Following on from my review of sorts of the HTC One. There’s a reason I like Windows OS. And a reason I had reservations about Android. The former is a clean, slick, pretty hot looking operator. The latter is often ugly, functional and even clunky sometimes. One of the reservations I have about the new Flickr is that it looks a bit Google-ified. That’s to say, it could look prettier. To say the least. I blame Marissa Mayer. She’s from Google. Ironically, she herself is very pretty. But I’ll have more to say on Flickr another day.
Google constantly irks me. They buy up cool companies and then shut them down. They make ugly, ugly products. And yet they just work better than the competition. Tried searching for mail in Outlook.com? For all the prettiness of Microsoft’s email baby, it’s a decade behind Google. I gave it a good run, and still use the email address they gave me. Via Gmail. But then, amongst all the Plain Janes of Google’s product portfolio, there’s that one stunner…
Google Maps has always been the best. Again, Bing maps is pretty, and it actually works well. In some ways better. But it’s not as expansive, its version of Street View is very limited. Maps is the one product where they have the entire competition well and truly licked. Knocked out the park. On the desktop or on a mobile device, it has no peer. And to rub salt in the wounds of those competitors, Google Maps just got a huge make over and is better than ever.
It’s Maps and Earth all in one, with genuinely useful (as opposed to frivolous and gimmicky) functionality built in. It remembers your locations and searches, brings up strips of images, has slicker street views and awesome tilt/3D views. I got my beta invite a few days ago and have been playing around a while to see if it breaks or if the new stuff wears thin. It doesn’t and they don’t. Want to see the new Maps for yourself? Request an invite. It took them a week to let me in, so the sooner you apply, the sooner you get to play.
So, Mr Google. I give in. You win. I’ll throw my lot behind you. I’m kinda committed, I guess, having bought a new Android phone. Again, the beauty of that Sense 5.0 interface, as I mentioned in the review I did of the device, wipes all the traditional Google ugliness from view. I’ll give Google+ another go. Google+ photos too. I’ll switch back to using my Gmail address again.
I’ll let you resume your snooping around my hard drive. Credit where credit is due. Google keeps innovating. You keep churning out fantastic products. Even though you really, really pee’d me off when you killed Reader. I’m using Feedly now, by the by. It’s the best of the rest, sort of thing. It turns out that Feedly is just as good as Google Reader once you get used to it. In fact, it’s Googe Reader made pretty. It’s the product you should have made in the first place…

















