One would expect Google to be a company of world class developers. While they create good software in some categories, they sometimes don't implement basic features one would expect some other categories of software to have. This page collects various failures of Google's "world class developers". Everyone is welcome to contribute.
Android file manager
It baffles me how Google manages to create a sophisticated chat bot like Gemini while failing to build a proper file manager that lacks features that ES File Explorer already had in the early 2010s, in its golden days before becoming adware and when Android was friendly to third-party file managers.
Both "Files by Google" and Android's built-in file manager (DocumentsUI) lack basic features one would expect from a file manager.
For example, there is no scrollbar. On DocumentsUI, you can not see the total size and recursive file/folder count of one or more selected directories. You can not limit searching to one specific folder but you have to search the entire storage. There are no search filters like date range. The search feature only returns up to 24 results, an arbitrary limit. In list view, the last modified time and number of items within a folder are not shown. The detail view only shows the last modified time in minutes, not seconds, and does not show the exact file size in bytes. You can not jump from a search result to its parent directory. It does not remember your sorting preference. You can not select all items inbetween two items (like shift+click does on desktop and ES File Explorer does with a dedicated button). There is no "open with" feature. It doesn't even make use of Android's built-in recycle bin feature.
Most importantly, after tapping on "copy" or "move", it doesn't stay in the current directory, but opens the Download folder instead. This means, if you wish to move items to a subdirectory of the currently viewed directory, you first have to manually navigate all the way back to the directory you were in before tapping on "copy" or "move". This is something even Windows 95 did better.
But hey, at least they implemented Google Drive integration. To their credit, they implemented the ability to browse ZIP and even TAR files, and the file transfer progress is displayed as a notification, which is better than a pop-up that blocks interacting with the file manager, like in Samsung's file manager.
GBoard (Google Keyboard)
There is no option to turn off the one-hour clipboard time limit, which automatically deletes clipboard items older than one hour.
The clipboard is not intended for long-term storage of course, but that's not an excuse for not giving the user the choice. Why not two hours? Why not one day? Let the user decide.
If special character shortcuts are enabled, there is a shortcut for the backslash (\), but surprisingly not for the forward slash(/), a much more commonly used key.
Additionally, it lacks reverse backspacing. Samsung's keyboard allows reverse backspacing using Shift+Backspace. This is like the "delete" key on desktop computers.
Google Calendar
Lacks a "jump to date" feature which would let you enter the numerical date.
This is something Samsung had in the early 2010s (but curiously removed with the S6), and Nokia had even in the 1990s, for example on the Nokia 7111.
If you want to check what day of the week a specific date was, you have to manually scroll to it.
Google Chrome
Mandatory pull-to-refresh, data lock-in, lack of customization, and more. See Everything wrong with Chrome.
Google Messages
No option to export messages, making it almost impossible to create local backups without root access.
The third-party app "SMS Backup+" sadly forces the user to go through the middleman GMail rather than doing the sensible thing, just dumping a file in the device storage.
Dialer (telephone) and contacts app
Of course, no built-in exporting to a file. Not surprising at this point.
YouTube
YouTube has ID verification, DRM, etc.