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Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

arstechnica.com

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

#41

Post by breakingcups »

m-p-3 wrote: post #27
hellcow wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole Nexus brand springs to mind. The best mid-tier phone available was killed and replaced with nearly the exact same specs at the highest price possible. Sent begrudgingly from a Pixel.

The exact reason why I transitioned from a Nexus to an Android One. The Pixel price-point is too damn high.

The Nexus line did exactly what it was supposed to do. It was meant to push an idealistic vision of what Android phones were supposed to be onto the market at a (too) competitive price point to force other Android manufacturers to follow suit.

A few years down the line, consumers have flocked to Android in large numbers, so now it's time to appease other phone manufacturers and guard the bottom line by discontinuing the Nexus line which ran at a loss.

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

#42

Post by fixermark »

I was going to make a comment about how Google's approach to service deprecation contrasts with Microsoft's, but then I spot-checked my assumptions and realized that MS has discontinued over 50% of the Office ecosystem of apps over the years.

So I think I need to instead ask a question: Is Google's deprecation strategy actually unusual for a company with a wide ecosystem of offerings?

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

#43

Post by AJ007 »

carrier_lost wrote: post #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.

Yes, Google will be fine because they have an insanely favorable business model. However, if you can’t get the early adopters to use your products the late adopters never will. Why? Because the tech savvy early adopters are the ones who figure out new user interfaces and use cases, and transfer that knowledge to the less capable. They show them examples of why to use something and help when they run in to problems. I’m still helping people use Google search and Gmail.

There is nothing wrong with a company testing and shutting down new products. There is a problem when you say this is Google _______ or Facebook _______ and your customers think it is on the same level as your first tier apps. Amazon does it all the time and most users never know it was an Amazon product. Most users don’t even know Instagram is owned by Facebook.

Consider the exhaustive work Microsoft has done for decades to make things backwards compatible, often at the cost of their current product. No one would expect that from Google. They expect things to be killed off arbitrarily when the product isn’t popular enough.

There are options:

Sell the product to another company

Publish the source code with an open license

Or never stamp your name on the product in the first place

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

#44

Post by blablabla123 »

I was really disappointed when they were shutting down Wave. It seemed so innovative and even today there is no powerful Wiki-Messenger-Docs that is even close to it. I virtually stopped using Google because of privacy concerns but Wave was so unique, I might not have never considered to leave, who knows...

About Inbox I don't really care but obviously the UX was amazingly intuitive.

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

#45

Post by ergothus »

gnur wrote: post #16
blakesterz wrote: post #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 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.

Right, they just let it wither. If you have a google apps domain, you run months to years behind getting new features compared to their free offerings.

Then there's Google glass...when was the last update for that?

Paid has not meant any kind 9f safety net from Google's mercurial attitudes.

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

#46

Post by fixermark »

mywittyname wrote: post #29
carrier_lost wrote: post #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.

Google will be "fine," but I've stopped investing in Google products and I'm sure a lot of the tech-savvy community feel the same way. This will make it more difficult for them to get new products off the ground in the future. They make excellent products, but they just don't want to invest in them long enough to gain widespread appeal. Inbox was a killer app. Now that I've experienced what brilliant email looks like…

From my point of view, if it's a choice between an ecosystem of tools that Google could kill at their whim and an ecosystem of tools floated and maintained by startup companies that could dry up and die at any time, it's a bit of an illusory choice.

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

#47

Post by Goronmon »

criley2 wrote: post #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 notifyin…

I think it's combination of:

* The person who pushed for the Inbox project got the promotion/raise they desired and move onto other new projects for further advancement.

* Inbox was too good at quickly managing email, and Google would prefer you spend more time fighting the interface in Gmail and seeing ads than getting this done efficiently.

Call me cynical but that's where I'm at with Google at this point.

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

#49

Post by radarsat1 »

tikkabhuna wrote: post #31
criley2 wrote: post #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 notifyin…

I completely agree. Gmail doesn't seem to have that much customisation. I don't understand why the "Social, Promotions, Updates, Forums" are baked in without being able to customise them. The Inbox bundles seem to be slightly renamed categories that Gmail has, but with the ability that they're always on the main page and being able to create your own. Why couldn't this be easily ported back over to Gmail and tweaked…

> I don't understand why the "Social, Promotions, Updates, Forums" are baked in without being able to customise them.

Isn't this because it's a categorization they do using global information, like spam filtering? If so they would only be able to support the specific categories they are trained for across all users, so they couldn't support custom categories.

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