to be fair, Microsoft is also shoving Copilot down our throats. They keep adding unremovable Copilot buttons to Outlook.com
I would say that neither corporation forcing AI on us is fair by any stretch
They replaced the “M365” app icon with “M365 copilot” and the copilot icon on android the other day. I Uninstalled it.
It’s nice to be able to use copilot in some of these apps, it is shit to be forced to have it everywhere.
Oof, luckily I don’t have to use o365 at work anymore.
It is one of the few useful usecases tho. It can summarize meetings if transcribe is on.
But can it summarise them correctly?
Mostly. Their transcription getting the wrong words are more of the issue.
Google was “cool” 2 decades ago… or before they combined both monetization (through ad) with power (through monopoly) they inexorably transformed EXACTLY to Microsoft the same way Facebook/Meta did the Google playbook.
Those huge tech corporations are pulled by the market to follow the same, sadly successful, strategy playbook and keep no uniqueness.
Google has been the new Microsoft for years already but through careful marketing consumers somehow believe they aren’t.
Google is slipping. Duck duck go is a better search engine. There are better mail systems as well. Meta is done as well.
Some of my non-techie friends were complaining about how rubbish Google search is now and I suggested Duck Duck Go. They couldn’t get past the name. I know it’s based on some childhood game in the US but it makes no sense to anyone here in the UK.
So back to the search engine with the serious and sensical name “Google” then?
No, that’s not “back”, which implies they left. That’s just staying with what you’re used to, what is normal to you.
Google has become established enough that the name has obtained a sense in itself. When switching to something else, the new tool has to convince in a way that the previous one doesn’t. Often, function isn’t enough if the form doesn’t fit.
Yeah it’s a weird fucking name and i didn’t like the search results of it nor of Google so I switched to Ecosia instead
When the leaked internal video came out about Google’s real vision, everyone said it is fake. It does not look that fake now.
Which video was this?
Thanks! I’ll give this a watch.
Thats nothing, the Play Integrity API is trying to block usage by other operating systems like CalyxOS and Graphene. Imo much more insidious and opaque.
Ewwww
This is probably the most ‘old man yells at cloud’ thing about me but I hate voice assistants and they have yet to work consistently enough to be worth my time.
It is completely insane to me that something simple like “Add ____ to the grocery list” has worked and stopped working multiple times for years now. How hard is that to get right? Cannot believe such a simple action is so inconsistent.
I think a lot of that has to do with that Google used to be a company with engineers wanting to make the best software.
Now it’s an ad agency that happens to have some software to make money, and they don’t care about the software anymore. Money is not only bottom line, it’s all the lines. You see the results in the quality of their software, it’s all gone down hill.
Nah dude you’re right. I have mine disabled and nuked as best as possible on my phone. I have no nest. No Google assistance puck. No Alexa. My home is not a smart home. There is a gun and a bottle of wild turkey next to my printer, and sometimes I make threats to it to ensure all my machines stay in line.
There is a gun and a bottle of wild turkey next to my printer
I wouldn’t leave a gun in the printer’s reach. The fucking thing will murder you in your sleep. Those things are the work of the devil and every day they continue to exist is a day too long.
My Google smart speaker used to integrate with my shopping list app. The loss of that integration and other features makes it basically a glorified white noise machine now.
That’s my biggest gripe with Gemini; it’s not a proper replacement for Google Assistant and yet it’s still treated as such.
Feels like Google took at least two steps back when it comes to Gemini on Pixel devices…
I love the dedicated piracy folder lmao
Or I ask to go to Costco, and where Assistant previously would route me to the nearest one, Gemini sends me to one 80 miles away
They just slapped an LLM which tried to replace Google Assistant where the said LLM could not even do the most basic functions like setting up an alarm.
I’m slowly moving away from Gmail and Google Docs/Drive, but in the meantime entering this into uBlock Origin seems to help:
mail.google.com##div[jscontroller][jsaction]:has(> span > button[aria-label="Try Gemini"])drive.google.com##div[jscontroller][jsaction]:has(> span > button[aria-label="Try Gemini"])docs.google.com##div[jscontroller][jsaction]:has(> span > button[aria-label="Try Gemini"])AAAAAria to save the day!
Where are they putting it, chrome? Just use Firefox instead.
I use gmail at work and I see the logo in chats, email, drive, docs, and I’m not sure where else. Its annoying when I’m typing an email and it tries to get me to use it. I don’t know how to get rid of it either.
My employer is switching from Microsoft to Google for office tools next month and they’ve been championing its availability to all of us. I’m not looking forward to it…
The article in this post tells the only way to get rid of it. If you use it for corporate, your IT people have to call and ask Google support to add the setting for you to be able to turn it off.
It is also on android phones and can’t be uninstalled or disabled.
there is nothing forcing you to keep using google though
For now
I tried to ask it how I could remove it, Gemini told me that in order for me to help it I needed to active some of the “smart” features I didn’t have active on my account, essentially helping do the opposite. It follows the ever increasing practice of trying to shove basically illegal behavior into “it’s just the algorithm, bro, there was no intent!”
All of it is. Or pushing copilot into all Microsoft products like anyone is using this shit.
Every time I’ve opened an Office app this week it has given me some copilot welcome screen and opened it’s own sidebar. I tried to use it to proofread a word doc and got prompted to purchase a license. So they basically just filled 1/3 of my screen with an ad.
Every Google Drive action I do now is shifted over 20% for ✨
Problem with Gemini is that is sucks badly in comparison with more mature solutions.
It really is terrible. I’ve tried a dozen times to get it to do anything that the free version of GPT can do…fails every time on the few things it even tries.
The good news is that this may cure my laziness. I’ve been preparing to leave most of google service for a while now.
Is it bad that I stopped using Google docs and plan on moving to OpenOffice instead?
I’d recommend libreoffice, because oracle also kinda sucks.
Kinda?
I view Oracle as worse than Google.
Worse but less powerful
Why would that be bad?
Open office. Or libre office. Also. Don’t give Google your data like that bro
I <3 libreoffice
Try OnlyOffice instead
Use a hardened Firefox, use a different search engine
I don’t even have chrome installed. I use Firefox and Duckduckgo. It in android phones and gsuite products that people have to use for work.You have to go to extreme lengths to uninstall on desktop as outlined in the article, and cannot uninstall or opt out of on android.
My power button on my phone now opens Gemini… Every damn time it’s bumped. Press to wake? Oh hello Gemini
Install LineageOS or e/os/ on your phone and bye bye Gemini 🙂
I have a Samsung A series, would it work on my phone too?
Which one? You can check officially supported here: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/#samsung But it is possible that yours is unofficially supported. In this case you have to read xda forums.
It looks like I need a pc and use terminal. Shit. Though it was a bit more streamlined.
Unfortunately, yes, but that’s not hard. Some Samsung phones have installer for e/os/ (full degooglised).
Wanted to say it feels like Microsoft doing same thing with Copilot, but at least you can disable that. At least on enterprise plans, home / small business apperently is a different story now.
I wasn’t able to disable Copilot in Office without threatening to cancel via my account management page. It’s only then that they give you the option to fall back to the originally priced plan that specifically doesn’t include Copilot. And even after that, Copilot apparently won’t be removed from my locally installed copies of the Office apps until my plan renewal date in April! I’m pretty sure I’m gonna use the time to transition all my documents to LibreOffice and fully cancel my MS Office plan before it renews.
