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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

#231

Post by gonyea »

crunchlibrarian wrote: post #125
TimTheTinker wrote: post #10

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…

I'm so tired of this decision making process in business: well our statistics say Just stop. Please. Analytics != insight. Meetings should stop being won by whoever prints off the the most tables and visualizations, because gasp sometimes that leads to the wrong decision.

I don’t get this. Features complicate products and require maintenance. By your logic, features would never get built because they’d carry a lifelong burden.

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

#232

Post by Heliosmaster »

I see in these comments a lot of bitterness, where I think there should be opportunity: if you think Google made a mistake in killing Inbox and it was a feature beloved by many users.. why don't you spin up your version of it? They have already done the hard part for you: the idea.

When google killed greader, Feedly, The old Reader and other products rose up to the challenge. They felt there was market, and they launched (or just changed and marketed better) their product.

What is stopping you from doing the same now?

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

#233

Post by njarboe »

Heliosmaster wrote: post #232

I see in these comments a lot of bitterness, where I think there should be opportunity: if you think Google made a mistake in killing Inbox and it was a feature beloved by many users.. why don't you spin up your version of it? They have already done the hard part for you: the idea. When google killed greader, Feedly, The old Reader and other products rose up to the challenge. They felt there was market, and they laun…

I believe that the hacker news general attitude is correct that the idea is not the hard part. The hard part is execution and getting adoption. Inbox works and is use by many. Hundreds of functional imitations can/will die, even when readily available on github.

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

#234

Post by m-localhost »

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.

I'm waiting for https://superhuman.com/ finally to launch

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

#235

Post by jaimex2 »

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…

Yup, I use scrapers instead of the official APIs for any data from Google these days. It's works out better in the long run and you can do whatever you like.

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

#236

Post by bogomipz »

codyb wrote: post #25
omosubi wrote: post #16

I used to be a Google fan boy but am starting to dislike them more and more. This, they killed off reader and the creepy data collection they do is why I've started to look into alternatives for their products - anyone have any good suggestions?

I use Fastmail (paid) for email with my domain name. It's alright, the app works well enough on iOS. No complaints so far really. Then DuckDuckGo for search. You can use !g to switch to google search but I rarely do anymore. Then Weblock and uBlock origin as ad blockers for phone and desktop respectively to prevent some data harvesting. And I only browse in incognito, I just log in everytime I need to use something.…

Could you say what does Weblock provide that uBlock doesn't? I looked at their FAQ and it wasn't obvious to me. Thanks.

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

#238

Post by dankohn1 »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #226
pratyushag2 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burn I wonder if that’s really a problem because in 3 years, if GOogle Cloud becomes a billion dollar company then most wont question its financial importance to Alphabet.

But that also means if it doesn't become profitable, it'll be shut down on short notice. Which is exactly the reason nobody is considering Google Cloud, and going to AWS and Azure instead. Google knows this (they're not stupid after all) and seems to be pulling out of kubernetes development recently.

Google is not pulling out of Kubernetes development. Their contributions have stayed at a very high level and they remain the largest single contributor, although their % of all contributions has declined over time as many more companies have gotten involved.

You may have gotten confused by this clickbait TechCrunch headline, which does not match the article content: https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/29/google-steps-back-from-run...

Disclosure: I’m executive director of CNCF which hosts Kubernetes.

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

#239

Post by tboughen »

gonyea wrote: post #231
crunchlibrarian wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so tired of this decision making process in business: well our statistics say Just stop. Please. Analytics != insight. Meetings should stop being won by whoever prints off the the most tables and visualizations, because gasp sometimes that leads to the wrong decision.

I don’t get this. Features complicate products and require maintenance. By your logic, features would never get built because they’d carry a lifelong burden.

I think the idea is that the ‘long tail’ of users that such use features can still be 10s of millions for google, and preserving can act as a most preventing these power users from seeking alternatives.

And then taking other users with them.

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

#240

Post by Moru »

gonyea wrote: post #231
crunchlibrarian wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so tired of this decision making process in business: well our statistics say Just stop. Please. Analytics != insight. Meetings should stop being won by whoever prints off the the most tables and visualizations, because gasp sometimes that leads to the wrong decision.

I don’t get this. Features complicate products and require maintenance. By your logic, features would never get built because they’d carry a lifelong burden.

It's the frustration of people building their workflow on those features that is talking. It's very irritating when you find yourself in the position during your hard earned vacation to (once again) have to find a new option for something that your company needs to function.
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