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Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

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Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would love to see a comparison of products "killed by Google" to products "killed by Microsoft" or even "killed by General Electric". I'd bet a week's paycheck that Google's list would be the shorter one.

Not really. GE may have stopped making a radio your parents bought in 1948, but it's perfectly possible it still works. How many perfectly functional devices have GE bricked simply because they were bored of supporting them? MS Windows drivers support just about every ancient crusty device MS ever made - apparently forever. It's the web obsession with having every trivial action go through an online server - for data…

I can think of some pretty big Microsoft pivots, and I don't begrudge them their choices at all.

But it's curious that you only hear cries of outrage when Google kills products, not when other companies do it.

Why do you think that is?

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Media Center

Kinect

Zune

PlaysForSure DRM

Microsoft Money

Windows Home Server

Microsoft Kin Phone

Microsoft Mobile, previously known as Nokia

Windows 10 Mobile

The Band

TechNet

Hotmail

Live Messenger

Live Mesh

Groove Music Pass

Groove Music for iOS

Groove Music for Android

Encarta

Windows Small Business Server

Flight Simulator

Microsoft Works

Microsoft FrontPage

Windows Embedded Automotive, formerly Microsoft Auto, formerly Windows CE for Automotive, formerly Windows Automotive, formerly Windows Mobile for Automotive

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#492
post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I agree. Lately I've noticed search sometimes just pops in websites just because I visited it from a previous search, relevancy be damned! and it suuuuuucks.

I seem to be able to find a much more limited selection of content than I used to in the past. It used to be that even obscure search queries turned up something useful, but now you either get nothing or the same old big or commercial sites. There has to be tons of content out there that Google just can't seem to find anymore.

There was a discussion about exactly that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19604135

Ironically I could not find this link via DDG, but it was the first hit on Google.

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#493
post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I used to be a fan. They were explicitly not evil, gave lots of open source stuff away for free, made lots of other free services. Turns out they were just making us dependent on them, and now that they've got us, they do whatever they want. We need to make ourselves less dependent on Google. Move away from GMail, use Firefox, DuckDuckGo, OSM, federated social networks, etc. I don't have a good replacement f…

>I don't have a good replacement for Android yet It might not suit your needs, but I've been happily using SailfishOS for the past four years.

> SailfishOS

Descended from MeeGo, I see. I hadn't heard from it yet, but I'll have a look.

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For those who see this as Google turning off an unused service: no, just no. This is Google cutting off a massive interop ecosystem to try to parlay the success of Nest into higher adoption of Google Home. That’s vastly different than shutting down G+, Wave, Orkut, Reader, etc. It's exactly the same as previous shutdowns, it's just that you didn't personally care about previous shutdowns and couldn't be arsed to em…

Since you claim its exactly the same as previous shutdowns listed; when Google shut down Wave, which paid for Google product were they aiming to increase adoption of?

my memory of wave is that it barely even launched. wasn't it around less than a year? did anyone actually use it?

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#495
post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or build on an open an open source stack. Don't like Intel? Switch to AMD. Don't like AWS? Switch to another cloud. Proprietary platforms lure developers to their stack by making development easy. Learning an open source is typically more difficult, but the reward is greater freedom. Believing you're forced to build on proprietary technology is a fallacy.

Open source only works as a business, when one can get money with some kind of subscription service, or selling hardware.

There are a number of business models that are compatible with open source. But the question here isn't whether to open source your own software or not. The issue is whether it's a good idea to build on somebody else's proprietary stack.

It's in the long term interest of any business not to rely on the goodwill of some other business. This goes for Microsoft as much as for Google, Apple, Amazon, etc.

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a typical Asshole Executive move: leverage successful feature to increase adoption of random other product, and then convert adoption increase into bonus and career opportunities, and hope that the loss in goodwill isn't noticed. It was the same when G+ was created. Asshole Executives started jamming + buttons everywhere, including search results (!). They killed + in search queries as meaning "required". Every…

> Every semi-successful feature had to get G+ integration to maximize the adoption of G+. Also, forced Youtube integration and G+ accounts being required even to rate Android apps.

Funny that G+ was still ignored despite this effort.

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard that’s how PowerShell came in existence. Nobody wanted to improve conhost.

It's not really possible to substantially improve either conhost or cmd due to backwards compatibility considerations. The risk of breaking something for someone is just too high.

They just announced Windows Terminal and even spent time and money on a marketing video for this yet unreleased product:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gw0rXPMMPE

Granted, conhost will stay for compatibility reasons and this is a new thing.

But it's open source: https://github.com/Microsoft/Terminal . And according to the readme contains the source for conhost.exe too.

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#498
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but then that's different. Because you were complaining that they were not differentiating between actual killed services and things that naturally reached their end of life, but in this case, the site is actually wrong . It clearly says that it provided provided users with anonymous search, which gives the impression of something like DuckDuckGo or Startpage. But that's not what's happening, and I think that's w…

For the curious, here is the about page for encrpted.google.com from 2010: https://web.archive.org/web/20100524223335/http://www.google... > Note that SSL search does not reduce the data that Google receives and logs when you search, or change the listing of these terms in your Web History

The page you linked to is for "Google Search over SSL" and is not the same thing.

Searches performed at encrypted.google.com (not just google.com with SSL) were not available in any user-facing capacity in one's Google account. It did not store the search queries in user-facing history, and did not use those terms for future search suggestions.

Re: Google Is Turning Off the Works-with-Nest API

#499
post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the caveat of having to jump through a series of hoops every few months because Google kindly decided to switch off "unsafe access"

That's never, ever happened to me.

It happens to me all the time. I used to use Gmail API to send mail (personal hobby app, to my own account). Every now and then Gmail would randomly refuse to authenticate through the API because of unsafe or suspicious access or some other BS. Then I would need to jump through some hoops (log in manually though browser, toggle on/off the "allow less secure app" setting, the disable unlock captcha setting, and it would work again for a while before acting up again.
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