It seems their brand is "socially awkward media"

I guess that explains why I keep getting hooked by it.

So they should take the Google name off it?

I don't know how to solve Google's problems and I don't pretend to. If I did I'd write a carefully thought-out Medium post and get claps and reshares and so on.

All I know is that as a user I can only describe my emotional reaction as "revulsion" whenever they unveil one of their new cash-grab copies of someone else's platform.

Here's how I view the Google brand in a nutshell: Half-assed crap that will fall out from under me, with bright colors.

That's it. There's more to it, but that's the primary view I have of them. Gmail was good once, then got bloated and slow. Search was good once, but is now Search for Stuff to Buy. All sorts of other things were good once, and now don't exist.

So when you said, "I don't know what this is and I don't want to know", I'm right there with you. I feel like I already know the part that will make me ignore it, so I'm not going to spend another minute on it. (Other than to trash it here, of course :)

Its fine to keep trying, its just that they keep forcing it down your throat by either tying everything to search, or not standing behind a firm commitment of support. As much as I dislike Google, if Google created a non-advertising, non-surveillance paid product that was quality, I'd definitely consider it. Heck I still buy Apple products when they're good, even if I don't like their anti-repair stance.

Anywho, as it stands now, Google seem to be finding new ways to set up toll-booths on the internet via search lock-in. That's their new mantra. Whatever happened to organizing the world's information? Even their "About 2,800,000 results" is total BS. I can't go past page 20 on almost all queries.