overcame two years ago.
Some services are still functional — as far as I can tell, Docs still works — but the company overall is starting to look like a dumpster fire.