I’ve noticed a lot of new quality coming from Google lately.
@GooglePlay I have nothing but problems with Books web interface. Is this the next retired product or something? pic.twitter.com/rmmJfqKs4i
— Jim Schubert (@jimschubert) September 14, 2015
Whether it’s constant display issues in Google Chrome or progressively worse search results from google.com, I often wonder what exactly it is that Google’s been up to lately.
With the failed adaptation of Google Plus, I think I’m not alone in avoiding many of Google’s new products unless I know they’re making money on them. I’m less concerned with purchasing a Chromecast stick because I know Google’s endgame is making money off of Google Play Movies. I’m less concerned about ChromeOS or Android because I know Google has stakes in hardware and software.
What does Google get out of the web interface for Google Play Books? Obviously not enough to put forth some quality assurance on the web interface.
Almost a year ago, I emailed feedback about the web interface being utter crap when resizing text. I was contacted by an engineer or representative that just didn’t seem to understand that I wanted to read a book through a web interface with the sole purpose of allowing me to read a book. My complaint was that increasing the text size on the web interface would result in a side-by-side page display on which there were four words per line on each page and 13 lines of visible text. Yes, a maximum of 52 words per page. Now, a year later, the issue seems to be slightly better (although I’m randomly able to reproduce the original problem, but it now mostly reflows to single page if I resize the browser).