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When will Google shut down Stadia?

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Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#361

Post by AlexandrB »

heywoods wrote: post #303
mbell wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stadia is different, with this product Google is trying something really innovative. Genuine question: What is innovative here? There are at least a dozen attempts at 'cloud gaming' that I'm aware of dating back about a decade.

I think I can help answer your question, but just watching the keynote will be best. https://youtu.be/hl-Y1QVhmcM . The tl;dr of the whole keynote is what's different about Google's attempt at 'Cloud Gaming' is their ability to leverage their infrastructure. Outside of Amazon and Microsoft I don't know of another company that will be able to match the latency and computation requirements to make this all work as mark…

> What is different with Google's attempt at 'Cloud Gaming' is their ability to leverage their infrastructure.

That's not innovation, it's just having a bigger stick than the other guy.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#362

Post by hyperdimension »

ogre_codes wrote: post #207
dopamean wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm crazy but I've never thought google had a good product team. Has there ever been a coherent vision for their collection of products? Edit: just to be clear. I'm not saying google doesnt have good products. I use and enjoy lots of them but for a long time it has seemed like even google isn't sure how all their products fit together. Perhaps that leads to weird forays into territories that don't fit which the…

Google has a few products which were stellar and singularly awesome at the time of launch: Search, Maps, and Gmail. In the years since I'm not even sure I love those products anymore. Search has nearly become pay-to-play, a model which the original search killed. Maps is not nearly as stand-out as it used to be (mostly because products like Apple Maps have improved massively over the years). And Gmail is a bit of a m…

Maps was an acquisition, too. "Skyhook" or "Keyhole" come to mind as to the original name, but I'm not sure which.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#363

Post by CobrastanJorji »

dylan-m wrote: post #293
iamsb wrote: post #88

A good model will be to start working on a new startup with a competing product as soon as google launches something. In couple of years when they shut down, provide migration paths. Swim in $$$.

This is, to some extent, what Feedly did. They started off as a really nice, somewhat niche magazine-style news reader built on Google Reader. When Google Reader shut down, it was in their best interest to implement the API themselves. They had the very clever idea to make that a _public_ API, just like Google Reader, so in the end all kinds of apps and services wanted to use it, and it seems they're doing really wel…

Feedly was amazingly positioned for that. Their two signature featuers were: 1.) it looked and worked almost exactly like Google Reader, and 2.) it could import your Google Reader feeds with one click.

Within months of Google announcing Reader's closing, Feedly had acquired something like 8 million new users. Amazing stroke of fortune for a well-deserving product. I still happily use the free version.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#364

Post by teh_klev »

coldpie wrote: post #328
teh_klev wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Reader's shutdown was a true act of vandalism. Sure there are a handful alternatives, but Reader despite its somewhat basic UI worked really well. And despite Google's attempts to kill RSS, it hasn't gone away.

Feedly's quite good, and they have a business model that isn't driven by abuse of their users.

I have tried it in the past, but it just ain't the same, I wasn't filled with joy and its UI annoyed me. Maybe I'll try again.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#365

Post by pavel_lishin »

ISL wrote: post #183
Roritharr wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually a bad sign, as it shows how notable it is at Google when something like this is prevented... ️ Preventing Products from failing should be SOP.

Promoting people who notice impending implosions should also be SOP.

Leading to a black market in manufactured implosion-causing problems!

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#366

Post by dmix »

thebokehwokeh2 wrote: post #352
pm90 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Textbook anti competitive behavior. Google needs to be broken up.

When people say this, what exactly does this mean? If you break Google up into Gmail, Search, Calendar, etc... what stops those from within, who have intimate knowledge of the innerworkings and HR related matters within Alphabet as a whole, from simply secretly colluding and sharing resources off the books?

I’ve asked this question an bunch of times and never got a serious reply. There’s no strong anti-trust angle or end game to these things, it’s purely vindictive because it’s trendy to hate on SV.

Sometimes companies are shitty but it doesn’t justify such a strong hammer. If anything their search products or mobile products would themselves need to be broken up, (or FBs network and Instagram) not the whole company... but even then it’s not like they will go away.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#367

Post by shadowgovt »

inetknght wrote: post #166
shadowgovt wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW though, setting up a mail server is difficult. Setting up a mail client with reasonable spam filtering to make email usable is also difficult. Compare the list of steps on either of those tasks to the list for getting email via Gmail: "1) Sign up to a Google account, 2) visit gmail.com"; it's obvious almost all users are going to do the latter (or its equivalent at a Google competitor).

