Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by slantyyz » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC

FabHK wrote: post #77

My list of degooglifying actions (mostly from my older post [1]) * switch default search engine to DuckDuckGo (one can still use the !s bang when one wants to see what Google has) * use tracking blockers (uBlock origin, BlockBear on iOS) * use anonymous/private/porn mode browsing most of the time (except for sites I actually want to be logged in permanently) * use Zoho as a replacement for shared Google docs * use Yo…

>> * switch default search engine to DuckDuckGo (one can still use the !s bang when one wants to see what Google has)

I switched to Bing Search last year to earn Microsoft rewards, and I was surprised to find that I only need to go to Google for supplementary searches less than 10% of the time. I thought switching to Bing was going to be much worse.

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

#122

Post by mordymoop » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #15

blakesterz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 supporte…

> 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.

This is a surprising claim, that a business "should" be any particular thing, particularly when the business under discussion is one of the most successful of all time.

It would be like criticizing the skeletal design of a lion. It's a lion, who are you to say what it should look like?

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

#123

Post by ocdtrekkie » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

carrier_lost wrote: post #62

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the "this news only impacts tech people" argument from time to time, but remember that all the non-tech people ask the tech people they know what to use. And tech people are who set up their family's computers, deploy software widely on business networks, etc. The tech-savvy community was on Google years before the general public, and them leaving Google should set your expectations for what happens with everyo…

"remember that all the non-tech people ask the tech people they know what to use. And tech people are who set up their family's computers, deploy software widely on business networks, etc." As a techie who has set up and/or fixed many non-techie family & friends' computers and devices, I hear ya. 110%, loud and clear. :-) However... I wonder how long this will remain true. More and more devices are ready to go out of…

Another aspect to consider is platform support. Look at Google's newest successful platform, Google Assistant. If developers weren't excitedly writing integrations for it, wouldn't it be dead already, with Alexa in the room? Since many new tech services are built as platforms, developer interest and support also becomes a key requirement.

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

#124

Post by dna_polymerase » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:30 PM UTC

jfasi wrote: post #61

Warning: Personal opinion ahead To understand why this keeps happening, you need to understand the product and engineering culture at Google. As a group, Google engineers and PMs are obsessed with promotion. At the heart of every conversation about system design or product proposal lies an unspoken (and sometimes spoken) question: will working on this get me promoted? The criteria for promotion at Google, especially…

I think Google doesn't care for most services as they do not depend on any of those. Sure Android, GMail, and YouTube will stay, because they serve their core business: ads. Everything else could be over at any time. This is supported by their recent push for China. Suddenly employee voices aren't worth anything anymore (remember the drone story, that was over after employees pushed back). Maybe they have realised by now that diversification isn't that bad after all and will continue to push GCP but I wouldn't want to bet on GCP's life-span.

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

#125

Post by Wowfunhappy » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:30 PM UTC

s3r3nity wrote: post #113

jfasi wrote: post #61

Warning: Personal opinion ahead To understand why this keeps happening, you need to understand the product and engineering culture at Google. As a group, Google engineers and PMs are obsessed with promotion. At the heart of every conversation about system design or product proposal lies an unspoken (and sometimes spoken) question: will working on this get me promoted? The criteria for promotion at Google, especially…

I totally understand this - but it doesn't mean I like it. I could get through having two podcast apps on my Android (Google Podcasts, Google Play Music) that give me notifications for my podcasts, with no plans on phasing out one or the other. I could get over having two different music apps - Google Play Music and YouTube Music - because it seemed like there might actually be a plan here - albeit we haven't heard a…

> The FINAL straw was falling in love with a PixelBook that I bought during the Black Friday sales, as I moved into a role in an org that was 1) deeply invested in G Suite and 2) allowed me to do all my work from the browser - making the Chrome OS concept finally fit for me. THEN Google closes that part of their hardware division.

The PixelBook isn't going to stop getting security updates any time soon, so if it was a good machine before the division was closed, why is it a less good machine now?

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

#126

Post by jfasi » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:32 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #116

jfasi wrote: post #61

Warning: Personal opinion ahead To understand why this keeps happening, you need to understand the product and engineering culture at Google. As a group, Google engineers and PMs are obsessed with promotion. At the heart of every conversation about system design or product proposal lies an unspoken (and sometimes spoken) question: will working on this get me promoted? The criteria for promotion at Google, especially…

This went into my decision not to accept a Google offer. AMP is a product that should not exist in the first place . Everything AMP does could be done in other ways—having Google Search measure load time, improving load times, working on webpackages as step 1 instead of an afterthought, etc. But because AMP is a coherent, well-defined product, and Google rewards launching it over accomplishing the same goals in less-…

Ehh, I disagree with your assessment, and to illustrate why I think you need to focus on asblockers.

AMP serves a critical strategic purpose: it severely disincentivizes crappy, JS-heavy websites on search results and as a result makes people less likely to install adblockers. Google is terrified of adblockers going mainstream, to the point where they’re willing to risk anticompetitive suits by creating their own. AMP is a part of the effort to prevent that from happening.

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

#127

Post by Vinnl » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

vitaminCPP wrote: post #52

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…

Inbox was a dream come true for the zero-inbox mentality. Sadly, I've yet to found a replacement for this tool.

Heck, not just zero-inbox, but zero-todos. By being able to set reminders, I had a single point for all my own todos, and the ones sent to me by others (aka emails). Now they advice you to add a separate pane with Google Keep or Tasks, which means you're managing them separately. I also have no idea what will happen with the reminders I've set for later than today.

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

#128

Post by sunsetMurk » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:34 PM UTC

meddlepal wrote: post #35

Google's two (maybe three) core Google-branded products to non-tech people are Search, Gmail and maybe Chrome. I don't think non-techies could even tell you what some of the other products are or did. I would also wager most people outside of tech don't realize YouTube is owned by Google. Tech people pay a lot of attention to this stuff, but casual user's don't notice or don't care.

Google Photos seems to be a core for non-tech people too. ...and actually, is one of my favorite products that they've released in recent years.

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

#129

Post by IshKebab » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:35 PM UTC

josteink wrote: post #12

99052882514569 wrote: post #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 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?

I don't know why they didn't just add an audio jack to the normal Chromecast. Other than that aren't they identical?

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

#130

Post by geofft » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:36 PM UTC

jfasi wrote: post #126

geofft wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This went into my decision not to accept a Google offer. AMP is a product that should not exist in the first place . Everything AMP does could be done in other ways—having Google Search measure load time, improving load times, working on webpackages as step 1 instead of an afterthought, etc. But because AMP is a coherent, well-defined product, and Google rewards launching it over accomplishing the same goals in less-…

Ehh, I disagree with your assessment, and to illustrate why I think you need to focus on asblockers. AMP serves a critical strategic purpose: it severely disincentivizes crappy, JS-heavy websites on search results and as a result makes people less likely to install adblockers. Google is terrified of adblockers going mainstream, to the point where they’re willing to risk anticompetitive suits by creating their own. AM…

That's an interesting viewpoint and makes a lot of sense, but still - why couldn't Google have accomplished this goal through web search policies? Have the crawler say that if it sees JavaScript with certain behavior it will be de-prioritized compared to a similar website with less annoying JavaScript. Which, to some extent, you get just by focusing on load time: if the crawler emulates a normal browser and measures the time until everything has rendered, it'd be able to penalize annoying JS ads that block loading. Or if it emulates a normal browser and indexes text rendered on the screen, it'd be able to penalize sites that display a pop-over ad that you have to interact with.

(Would that have been more prone to an antitrust lawsuit than AMP?)