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Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

9to5google.com

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Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#171

Post by repolfx »

zorpner wrote: post #129
beginningguava wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Now explain it to me Google - what's your vision It's a bunch of very talented, bored engineers who realize that launching a product, even if it fails, is better for their career and resume than doing grunge work that might be better for google's bottom line Basically resume driven development and Google hasn't done anything to prevent it. They probably don't care, they'd rather have them wasting money at Google tha…

This is exactly correct (former Googler; still in touch with many). This is one of the reasons for the endless usability-destroying redesigns on their successful products -- people need listable accomplishments in order to advance, either internally or externally. Google has destroyed, or at least nullified, a generation of engineering talent with their unambitious, checkbox-resume based advancement scheme. We should…

The problem is not the promotion criteria. That's fine. After all, promoting people for successfully completing projects is hardly a stupid or irrational way to reward people. The alternatives are all worse.

The problem is there are too many Googlers, so they keep inventing busywork projects that don't need to exist (like reinventing messaging over and over) because otherwise there's nothing for them to do. The ideas:people ratio is completely out of whack.

Why are there too many Googlers? Because Google would rather spend money on hiring than returning excess profit to investors.

Why would they do that? Because their stock voting structure prevents investors from forcing their hand, and because of an essentially delusional culture/belief amongst senior management that they hire the world's smartest people, that they will never run out of ideas, that there's always more to do etc etc. Management can't accept that Google might have tapped out, ideas-wise, and maybe its natural size is smaller than today not bigger. It takes quite some humility to say "we're spinning our wheels, the profit we generate could be better deployed elsewhere" and they can't do it.

Watching this process play out gave me a new appreciation for why shares have voting rights.

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#172

Post by DenisM »

majewsky wrote: post #165
DenisM wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large companies rise, and then fall to clear up the space for the next aspiring large company. It's Google's natural destiny to fall, too. Interestingly, the lifetime of a company is directly tied to the attention span of its customers. As long people come to the store asking for Coca Cola the company will endure, so this is probably generational. Enterprise software sticks around, so does Oracle. Internet consumer t…

The search engine is still very profitable, though, so that would curb the fall. (Or did I miss some news there?)

My point was rather that Google search may not be that sticky.

Coca Cola is sticky through brand advertising, business deals, product placement, etc. Pretty much all that money spent by people on bottles of the sugary water was pumped into marketing, not into manufacturing. Over decades this created a very firm image in the people's heads, and the only way to dislodge it is to create a new brand for younger consumers (which Coca Cola will purchase as soon as it shows traction).

ERP software is deeply ingrained into business processes, removing it is akin to removing a person's neural system. The only way to dislodge that is to address up-and-coming companies, having them build their processes around a new paradigm.

You can't just beat any of this via superior quality product, they have "a moat" [1]

Google doesn't have that loyalty, and it's not that deeply ingrained. They ride on their default placement in Chrome/iOS and on the search result quality (which stems from quality engineering and superior scale yielding large data sets). If someone used NLP to build a more relevant search engine (of course serving more relevant ads), it won't be long before that new search engine starts using their revenue to pay higher $$ amount to hardware manufacturers to make a new engine the default. It's a shaky ground, and it's why Google is re-inventing itself and AI company - if they don't then someone else will. There is some strength in Google's name itself, but I'm not sure it can match to the visceral reaction to an addictive sugary drink.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/05/economicmoat.asp

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#173

Post by Markoff »

WalterSear wrote: post #170
Markoff wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google maps get it right? so i can download just country package before visiting it? i can just use it as offline navigation avoiding steep roaming fees or even better lack of network coverage in wilderness? i am honestly surprised by anyone using Google maps, that app it's missing basic features other apps had for years F-droid Maps user

Google map's offline download feature works fine on my phone.

you can select country in list of countries without highlighting some area finally?

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#174

Post by SwellJoe »

dragonwriter wrote: post #143
wyldfire wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Branding / re-branding is clearly not one of Google's strengths. Why change the name? Just change the feature set.

They didn't change the name so much as add disambiguation when they split the product. The broke Hangouts (for business, though this is now apparently coming for consumers too) into two apps, Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet.