Setting up a mail server isn't difficult. It's about as easy as installing and configuring a web server, and just about as technical. Email has been around for decades. The fact that Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and many paid services have had one-click email addresses for twenty-plus years should demonstrate that it's not difficult . Businesses just don't want to make it easy for lay people to do it.

The simplest web server I'm aware of is `python http.server 8080`

... and even for that, I had to disable / re-enable the firewall and fish around in the docs just last night to get the dang thing to accept connections from a source other than localhost (PROTIP: when running on a pretty-out-of-the-box Windows 10 config, the default options bind listeners to IPv6, not IPv4). And I definitely wouldn't recommend that configuration for production; you'll open yourself up to a universe of pain.

But as an analogy for setting up an email server vs. just subscribing to Google or whoever, I accept it. ;)

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#368

Post by joshuamorton »

inetknght wrote: post #262
ceejayoz wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The services you mention all have entire large teams devoted to tackling spam, reputation, uptime, etc. That it's easy and cheap on a marginal basis for them to add one more inbox to their millions doesn't mean the overall infrastructure is easy to keep running.

> The services you mention all have entire large teams devoted to tackling spam, reputation, uptime, etc. Can you provide specific numbers to the count of people devoted to tackling spam, reputation, uptime, etc? I suspect the number's a lot smaller than you think. I also suspect the peoples' duties are less devoted than you think. If Google, for example, truly worked to tackle spam then it wouldn't have a spam probl…

I work with these teams at Google.

There are teams that actively (and solely) work on spam and abuse detection. They're larger than you seem to believe, though I won't give exact numbers. There's also obviously sre teams that maintain uptime. (Note I said teams, and there's a public approximate minimum size for an are team at Google of 8-12 people)

The problem is that spam can't be "solved". Reputation is easy to solve: only accept email from a known list of good senders. Gmail, Yahoo, MailChimp (or not), etc. But that makes people on HN complain. So your have to try and infer reputation of mailservers on shared hosts. And spammers are always trying to beat you, and there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands of spam outfits. Af they're sneaky. They try to use awa or gcp to send email, or even send spam from Gmail, prevent trickier things. So you're left to defend from a spam campaign from Yahoo while also trying to not block everyone at Yahoo, and detect the spammers who are using Gmail to spam Yahoo too.

And the spammers are always innovating, so you have to as well.

My personal belief is that Google likely considers spam detection to be an area of competitive advantage so investments are warranted.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#369

Post by vonmoltke »

juped wrote: post #194
steelframe wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Has a Google product ever been good? Uhhh... Maps? Mail? Pixel 2 and 3? Fi? Sheets? Sure, their Cloud doesn't sell as much as Amazon's, but it's been praised as being a much more coherent product. Not sure how anyone could argue that Google hasn't gotten it right several times.

Maps, thanks. Still pretty good. I agree with none of the others.

I'm just one anecdote, but I love FI and my Pixel 3.

Re: When will Google shut down Stadia?

#370

Post by nvrspyx »

macspoofing wrote: post #187
gilrain wrote: post #118

The criticism of Google Stadia and the defense of its concept in this thread are correct. There is a successful future in cloud gaming and nobody denies that. However, it's extremely likely to be delivered by a company with both the technical chops and industry chops, including a deep existing library. Google only has one of those, and they didn't even nail the technical side convincingly. Look toward Microsoft or So…

I agree. If Google was really serious about Stadia, they should have invested in first-party and second-party dev studios to show off the platform (instead of relying on disinterest third parties to port their old games). They should also subsidize the service (and the games) and lose money on it while they educate the public on the benefits of cloud gaming. And yes, they should also forge deeper relationships with t…

I’m not a huge fan of it either and I agree with some of your points, but:

1. They are investing in first-party studios, but I’m not sure about second-party

2. Most of the launch games available to Founders are up to 50% off and included 2 free games (although that’s just like Free Games with Gold so I wouldn’t necessarily say it sets them apart)

3. They’ve worked with other studios getting their games on Stadia. For example, they sent engineers to Bungie for 6 months to help port Destiny 2.

4. It took MSFT years to develop Game Pass and the relationships with the developers to do so

5. Not many, if any, AAA companies are going to agree to put their new game on a subscription service, which is why Game Pass only has old games and Microsoft’s first-party games (although there might be a couple of exceptions)

6. It’s the developers that are choosing to sell the games for full price. Google definitely could eat some of the cost though

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