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Sunsetting Hire

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Re: Sunsetting Hire

#51

Post by wpietri »

4ntonius8lock wrote: post #28
ahupp wrote: post #21

Does google actually have a worse track record on shutdowns than the average startup? Random 10 person companies shut down all the time, but we seem to pay extra attention when it's a 10 person team inside Google.

When I get involved with a random 10 person company, I know what I'm getting into. Using the google brand provides(provided) a sense of respectability and deeper pockets/longer term vision. Some users, I believe rightfully so, feel betrayed by google's lackadaisical approach to starting and shutting down projects. Especially when comparing the effort to market vs create a great product. Like google +, it was shoved d…

This all seems pretty fair to me.

I know how to evaluate a startup's potential failure. Who's funding them? How much money do they have? How popular are they? How solid's the product? What are the founders like? Heck, for a lot of small startups, you can just ask to talk to the CEO if it's what it will take to close the deal. And I have a good idea of the conditions under which they'll throw in the towel.

But Google product success seems to depend entirely on internal politics, which are completely opaque to me. As traek explains, this product only exists at Google because Google wanted to hire the company's CEO: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20815572

And it stopped existing because she left Google. How could I possibly predict that? Better just to stay away, I figure, unless it's an obvious money-maker or has high strategic value.

Re: Sunsetting Hire

#53

Post by Havoc »

Starting to think that the key is to build your toys on a VM you control. That way nobody can take them away

Proprietary stuff is starting to become flakey not in the uptime sense but pure lifespan. Almost like planned obsolescence became a thing with gear

Re: Sunsetting Hire

#54

Post by a3n »

> While Hire has been successful, we’re focusing our resources on other products in the Google Cloud portfolio.

The corporate equivalent of "spending more time with his family."

Re: Sunsetting Hire

#55

Post by [deleted] »

xg15 wrote: post #38
traek wrote: post #25

This makes sense, Hire was born out of Bebop (founded by Diane Greene, former VMware founder/CEO). Google acquihired Bebop to get Diane Greene as head of Google Cloud (which is why this product was lumped under their cloud division), but she left Google earlier this year. No reason for Google to keep it running now.

So I guess we now passed the aqui-hire (acquire a company you're not interested in to get the people you want) and arrived at the prod-hire: Build a product you're not interested in to acquire a company you're not interested in to get the people you want.

[deleted]

Re: Sunsetting Hire

#56

Post by a3n »

Is this related to the EU accusing Google of favoring their job search product on relevant Google searches?

Re: Sunsetting Hire

#57

Post by jtbayly »

pwinnski wrote: post #8
wilkystyle wrote: post #6

Every time there's a post about a Google service being shut down, there are the usual remarks. I'm not saying they aren't deserved, but I'm curious if there's an alternate perspective here? Perhaps sunsetting these services ultimately leads to a more trim and lean Google, and better profit margins? Put another way, is it just the HN circle that is so put off by this?

The two positions don't seem to be in any conflict: I'm sure it is good for Google to shut these services down. I'm sure it does result in a leaner and more profitable company. The end result is still that Google cannot be trusted to keep any service running that isn't extremely profitable, and people who come to depend on these less-profitable services still end up orphaned.

It's good short term anyway. Whether it bites them in the end is basically a question of whether they make their brand untrustworthy. They seem to be doing so.

Re: Sunsetting Hire

#58

Post by foota »

I'm surprised by this move seeing as it seemed to be fairly heavily marketed, but the deprecation timeline seems generous.

Re: Sunsetting Hire

#60

Post by thanatos_dem »

cbisnett wrote: post #9

I wonder if Google has unintentionally created a self-reinforcing feedback loop where potential customers don’t trust the products will be supported for more than 24 months which leads to limited adoption which in turn leads to the products being canceled before 24 months. Pair that with other HN comments that have described a situation where it’s easier to get promoted from launching a product vs maintaining an exis…

Yeah, killing inbox moved me away from google for mail entirely, and after that the dominos started falling. The only google product I use regularly at this point is YouTube, which I pay for to avoid ads.
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