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Google fucked a whole generation with Chromebooks, and now they're fucking the next generation with AI
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this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
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Enshittification
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What is enshittification?
The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits. (Cory Doctorow, 2022, extracted from Wikitionary) source
The lifecycle of Big Internet
We discuss how predatory big tech platforms live and die by luring people in and then decaying for profit.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
We also discuss how naturally open technologies like the Fediverse can be susceptible to corporate takeovers, rugpulls and subsequent enshittification.
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Why would they, though? The average user in today's world doesn't need that knowledge, just as we didn't need the knowledge of how punchcards worked (although I think there are a few Lemmings around here who may actually be old enough to qualify). We needed to know how folders work, because that was the norm during our upbringing, but that's no longer the case.
We didn't stick to our predecessors' methodologies. Neither will our successors. They'll evolve and grow beyond the technology and the norms that we're familiar with, just as we did with the generation before us.
That's just factually not true for anyone that works in a medium to large company. Folder structures and network drives are how all company data is handled. The only people at any of our business locations that don't need to know how that works are the environmental services and food and beverage employees. The rest of the employees absolutely use basic knowledge like that every single day. And not needing that definitely doesn't apply to any IT adjacent profession, which have expanded dramatically since I was in school.
Eh, kinda of, but modern enterprise document storage is largely evolving away from it for general business users. I say this as an IT professional that has been an active consumer of the evolution over the last 25 years. Yes, SMB/CIFs/NFS shares still exist in the corporate enterprise, but modern enterprise systems are doing document storage more in Sharepoint, Google Drive, or even object form (storage buckets). All of these last three don't use a traditional file system where folder (directory really) navigation is a required skill.
This is especially true with Google drive. Yes, there are folders, but its equally likely that the file you need isn't even in your folders because its been shared to you by another user from one of their folders. Links, bookmarks, and free text file searches are often more useful for locating document that navigating a traditional directory tree. This is somewhat true in Sharepoint too.
Corporate employee here, can confirm. Now you just turn on auto save and forget about it.
Edit: This came off intensely aggressive. Sorry.
I'm looking down the barrel of a massive project to shift all of our departments away from network shares to SharePoint. Simultaneously, my team is going to stop supporting "special" permissioned sub-folders, like share/Facilities/Managers/ so people can't see their co-worker's yearly review. Each Sharepoint site's "owner" (read, department manager) will be responsible for access management in their own site.
Also, knowing some of these departments, they will absolutely run up against the limit on amount of files in a single Sharepoint site. My boss seems to refuse to believe that's possible.
This is going to be such a clusterfuck. I am afraid.
Original comment:
Sincerely: How the fuck are your users utilizing Sharepoint that they don't need to navigate the file/folder structure concept? Just using the search bar every time? Maintaining a list of shortcuts or browser favorites?
How does a file being shared from another user's storage invalidate the need to still know how to get to it?
I can't speak to Google Drive, as I've only used that minorly as an end user. Object based storage is an entirely different use case than document/data organization.
File names and tags with shit chucked in what is effectively a root folder are not adequate for most companies' data organization and "securing so only the right people have access" needs.
Users are horrible at file management, but you know this part already. When your users have fully evolved away from SMB/NFS shares to Google Drive or Sharepoint it works like this:
User1: "Can you update the financials for your project for this quarter in the file QuarterReporter?"
User2: "Yeah absolutely, where is QuaterReporter?"
User1: "Its in the Reports folder, but theres a few version of it. Don't use QuaterReporterV1. Use QuaterReporterV1-restored_02-02-23". Thats one we maintain with current data in it. Here's the link to the file."
User2: "Uhh, I clicked on that link but don't have access to it. Can you grant it?"
User1: "Oh sure, let me add you to the doc. There, try it now"
User2: "Yep, that worked. Okay do you just need the financials update one time or would you like me to do that for each quarter ongoing?"
User1: "Ongoing please"
User2: "Okay, I'll bookmark this file then and use it again in 3 months. Hey, my financials only cover the top of the project, do you want the tactical detail too?"
User1: "I do actually, yes."
User2: "Okay add, Jim Smith to the doc, and I'll forward the link you gave of the file to him."
So yes, the file still lives in a folder somewhere, users often don't even have the right permissions to maintain the folder structure properly and they just route around that by ignoring it and using links, bookmarks, and email forwards of links.
So kids with iphones just download every photo, video, and song they have to one folder and have no way to sort it?
Basically, yeah. Chronological sorting is good enough for most people. As long as you remember when you took the photo, you can find it easily.
Jesus that sounds horrendous. I do the same thing with my phone camera out of laziness, and that's bad enough. I can't imagine every file I have being accessible based on my memory of timeline.