Still sad about Google reader closing I've been hesitant to put my faith in any new Google product since.
Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand
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Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand
#12They 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 t…
> They discontinue products that don't pan out and lose them money (like Chromecast Audio)
I got the Chromecast audio and think it is great.
That this was discontinued was news to me. When did that happen? Do you have any links to the announcement?
Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand
#13Damaging? Its very clear the damage is done.
I thought the whole point of Alphabet was to try and hide the Google brand so customers trust to use it.
Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand
#14Well in that case losing Google Reader was all worth it.
I am still upset about that.
That single service being shut down is what started me to distance myself from all google services except search when possible (including making the decision to actually pay for services when necessary)
Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand
#15So 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.
> more like a university than a business
which is wrong for google to behave this way, as the focus of university is to produce _new_ research, and a business's focus is to produce sustainable service for profit. Google should have a graduation mechanism for a product they launch, where they publicly announce that a product is out of beta, and can be depended on to exist.
And if the product isn't ready to be supported, they should continue to have the 'beta' moniker attached to the product name.
Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand
#16I 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 an…
As far as I am aware, Google hasn't shut anything down that you actually pay for. So fear mongering about GCP is just begin irrational.
Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand
#17I'm not so sure.
In the eyes of users of those products, perhaps, but if those products are not succeeding, ie not becoming widely popular/turning a profit, I guess google are calculating limited collateral damage from shutting them down.
I think the brand is tarnishing for more abstract reasons; privacy/surveillance, complicity in chinese censorship, being a (the?) prime example of tech-leveraged inequality (stories about founders' private jet parties probably don't help), and so on.
Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand
#18I think this is most damaging to Google Cloud Platform as Amazon and Microsoft have demonstrated just how valuable such a platform is and it's often the developers who steer companies in choosing such platforms. But can we trust that any service on such a mission critical platform will last as long as our apps? Amazon and Microsoft have earnt our trust on this despite any other faults they may have.
Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand
#19It's one of the reasons I will never buy any games on google stadia when it launches, I expect it to be shut down in 2-3 years.
I have the network to use streaming so I'm not so worried about performance, ps now for instance is almost indistinguishable from playing locally on my ps3.
Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand
#20Hopefully 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.
Its too late for them. No one would trust their business to a company with a reputation of closing down services for no reason or worse yet entire business accounts with no ability appeal.