google discover feed
anyone know what google was thinking when they got rid of google now in favour of the discover feed because i honestly can't understand how you can have the best engineers in the world and make a decision like that
Engineers don't make those kinds of decisions.
Exactly this. Amazing engineers can still be run by brain dead management. Turns out being a manager gets you more decision making power though.
it wasn't an engineering decision
The two aren't related either. Google Now was contextual information, articles were more of a symptom.
It could correctly assume you need the saved location of your card when you got up after sitting for a while at a restaurant. That kind of stuff.
The discover feed is more the reddit default frontpage. Completely different idea.
"How can we make more money?"
They moved the google now features to assistant. It's basically the same thing that happened with inbox. Google Discover only really exists to sell you stuff. It's ads. All of it. Google Now features like package tracking, flight tracking, bill reminders etc? Available in some way shape or form in Google Assistant. You know, as a way to sell you on IOT devices like Smart Displays and speakers.
I recently started getting ads on my discover feed, it was the last Google thing to be ad free, it used to be a good selection of my interests and local news, I've turned it off now as it's full of irrelevant crap and adverts.