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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

#311

Post by scarface74 »

user5994461 wrote: post #300
yoodenvranx wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile, consider Reader. A product with only a couple million users, mostly pointy-headed techie types, that doesn’t drive business to any money-making effort, And this is exactly the problem about Google! They only care about direct metrics: Product A generates only x million $ per year -> it must be canceled. But what those direct metrics do not show is the long term trust which is destroyed by such short-term…

> And this is exactly the problem about Google! They only care about direct metrics: Product A generates only x million $ per year -> it must be canceled. Microsoft doesn't consider a product unless it can generate more than $100M a year. It's a general mode of operation for big companies, not limited to Google.

How much money do you think AWS loses still supporting old deprecated services like running EC2 instances outside of a VPC and SimpleDB?

I’m not aware of a single feature on AWS that has ever been abandoned.

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

#312

Post by scarface74 »

korethr wrote: post #308
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 is also why GMail, YouTube, Search, GCP, Android, and others aren’t going anywhere. They’re making money, they’re core to the business, and there’s plenty of opportunity to work on them and get promoted. They all also share one thing in common: deep down they’re frontends for search or advertising (GCP and Apps are an exception because they make money on their own). Measuring and proving impact on search number…

Advertising is not evil, but I prefer business models that involve me giving companies my money and them giving me stuff.

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

#313

Post by scarface74 »

fjabre wrote: post #197
geofft wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a "company like Alphabet"? Can any company of the size and scale of Alphabet, or aiming to be such one day, avoid these pressures? Why isn't this the Google we grew up with, given that this is what Google was growing up to be all along? A serious question is whether a young company in roughly the state Google was in the early '00s can reasonably commit to never becoming a multibillion-dollar conglomerate.

Probably not. I think going public ruins the ability of such a company to maintain a moral compass. It certainly vanquished any idea of maintaining their 'don't be evil' motto. They simply could have committed not to becoming a publicly traded company. I know every YC investor looks at going public as the end all be all for every company on earth but I think the pursuit of the public market at all costs mindset typic…

If every YC investor looks at going public and only one has ever gone public, they were looking in the wrong direction. Most VC funded companies either get acquired or go bust.

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

#314

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

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…

Probably also explains why their messaging strategy is completely incomprehensible too. I still have no idea what apps do what, which ones provide video or audio or text or both.

I have a hangouts and voice app on my phone and they appear to have duplicate functionality. I’m not joking — I receive the same notifications on both.

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

#315

Post by acemarke »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #282
s0rce wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tested a few that appeared from the ashes. Ended up not liking most of them but eventually found bazqux and pay them money.

I switched to Feedly the day they announced the shutdown because it could import from Reader, looked like Reader, and used a lot of the same shortcuts. Is bazqux better?

Haven't used Feedly, but I was a hardcore Google Reader user, and I _love_ BazQux Reader. It does exactly what I need - shows RSS, has APIs that allow mobile apps to hook in, is fast, and it _just works_. Totally worth the $20/yr, and I'm amazed more folks don't talk about it.

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

#316

Post by scarface74 »

rock_hard wrote: post #248
bradstewart wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any thoughts on whether Google Photos will stick around? I find it's far better than any alternatives I've come across, and the recent Inbox shutdown made me realize how "dependent" I am on it.

That’s gonna be an interesting one to watch. Hosting the worlds photos costs many billions of dollars each year! That said it’s a key driver to sell android phones (“infinite storage”)...so for the time being you will be good.

But then again according to information that came out during the Oracle lawsuit, they only made $36Billion from Android during its entire existence.

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

#317

Post by QuercusMax »

josteink wrote: post #277
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…

> 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. For people outside the San Francisco and Silicon Valley bubble which are confused by this, it may be worth noting that promotion here does not need mean getting a new job. Everyone are not constantly getting new jobs. “Promotion” here means internal, magic…

Promotion means you get promoted to a higher level within Google[1]. This typically means you get more money[2], better opportunities, and more visibility.

People often do change jobs within Google/Alphabet after getting promoted. It's a signal that you're doing a good job, as verified by a promotion committee, and hiring managers will often look at a recent promotion as a signal that someone is a high-performer. But there are lots of folks who don't change jobs after a promotion (especially if you're happy with what you're doing) - it's an opportunity to keep doing what you're doing, just more of the same, with official recognition that you've been doing a good job.

1. Level 3 = SWE I - New Grad (Bachelors/Masters). Level 4 = SWE II (Newly minted PhDs start here). Level 5 = Senior SWE. Level 6 = Staff SWE. Level 7 = Senior Staff SWE. Level 8 = Principal SWE / Director.

2. This is not strictly true; a high-performer at Level N may make just as much as a low- or average-performer at Level N+1. But in practice you start to hit salary caps, and sustaining very high performance at Level N may be more difficult than sustaining average performance at Level N+1.

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

#318

Post by jedberg »

anoncake wrote: post #289
jedberg wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely doesn't apply to Netflix. You can get good raises and promotions by optimizing an existing process. If you can show improvement in internal metrics, such as improving latency or lowering cost, that's a huge win. Even if you increase costs you can get a raise and promotion if you show that it increased code quality, such as creating the Chaos Monkey/Gorilla/Kong.

I guess it helps that Netflix essentially has one product.

Yes that probably helps a lot. Also they don’t hire fresh college grads, so you generally have less of the “wow this was clearly written by a junior engineer” type of maintenance. The low hanging fruit is mostly picked when it comes to architecture and optimization.

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

#319

Post by scarface74 »

steven2012 wrote: post #140
TheTruth1234 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Google as a company is worth almost $1T. It's hard to argue that's the wrong approach when they are so ridiculously successful.

How well is GCP doing compared to AWS and Azure?

How well is GSuite doing compared to MS Office?

How well is Android doing as far as revenue and profit compared to iOS? According to information that came out during the Oracle trial, Android has made Google less over 10 years than iOS makes Apple during a down quarter.

How well is G+ doing against FB?

Google hasn’t had but one successful revenue generating product - ads.

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

#320

Post by scarface74 »

chrisfinazzo wrote: post #60
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.

Last I checked, YouTube was/is kind of a big deal.

Rumors are that it is still barely above break even if that.
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