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In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

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Re: In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

#141

Post by dannyw »

bootlooped wrote: post #66
dawnerd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate their “new” tabs that tries to categorize emails. It’s just extra clicks to get to the emails I want. It’s forced me to go back to a dedicated email app.

Tabs were not something just introduced in the new UI, the have been in Gmail for 5 years. You can turn them off in settings, or drag and drop emails into different tabs to train it. Gmail has a very high degree of customization and available settings.

I never knew you could drag and drop to retrain. That needs to be more discoverable.

Re: In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

#142

Post by pixelrevision »

djaychela wrote: post #32

I use and like inbox, mostly because I took straight away to using the snooze function - the best thing I've found in an email client, full stop. While this can apparently be done in Gmail now, I'd like to look for an alternative at this point - paid - to move from Google. Any suggestions for an email client that has decent android support, and offers a snooze function?

Outlook has snooze.

Re: In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

#143

Post by UncleMeat »

andrewstuart wrote: post #7

Google's shutdown of products and APIs seems to have led to critical level of trust loss amongst developers and influencers. It's time for Google to either fix this or get out of providing services and APIs to developers. Google doesn't seem to put any weight at all on the outcry every time its shutters another service/API. The trust must be restored. Google doesn't seem to understand that when they shut service X, t…

This is bizarre to me.

Pivoting is seen as a tremendously good thing in the startup community. If you have a product that isn't working and isn't getting users, you do something different or your company dies. You simply cannot keep throwing developer time at such a product.

Google has a lot more money than a startup and can afford to waste developer time, but it still isn't good. "We tried this thing out and it didn't get a lot of users" is an absolutely reasonable argument for killing a product. Google just gets known for killing products because they are so big and therefore start so many new products.

Re: In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

#144

Post by RhodesianHunter »

mbrumlow wrote: post #130
smt88 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company switched from AWS to Azure without considering Google's Cloud at all, and the loss of trust is the reason.

Should have switched to bare metal, things like AWS cost a ton more than you realize, it just looks like a good deal because you have smaller cost up front. But in the long run managing your own systems at places like Softlayer can save you a bundle. EDIT: I don't care about downvotes, but if you are going to do it at least leave a comment of why you think I am wrong.

1. AWS saves us money despite the apparent higher costs because our developers spend more time working on our core business than managing infrastructure, and developer time is our most expensive resource.

2. Softlayer completely f'ed us twice now with down time resulting in a substantial dollar loss.

Re: In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

#145

Post by patrickdavey »

procinct wrote: post #19
everdev wrote: post #14

I'll miss reminders the most because I use my mail client as my ToDo lost as well. I switched to Gmail preemptively and I'm back to writing emails to myself again...

I’m pretty sure the new Gmail has a todo list built into it called Tasks. Could be only with Gsuite though.

Google tasks?! Never heard of it, thought it was another name for Google keep (which i have used). Irritating that it's not built into the Gmail app.

I'm really going to miss inbox :(

Re: In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

#146

Post by sharmi »

Gatsky wrote: post #131

There is always so much vitriol on HN about these kinds of announcements. I've never understood why. Google presumably has lots of data and feedback from people using Inbox, and determined that it wasn't useful enough or widespread enough to justify ongoing investment. Why is this surprising or shocking? This happens all the time in commercial and open source software. The internet is great, but unfortunately has the…

In the case of open source project,

* if the maintainer is no longer able to take the project further, the code is still there an can be used as is, maybe with a few bugfixes. (ala, thunderbird). The code does not disappear overnight. r.

* All the associated data is still yours and available. So no information is lost.

* If it is very critical, you can develop it yourself further

I am not an user of Inbox, but I can understand the outrage. When a service is offered for free by such a mammoth of a company, it gives a false sense of security and permanence. It crushes most competition and development of open source alternatives. Then one fine day, the rug is pulled from under your feet and there is no recourse.

The most ironic aspect is you no longer have access to your pinned emails, bundles and such. Yet, somewhere in google's distributed data storage, it will continue to reside for a long long time. The information asymmetry is outrageous.

Re: In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

#147

Post by geggam »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #144
mbrumlow wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should have switched to bare metal, things like AWS cost a ton more than you realize, it just looks like a good deal because you have smaller cost up front. But in the long run managing your own systems at places like Softlayer can save you a bundle. EDIT: I don't care about downvotes, but if you are going to do it at least leave a comment of why you think I am wrong.

1. AWS saves us money despite the apparent higher costs because our developers spend more time working on our core business than managing infrastructure, and developer time is our most expensive resource. 2. Softlayer completely f'ed us twice now with down time resulting in a substantial dollar loss.

Developers managing infrastructure is expensive. Get some experienced architects and operations folks who dont let developers use resources because they are there.

Amazes me when I see automation stacks with 5x the hardware you need to run the entire production / dev / stage environments

Re: In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

#148

Post by viraptor »

Gatsky wrote: post #131

There is always so much vitriol on HN about these kinds of announcements. I've never understood why. Google presumably has lots of data and feedback from people using Inbox, and determined that it wasn't useful enough or widespread enough to justify ongoing investment. Why is this surprising or shocking? This happens all the time in commercial and open source software. The internet is great, but unfortunately has the…

> This happens all the time in commercial and open source software.

I think it's not the same for Google, or other large companies. Products going away are something that happens a lot - you're right. But in many cases, it's a startup folding because their idea wasn't profitable / worth continuing. In case of a single service, the company will often fight to keep it alive, will try to improve and maybe increase the prices.

It's different for the huge enterprises. They just decide at some point to kill the product - it could be because they're not profitable (but is Gmail profitable?), it could be because of staffing assignment, it could be due to management shift, it could be because of internal conflicts.

It's easier to take "we tried and just can't succeed with this" than "management decision, deal with it".

Re: In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

#149

Post by romed »

I think people are overlooking the big picture here. Inbox had a lot of machine learning features that Gmail lacked, like Smart Reply. I think this was just because they really couldn't afford to run Smart Reply on all the incoming email. Now they can, so Gmail has gained Smart Reply and they no longer need to partition that out for cost reasons.

While Gmail still lacks some of the other email intelligence features that I will miss, like the Trips bundle, I have a feeling they will emerge in Gmail shortly.

Re: In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

#150

Post by jsjohnst »

iamdave wrote: post #55
andrewstuart wrote: post #7

Google's shutdown of products and APIs seems to have led to critical level of trust loss amongst developers and influencers. It's time for Google to either fix this or get out of providing services and APIs to developers. Google doesn't seem to put any weight at all on the outcry every time its shutters another service/API. The trust must be restored. Google doesn't seem to understand that when they shut service X, t…

To put a positive suggestion forward, Google could consider giving all services a "sunset guarantee I'd honestly even settle with something like a program where users can choose to enroll in these programs in some sort of test phase. Maybe put some kind of marker in the name or even on the logo that clearly informs and denotes "this product might not last long, it might go into production, it may die after 3 years, y…

> There's a word for this but for some reason it eludes me (and apparently eludes google as well).

Beta? Developer Preview?

Google (mis)uses both already. Heck Gmail was in Beta for years (5? Not sure, but that seems the right ballpark).

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