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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

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube has the benefit of a huge audience, but organic discovery?! Come on. Unless you’re producing clickbait, appealing to tweens, crapping our memes, or pimping rage fuel, their algos will not put you up next. It’s almost comical how bad their recommendation engine is for discovery. Listen to a pop song? Doesn’t matter if it’s the only one you ever watched, now you’re being recmmmemded Ariana Grande until you die.…

You may find it terrible (I don’t think it’s great, but it’s usually at least mediocre for me), but Vimeo has virtually nothing. Also, Vimeo doesn’t seem to rank well in search engines either. So yes, even if YouTube was universally terrible as you claim for organic discovery (it isn’t), it’s still better than basically nothing.

I think “better than nothing” is the perfect way to describe it. Almost anything else would be better, but there is effectively nothing else. I would point out that when talking about how Youtube does well on search engines though, it can’t hurt that it has that little connection to Google, the premier search engine.

I’m glad that you’ve had better luck with using it for discovery though, any tips on how how to get that to work?

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

#183
post #174

I don't think Google cares whether its users are "passionate" or not. They've reached market saturation, so further spread of their products through word-of-mouth (via passionate users and such) isn't a goal at this time. With regard to their Internet service products, their goal seem to be to monetize the user base effectively, while avoiding wasting funds on unnecessary developer time. To that end, many of their pr…

You're right that passionate users can no longer effectively bring new people to Google. But passionate users can lead people away from Google.

This. Google cloud for example is the most technologically advanced. But no one in my company would touch it with a ten foot pole. Google can and will shutdown things is just ingrained - even when we pay, things will change so drastically or be not supported any more that you just can't assume anything.

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

#184
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.

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.

I look forward to the national election where a politician stops what they're doing to complain every single time someone doesn't vote for them, and interrupt what's happening to demand an explanation.

That isn't how voting works.

"cost a ton more than you realize" - unless you look at the prices for the contract you're agreeing to? Y'know, like you do?

"Should have" - telling someone what their company should have done, without even knowing what their company /is/, let alone what they were trying to achieve and what constraints they had on their available options. Assuming or implying that the cheaper thing is always the more correct thing and no other factors can change that.

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

#185

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…

"The trust must be restored." Playing devil's advocate, what happens when the trust doesn't become restored? The company loses ad revenue? Developers flee in mass droves to...Yahoo and Microsoft? Look what happened when people "lost trust" in Facebook. Shares are down 4% relative to a year ago. Is the company permanently crippled? Are people revolting and moving to alternate forms of social media? Fewer of the people…

Google has brought Diane Green to run their cloud business. How many major clients have they signed up? Google has a huge Cash cow in ads. Otherwise all these cracks would be much more visible.

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

#186

I don't think Google cares whether its users are "passionate" or not. They've reached market saturation, so further spread of their products through word-of-mouth (via passionate users and such) isn't a goal at this time. With regard to their Internet service products, their goal seem to be to monetize the user base effectively, while avoiding wasting funds on unnecessary developer time. To that end, many of their pr…

Agree entirely. They don't launch products with the hope of having a long term product. They launch products to experiment and learn more about ad delivery. The core ad system is the main priority. As such, falling in love with any product that isnt their ad tech means understanding the product may disappear for no decent reason.

I would take it a step further and say that they don't launch products; they launch experiments. It's a giant Mechanical Turk setup.

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

#187
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that passionate users can no longer effectively bring new people to Google. But passionate users can lead people away from Google.

This. Google cloud for example is the most technologically advanced. But no one in my company would touch it with a ten foot pole. Google can and will shutdown things is just ingrained - even when we pay, things will change so drastically or be not supported any more that you just can't assume anything.

But Google Cloud deprecation policies and other SLA's for generally available products.

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

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may find it terrible (I don’t think it’s great, but it’s usually at least mediocre for me), but Vimeo has virtually nothing. Also, Vimeo doesn’t seem to rank well in search engines either. So yes, even if YouTube was universally terrible as you claim for organic discovery (it isn’t), it’s still better than basically nothing.

I think “better than nothing” is the perfect way to describe it. Almost anything else would be better, but there is effectively nothing else. I would point out that when talking about how Youtube does well on search engines though, it can’t hurt that it has that little connection to Google, the premier search engine. I’m glad that you’ve had better luck with using it for discovery though, any tips on how how to get t…

> it can’t hurt that it has that little connection to Google

Except YouTube ranks very well in DDG, Bing, and Yahoo too.

> any tips on how how to get that to work?

1) I don’t sign into YouTube unless I am uploading a video and I sign out when done.

2) I almost always search for something of a technical nature.

3) If I search for something “main stream popular” on YouTube, I usually do it in an incognito window.

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

#190

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…

"The trust must be restored." Playing devil's advocate, what happens when the trust doesn't become restored? The company loses ad revenue? Developers flee in mass droves to...Yahoo and Microsoft? Look what happened when people "lost trust" in Facebook. Shares are down 4% relative to a year ago. Is the company permanently crippled? Are people revolting and moving to alternate forms of social media? Fewer of the people…

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