I want to add: I got into a debate with someone last night about whether workarounds do more harm than good. I’m sure product teams hate them, but I am explicitly in the “good” category. They put attention on the wrongs that companies do, and the ways they could be doing things better but aren’t.
Yes, it would be nice if the company just stopped doing the bad thing, or regulators stepped in. But fact of matter, in a vacuum of indifference, workarounds play an important role.
As users, we don’t have the megaphone of the massive platform, but we do have the benefits of organic reach. We can tell people about them, and the idea spreads. And by giving something like this awareness by promoting the concept through a website or an app, it gives users a choice in the matter that they did not have previously.
Sure, you could go through the extra couple of clicks to go to the Web interface every single time, as Google’s design clearly discourages, but it’s easier to just know this URL code. So tell other people about it (or push them to an alternative search engine, if you prefer). And use tools like this Safari add-on.
Yes, it would be nice if the company just stopped doing the bad thing, or regulators stepped in. But fact of matter, in a vacuum of indifference, workarounds play an important role.
As users, we don’t have the megaphone of the massive platform, but we do have the benefits of organic reach. We can tell people about them, and the idea spreads. And by giving something like this awareness by promoting the concept through a website or an app, it gives users a choice in the matter that they did not have previously.
Sure, you could go through the extra couple of clicks to go to the Web interface every single time, as Google’s design clearly discourages, but it’s easier to just know this URL code. So tell other people about it (or push them to an alternative search engine, if you prefer). And use tools like this Safari add-on.