Well, yes, that, but also announced that Hangouts would be shut down, which is exceedingly confusing messaging.

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#175

Post by WalterSear »

Markoff wrote: post #173
WalterSear wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google map's offline download feature works fine on my phone.

you can select country in list of countries without highlighting some area finally?

No.

Can you select a physical area that you are going to visit and download that you to your phone for offline use? Yes.

Perhaps you can explain to me: what does selecting an area from a list afford you that highlighting an area visually does not? I've even used this, on a couple of occasions, to download the roadmaps for entire, albeit tiny, countries.

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#176

Post by bostik »

ams6110 wrote: post #66
8ytecoder wrote: post #45

Google feels like a company that's run by a bunch of engineers/product managers instead of a product leader with a cohesive vision. Anyone with an iPhone would understand what iMessages is and what FaceTime is. What is what and what you can do with each. Now explain it to me Google - what's your vision? (Or is it "target end state" in engineering speak?) As customers we want (at most) one chat application and one vid…

I'd put Google Drive/Docs/Sheets in there as home runs. They just keep getting better and better. I hardly ever think about using a desktop office suite any more. Remember when collaborating on a document meant emailing copies and revisions back and forth to each other? Unthinkable now. But Allo? My thought was "oh, another Google product I never heard of is shutting down."

Drive and Docs/Sheets make for an abomination.

Each one is good in isolation. But for a company whose primary user facing product is searching for things, Google sure haven't bothered to make the that work in drive. The search in GDrive is just plain atrocious.

At work we need to frequently ask someone working on a document or a set of documents to paste the sharing links, because GDrive's search will not surface the document or the drive folders you are looking for. Even with exact words or phrases.

And don't get me started on the latest incarnations of GSuite admin (slow) or Gmail (slower). But at least in those the search feature works.

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#177

Post by iainmerrick »

joshuamorton wrote: post #89
iainmerrick wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never understood why Google always exposes these account migrations to end users. Okay, something significant about the implementation is changing, and that takes development time, sure; why do users need to know or care about it? Just figure out how to make the migration as seamless as possible for them.

They didn't, this was leaked.

From the official blog post:

“Allo will continue to work through March 2019 and until then, you’ll be able to export all of your existing conversation history from the app—here are instructions on how to do so.”

That’s not terrible, but the bar is very low for this kind of thing. It’s hardly seamless.

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#178

Post by parineum »

Phrodo_00 wrote: post #94
parineum wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is currently trampling Google in messaging.

I don't think that true in the broad messaging space (speaking of martekshare), mostly because apple limits itself to the portion of the market that happens to own apple products. Facebook is, though.

In the comparison of the two companies, Apple is crushing Google in any context. In the US, it's the same if you include other players. Worldwide is a different story.

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#179

Post by basch »

8ytecoder wrote: post #45

Google feels like a company that's run by a bunch of engineers/product managers instead of a product leader with a cohesive vision. Anyone with an iPhone would understand what iMessages is and what FaceTime is. What is what and what you can do with each. Now explain it to me Google - what's your vision? (Or is it "target end state" in engineering speak?) As customers we want (at most) one chat application and one vid…

>whoever is running Google Maps is a genius.

Yet waze is still a separate product, instead of a set of features to be enabled in Google Maps.

Re: Source: Google Allo will be officially shut down soon

#180

Post by Markoff »

WalterSear wrote: post #175
Markoff wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can select country in list of countries without highlighting some area finally?

No. Can you select a physical area that you are going to visit and download that you to your phone for offline use? Yes. Perhaps you can explain to me: what does selecting an area from a list afford you that highlighting an area visually does not? I've even used this, on a couple of occasions, to download the roadmaps for entire, albeit tiny, countries.

it's much easier than highlighting whole area including nearby countries since most of the countries don't have blocky shape and if you end up highlighting whole country you must highlight also unnecessary areas behind border

you must be really fanboy if you need to have explained how it's choosing package of country/region data superior to highlighting some area

you also forgot to answer how it's offline navigation working in these great Google maps

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