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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

#201

Post by dmix »

> A radically analytical approach is powerful, but it can blind you to the factors that cannot be measured. Factors such as user passion.

This is not true. You can still align KPIs to stuff like that... The problem is looking at 'vanity metrics' or one-size-fits-all metrics like pure user growth, without proper segmentation of high-value and high-engagement users.

Or worse marketing/positioning failing to pull its weight and blaming the product. Or giving it a half-hearted attempt, limited resource/talent-wise, and then comparing the results 1-to-1 with other successful products which were heavily prioritized.

There's plenty of opportunity to miss the boat. Aligning metrics with business goals is a dynamic process, not one-size-fits-all, which is lost on many business in the big data world.

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

#202

Post by cxseven »

uluyol wrote: post #22

The death of reader wasn't as bad as this for me. Soon after reader died, alternatives popped up left and right, and some of them are better than reader ever was. What alternative is there to gmail/inbox? Unlike an RSS reader, I think it's much more difficult to make an email service that's close to being as good as gmail/inbox while having the same level of features, especially across platforms.

The problem is that the death of Reader also inflicted a death blow to blogs in general. Aggregation was entirely forfeited to Facebook, and clickbait became the norm for driving eyeballs, not fascinating writing that Readers shared and loved.

Also, "sort by magic" provided an excellent feed of articles to me in Reader, and all of the alternatives I tried either didn't have a comparable algorithm or their userbase was too small to train it.

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

#203

Post by tlear »

eropple wrote: post #49
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…

> Google's shutdown of products and APIs seems to have led to critical level of trust loss amongst developers and influencers. Some companies have to care what developers think. (Few, to be frank; developers overestimate their importance.) Many companies have to care what "influencers" think. But not all, and Google is not part of that "most". Google doesn't have to give a shit because everyone uses Google. They are…

Couple weeks ago I was part of a discussion what to use for some new project that will require a pile of GPUs like a LARGE pile of them.

There was one guy who actually seriously suggested Google offering. Idea got dropped as EVERY other person in discussion said NO. Azure it will be. Over life of that project I am guessing google lost something like 1-2mil USD minimum. Obviously chump change by their standard but still.

Main reasoning for me was always the absolutely atrocious customer support, no fucking way in hell I will ever give 1c to them if I can avoid it.

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

#204

Post by elvinyung »

sdrothrock wrote: post #186
goatherders wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am not sure if you are using the term "Mechanical Turk" correctly. Would you mind clarifying?

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

#205

Post by grzm »

elvinyung wrote: post #204
sdrothrock wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am not sure if you are using the term "Mechanical Turk" correctly. Would you mind clarifying?

They're likely referring to Amazon Mechanical Turk:

https://www.mturk.com

as opposed to the chess-playing variety:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk

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

#206

Post by twblalock »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #196
tb303 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi (ex-googler here, although i wasn't on this project). Product usage isn't a one-way street. It requires coordination from marketing, customer support, and ongoing product development. Inbox was yet another product that Google spent years on internally, launched with a bang, and then basically forgot about while the PMs got their promo and moved on to new projects, and so on. To make a bad analogy (sorry) in respon…

That sounds to me like Google knows how to do projects, not products.

It seems like the incentives for employees at Google are the problem here. People are rewarded for successfully completing projects, not for maintaining existing ones, so rational employees will maximize their compensation by moving on from a project after it launches and trying to launch a new one.

There seems to be nobody at the top enforcing a consistent product vision.

This is how Android ended up having several text messaging apps at the same time a few years ago. Apple certainly would not have done that, and I doubt even Microsoft would have allowed that state of affairs to exist.

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

#207

Post by twblalock »

I don't see an endgame that wouldn't have resulted in outrage.

I doubt Google would be committed to keeping both Gmail and Inbox around forever.

Either Gmail would be merged into Inbox, or Inbox features would be merged into Gmail. Both of those choices would outrage a large group of users. Frankly it seems that getting rid of Inbox involves pissing off far fewer people than getting rid of Gmail.

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

#208

Post by nostrademons »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #153
nostrademons wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It still blows my mind how companies with billions of dollars to burn get UI wrong. Like the first Windows 10." It's much harder to build a UI that a billion people like than one that a hundred people like. Startups have the luxury of being able to pick their customers. They can (and should) make the UI really, really tailored to their initial customers, because that's all they've got. Nail that and the initial cust…

There is no excuse for the failure of Win 10 it was just a ball of confusion. As for Google Search, why can't they just offer features for those who want them? I wan't long pages of results, not short, I want inverted colours, don't want search results that don't include a term etc..

"As for Google Search, why can't they just offer features for those who want them?"

Heh. I am intimately familiar with the road that leads down...

My first project at Google was the Search Options panel [1]. This was a collapsible left-nav with a bunch of additional tools that you could use to help refine, visualize, or otherwise improve your search results. Many of these tools were very useful to certain populations (one that I worked on was called Wonder Wheel [2] and was very popular with teachers, reporters, and advertisers) and virtually useless to everyone else. Why was this panel collapsible? So that we could offer these features to just those who wanted them without cluttering the UI for everyone else.

Many of these tools got very low usage despite rave reviews. Why? Well, when we interviewed users, they didn't know they existed. On Hacker News discussions I'd direct-link people to a specific tool like custom date range or verbatim mode, and they'd be like "Wow, this is so useful. I had no idea this existed. You guys should make this obvious in the UI."

So my 3rd project at Google, a visual redesign of all of Search [3], included an always-open left nav.

After an initial bump, though, usage numbers for all the tools started dropping off. One interesting effect that you find out, if you do enough metrics-based UI design, is that people become blind to features they don't use. These tools were special-purpose enough that the majority of searchers - who just want to get to their result as fast as possible - were becoming blind to the whole left nav. So the order came down that we needed to hide most of the tools, and only show the ones that we could predict would be likely to be used on the particular query.

Well, we did that, but another principle of UI design is that controls should appear in a predictable order and not move around, so that people can build habits around their use. Changing the set of tools displayed per query violates that principle.

Eventually, after a few more redesigns, the left nav moved to the top nav and most of the tools were discontinued anyways. Many of the features you want actually exist, and I bet you don't know about them. You can get long results through Settings -> Search Settings -> Results per page, for example, and you can prevent Google from inferring what you really mean via Tools -> All Results -> Verbatim. But that sorta proves my point, right? You can't really please everyone - even if you build the features they need, there's no guarantee they'll know about them.

[1] https://searchengineland.com/up-close-with-google-search-opt...

[2] https://www.ppchero.com/how-to-use-google-wonder-wheel-and-r...

[3] https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/spring-metamorphosis...

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

#209

Post by twblalock »

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…

I've worked with Google APIs before and I was frustrated by the poor support and the breaking changes, but I didn't have a choice. Lack of integration with Google services would have been a major weak point for our product.

The bottom line is that Google is so big and important that other companies just have to put up with Google's behavior. Until that changes there won't be a migration away from Google's APIs.

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

#210

Post by shaklee3 »

sharmi wrote: post #146
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…

Correct me if I'm wrong, but inbox shared your same content as Gmail, right? If that's the case, nothing was lost.
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