Live data from Hacker News

Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

arstechnica.com

1–10 of 427 posts

Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

#3
So essentially Google's constant stream of new products leads to older ones falling by the wayside unless they can make very large piles of cash.

It's also worth highlighting this:

> Google rarely does anything as a singular company. Instead, the industry giant is made up of autonomous product groups that develop and launch things on their own schedule.

Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

#5
I was never really a fan of Google+, but it's amazing how it went from MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER to being shutdown completely in such a short amount of time. I'm annoyed by all the other things they've ditched, but it scares me to think they did such an about face on Google+. I'll never use anything new from them, and I always tell anyone who asks to avoid using anything there. I'm kinda surprised anyone would run anything on GCP other than some test things. These shutdowns SHOULD damage their brand, and the shutdown of Google+ should send a very clear message to anyone using anything they've added recently.

Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

#6
post #3

So essentially Google's constant stream of new products leads to older ones falling by the wayside unless they can make very large piles of cash. It's also worth highlighting this: > Google rarely does anything as a singular company. Instead, the industry giant is made up of autonomous product groups that develop and launch things on their own schedule.

That's an interesting quote, makes more sense now. I guess they're running things more like a university than a business? All the internal drama and products make perfect sense now.

Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

#7
Hopefully Google will see this and better understand why Microsoft is beating them in cloud services.

When I moved about a TB of S3 data into their cloud storage (as a cross-vendor backup) one of their product evangelists called me just to say hello. I was floored. But I mentioned that their constant shut downs are making me wary of a larger Google Cloud commitment.

Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

#8
They discontinue products that don't pan out and lose them money (like Chromecast Audio), and they improve features that detract from the user experience and muddy the waters in terms of ads/monetization in their view (YouTube annotations). They run their company as a constant stream of trial-and-error product launches, some of which succeed wildly and make them billions, others fail and are killed off. Makes sense to me.

Perhaps someone is confusing them with a charity or an Internet do-gooder enthusiasts club. That's unwise. You can be sure that successful services used by a lot of people will continue indefinitely, perhaps tweaked to generate more revenue. Otherwise, come on, as an avid Google+ user you must have known that the writing is on the wall for you and the other 500 avid Google+ users. No charities here.

Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

#9
These shutdowns might hurt Google's brand among the tech-savvy community that uses edge products like Google+ or Chromecast Audio (never even heard of that before today).

But everyone I know still uses Google search and Chrome. Most use Gmail. Schools still give students Chromebooks and teach them Google Docs.

I think Google will be fine.

Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

#10
Closing inbox has really made me re-evaluate if I want to continue using Google for email, as the clusterf--- of garbage that Gmail has turned into for people with long-standing accounts is untenable. The kitchen-sink approach of gmail has created a website/app that wants to meet every need and honestly meets none.

In the next 24 hours or so I'll be forced from a clean and clear perfectly rolled up and ideal notifying Inbox back to the utterly uncontrollable insanity of Gmail. The "rollups" in Gmail don't work, the filtering is arcane and unchanged from the 2001-era, the "labels" are useless at intelligently combating spam/marketing, and my gmail inbox receives hundreds of emails a day, 0 of which I care about, and hundreds of which google desperately wants to mark important, put in my inbox, notify me about, and provide precisely 0 tools to intelligently control it.

My gmail is a nightmare of anxiety that no man could ever wrestle control over (while my Inbox is a delightful walk through an orderly park) and I am honestly just considering abandoning this gmail account.

Of course, this gmail account IS my google account, it IS my google existence.

If Google has broken email, their core app, my core account --- maybe it's time to leave.

I can't be the only one approaching Google this way. Sooner or later, they'll kill what you love about them, too.

Post reply on HN