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

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

#211

Post by RestlessMind » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:27 PM UTC

dna_polymerase wrote: post #124

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…

I am willing to bet on GCP's life-span - it will be around for 10 more years at least. What would you like to bet for?

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

#212

Post by erik_seaberg » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:29 PM UTC

jfasi wrote: post #117

throw_away wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you get a company that throws stuff at the wall to see if it sticks, and if it doesn't kills it immediately. I would love if they followed this strategy. Instead, you have products like reader and inbox with many passionate users, which demonstrate some wall stickiness, and they're killed rather than monetized. Monetize me. I recognize that the things I like cost money. Figure out how to make money off me! I would…

The metric you need to keep in mind here is revenue per employee. Keeping one product up and running necessarily means withholding engineers from another. As an extreme example, ads engineers make Google many times their salary, benefits, and ephemeral costs, and even non-revenue-generating services like Photos and Assistant indirectly drive traffic to the money makers. Meanwhile, consider Reader. A product with only…

> staffed by about a dozen engineers

That's part of the problem. You should be able to leave Reader unstaffed for as long as it isn't strategic (it's not as if borg has trouble keeping the tasks up), but in practice it will randomly fail because somebody in infra went for promo, so every project faces a choice: staff this indefinitely or kill it now.

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

#213

Post by pavel_lishin » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:30 PM UTC

o10449366 wrote: post #63

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.

I disagree. I know a lot of "non-techies" that switched to using iPhones just for iMessage because Google's messaging ecosystem is confusing and seems to change every 12 months. I also know a lot of non-techies that use Google Play Music to upload and manage their own music libraries. It's rumored that Play Music is going to be killed in the next few months as Google pushes YouTube music subscriptions instead. The pr…

I'm dying to know more information about Google Music. I'm one of the people who uploaded their entire library up there, and while it vaguely exists as a backup of a 20XX version on a hard drive somewhere, losing access to it would be pretty crippling to my every-day listening.

I'm absolutely not interested in a Spotify-like subscription to a revolving library that I don't control; Google no longer letting me listen to music I upload will probably mean that I'm going to have to switch to something otherwise god-awful that prioritizes syncing my own library.

Can't wait to enjoy the iTunes experience of manually syncing music, except from someone even worse than Apple at writing that sort of software. Anyone got any recommendations?

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

#214

Post by jonathankoren » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:31 PM UTC

_ptgt wrote: post #167

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…

In my experience at a different FANG, the same culture exists here. If I had to guess, I would say it probably applies to the others as well.

Oh just go ahead an name Facebook.

The irony, is that this pattern at FB and and Big G isn’t indicative of a good engineering culture. It’s pathological engineering.

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

#215

Post by iagovar » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:32 PM UTC

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.

Yeah, good luck next time a tech-savvy has to recommend a Google product or something else.

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

#216

Post by deckard1 » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:34 PM UTC

o10449366 wrote: post #67

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…

Google+ was dying slowly to be sure, but the reason it was killed off is because they tried to cover up a data leak affecting over 500,000 users. [0] They've definitely killed off/abandoned their fair share of flagship products without warning (Hangouts, anyone?), but Google+ was shut down to minimize media controversy. [0]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/10/google-exposed-n...

jesus. I didn't need another reason to hate Google. But there it is...

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

#217

Post by tyfon » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:36 PM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #200

tyfon wrote: post #19

It'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.

Yeah, it looks like games will actually need to be built on stadia. It doesn't look like it just spins up an instance of vanilla install of the game. So there will need to be a deliberate choice by developers to support a new platform. Add that to the fact that many gamers already have a library of purchased games (like in steam) and aren't going to be thrilled at either buying them again or paying a subscription to…

Afaik it's built to a ubuntu + vulkan setup, but I suspect the rendering will go directly to a proprietary encoders framebuffer and that it uses custom input mapping and not libinput.

What would be nice if they released offline linux + vulkan versions in addition to the streaming version but that probably goes against their MO of tracking and monetising. It would make me much more inclined to buy on their service though.

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

#218

Post by jdgoesmarching » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:36 PM UTC

jfasi wrote: post #168

PopePompus wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be that GCP isn't going anywhere, but when our organization was choosing a cloud service, we chose Amazon over Google specifically because of Google's flakiness. Google could drop cloud services tomorrow, and it would not be out of character.

I can’t share with you how much GCP is making in revenue, but I can assure you it’s enough that it won’t get dropped, ever. I’ll put my money where my mouth is: I’m now preparing to expand my own team’s operations into GCP and away from AWS because of how good their ML offerings are.

Maybe the core product won't go away, but you could still see the damage from this approach in features or services you depend on within GCP. Not to mention Google's love for mixing around interfaces every five seconds (with poor documentation of course).

Consistency and reliability matter more than flashy new tech. I wish the culture at Google would understand that.

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

#219

Post by clebio » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:39 PM UTC

frosted-flakes wrote: post #175

TeMPOraL wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good at being a pathfinding and point-by-point navigation tool, not as an actual map . Their completely broken treatment of street and POI labels makes the product very annoying when trying to preplan a journey, get yourself oriented in a place you don't know, or evaluate alternative routes.

Especially when driving. Super thin, low contrast lines with hardly any labels at a weird angle make trying to read the map while driving super frustrating. I have a Garmin unit mounted on my car windshield that comes on with the ignition, and the user experience is just so much better. The route lines don't blend in with the background and it has large labels that are actually readable. The low angle of the 3D map a…

Any particular Garmin device you recommend?

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

#220

Post by gotocake » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 4:41 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 agree with most of what you’ve said, but I’m curious about whether or not YouTube actually makes money. I was under the impression that on a good day it just about breaks even, but has that changed?