Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 427 posts

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

#251

Post by president »

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 mindset is commonplace in most of the jobs I've held in the last 10 years. Personal gain trumps morals, company values, and even company performance. It's what happens when you put a bunch of high-performers in a box and let them play the corporate ladder game.

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

#253

Post by mshockwave »

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…

> Maintenance engineering is so not-rewarded that it's become an inside joke

highlighted

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

#254

Post by jedberg »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #210
sooheon wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think the half life of most electronics is? Why do you think so many people get anxious about Apple "abandoning" the Mac? A trickle of security updates does not make a well supported and thriving product line.

You should be purchasing hardware based on whether the current model looks good, not what model may be next in that product line. The latter is pointless and largely impossible. Chrome OS itself isn't going anywhere.

> You should be purchasing hardware based on whether the current model looks good, not what model may be next in that product line.

I couldn't disagree more. When I buy a laptop, I want to know that all the time I invest in learning that ecosystem and customizing won't be wasted time. Or any other hardware. Especially if I have to buy apps for it. I want to know that when I get the next piece of hardware, it will support all the software I already know and love (and paid for!)

I'm reluctant to buy into an ecosystem that might be on the decline, because it means a higher chance of that stuff not working anymore.

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

#255

Post by Animats »

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…

Streaming game services, not so much.

Yes. The game industry is very reluctant to use Improbable's Spatial OS, because, through a deal with Google, they force you to host your game, expensively, on Google's servers.[1] Nobody wants to spend $100 million developing an AAA title using that system, and then suddenly get an email that Google is discontinuing the product.

(Spatial OS is technically interesting, and, hopefully, someone else will do something like it, with reasonable licensing terms.)

[1] https://massivelyop.com/2018/01/12/chronicles-of-elyria-is-d...

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

#256

Post by svachalek »

sigmaml wrote: post #238
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…

It is anecdata, but in my reasonably large group of acquaintances and fellow professionals (hundreds), I haven't heard this complaint in ages! In any case, if you are having spam delivered to your inbox in GMail, it is very easy to train it to detect spam. Mark as many such as you can, and report them as spam. GMail learns very quickly.

The problem is the big gray zone between spam and letters from Mom. All those mailing lists you get on because you signed into their website or thought something looked interesting once, and they're more or less behaving themselves but still more noise than you're willing to deal with most days.

Inbox dealt with that category of mail, which is at least 90% of what I get, in a simply beautiful way that I can't replace. Gmail has clunky tabs with 90s style pagination and ads at the top.

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

#257

Post by nadezhda18 »

Goronmon wrote: post #47
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.

> Google would prefer you spend more time fighting the interface in Gmail and seeing ads

Do you see ads in Gmail?

I don't anymore and it feels it has been like since a very long time.

(and my AdBlock os turned off on Gmail)

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

#259

Post by prolepunk »

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…

Have you tried temporary containers Firefox plugin -- it's basically automated private mode for everything.

Article about it -- https://spin.atomicobject.com/2018/10/29/virtual-browsers-fi...

Extension -- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...

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

#260

Post by RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u »

TheTruth1234 wrote: post #112
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…

Thanks, but to you and any other GOOGLE EMPLOYEES Are you not internally aware of this? Do you just carry on regardless? What happens when you voice this issue internally? As an ex-Google fan boy, the title of this article has been true for years and it's what poisoned me (and no doubt many others) against you. So you must be aware of it. What's your take? I'm super curious as to why you gave up tech (brand) leadersh…

While this issue is not unique to Google, IMHO their hiring process exacerbates it further. From day -1 you're primed to game the interview racket; once you're in, why would your mentality suddenly change wrt to climbing the promotion ladder? Your incentives haven't changed.
Post reply on HN