This is terrible.
I use Linux at home, and Linux has always had difficulty printing. I deliberately bought a Brother laser printer with Google Cloud Print to avoid these issues. It also makes it easy to print from my phone.
Had I known this, I might have bought an HP printer, which are known to have better Linux drivers....
Google Kills Cloud Print
271–280 of 567 posts
Re: Google Kills Cloud Print
#272Google has the corporate equivalent of ADHD. Having talked with ex-googlers and current googlers, the problem seems to be deeply baked into their culture. The incentive structures seem to favor the sexy over the boring, making it much more likely that someone will get promoted for launching products versus growing one. The fix seems to be obvious, create a separate path, a maintenance and growth hacker path, where pe…
> Google has the corporate equivalent of ADHD.
This isn't Google-specific. Based on my own first-hand experience working in a Global 500 company, I'm inclined to say that it's actually inevitable in any sufficiently large company with a sufficiently large range of business.
The fundamental problem is that there's just way too much heterogeneity for senior leadership to possibly understand all the company's lines of business. Which means that it's impossible to make thoughtful, intentional decisions about all of it at the corporate level. I'm guessing the best strategy is to focus on the bread-and-butter business, and treat all the rest with a sort of benign neglect. That seems to be what Google is doing. But you can't neglect things indefinitely - you do need to occasionally clean out the hallway closet and get rid of all the stuff you didn't even remember you had.
Re: Google Kills Cloud Print
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It was the single way of printing from Android -- a couple of billion devices sold -- for the longest time Cloud print was added to Android at the same time Android added support for generic printer drivers. Cloud Print is, in fact, just a generic printer driver as far as the OS is concerned. There are, and have been, native print drivers, though. HP, for example, has Android drivers: https://support.hp.com/us-en/d…
Google Cloud Print was released in 2010, and was the way of printing on Android as of 2011. Native print drivers were added to Android in 2017 . A print "framework" was added in 2014, where manufacturers could build hacked-out targets, which a couple did, although most are relatively newer. This is a far cry from "same time". Indeed, most manufacturers STILL pitch Google Cloud Printer up front, most electronics store…
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Re: Google Kills Cloud Print
#274Google has the corporate equivalent of ADHD. Having talked with ex-googlers and current googlers, the problem seems to be deeply baked into their culture. The incentive structures seem to favor the sexy over the boring, making it much more likely that someone will get promoted for launching products versus growing one. The fix seems to be obvious, create a separate path, a maintenance and growth hacker path, where pe…
Their leadership has no vision. They don't know what to build, where they're going, or what problems they need to solve.. So they encourage these random projects hoping one of their employees will have a vision for them. So the organization just flails around hoping to win the lottery. Each new project is a new lottery ticket.. saving the leadership from making any hard decisions.
>So the organization just flails around hoping to win the lottery. Each new project is a new lottery ticket.. saving the leadership from making any hard decisions.
Not to be hateful, and I couldn't possibly live further from the SV area, but isn't that just a description of startup culture? Are they just being the most successful startup?
Re: Google Kills Cloud Print
#275Google has the corporate equivalent of ADHD. Having talked with ex-googlers and current googlers, the problem seems to be deeply baked into their culture. The incentive structures seem to favor the sexy over the boring, making it much more likely that someone will get promoted for launching products versus growing one. The fix seems to be obvious, create a separate path, a maintenance and growth hacker path, where pe…
I don't disagree with your assertions. But I want to point out that other tech giants sunset stuff all the time too. It some ways, it's endemic to the industry. Here's a list of everything Microsoft shut down over the years. It's a big list.
https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/discontinued-micros...
Re: Google Kills Cloud Print
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
They might not be wrong. Engineers who could be maintaining mildly profitable products could be invented new products that have some percentage chance of being much more profitable. If someone did the math and said the expected value of "engineer working on new projects" was bigger than the expected value of of the the profits of an existing project divided by the number of engineers needed to maintain it, then it'd…
What's the expected value of not having your brand known for routinely canceling products without much notice? It seems like any company would have to be crazy to want to depend on any new Google service for anything important - and that's bad for Google.
Yeah... for example, it's a problem for Google Stadia! Who wants to invests time and money in a platform that can be cancelled at any time?
Re: Google Kills Cloud Print
#277Google has the corporate equivalent of ADHD. Having talked with ex-googlers and current googlers, the problem seems to be deeply baked into their culture. The incentive structures seem to favor the sexy over the boring, making it much more likely that someone will get promoted for launching products versus growing one. The fix seems to be obvious, create a separate path, a maintenance and growth hacker path, where pe…
This is the right move though because moving towards "Driverless printing" will solve the overall problem in a simpler way: https://openprinting.github.io/driverless/ Google is pro-adapting to change. And it is painful but it is usually the right thing.
I bought a $200 Brother laser printer a few years ago. It supports:
>LPD
>Raw Port
>IPP
>AirPrint
>Mopria
>Google Cloud Print
and, I think, a bunch of proprietary HP/Epson protocols.
The best part is the toner cartridge that comes with it lasts long enough to totally recoup the cost difference between it and a "consumer" inkjet printer
Re: Google Kills Cloud Print
#278Google has the corporate equivalent of ADHD. Having talked with ex-googlers and current googlers, the problem seems to be deeply baked into their culture. The incentive structures seem to favor the sexy over the boring, making it much more likely that someone will get promoted for launching products versus growing one. The fix seems to be obvious, create a separate path, a maintenance and growth hacker path, where pe…
Their leadership has no vision. They don't know what to build, where they're going, or what problems they need to solve.. So they encourage these random projects hoping one of their employees will have a vision for them. So the organization just flails around hoping to win the lottery. Each new project is a new lottery ticket.. saving the leadership from making any hard decisions.
Agreed -- I saw Sundar give the keynote at Google I/O last year, and while it was obvious that he was really into the tech, it was equally obvious he had no overarching vision for any of the things he talked about, outside of a general sense of "wow, isn't this cool?"
Google really needs to ditch him and find a new CEO capable of providing some actual vision and direction, not just randomly lead them to chase various cool technologies.
Re: Google Kills Cloud Print
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their leadership has no vision. They don't know what to build, where they're going, or what problems they need to solve.. So they encourage these random projects hoping one of their employees will have a vision for them. So the organization just flails around hoping to win the lottery. Each new project is a new lottery ticket.. saving the leadership from making any hard decisions.
Google is basically a startup builder. And a really good one. How many companies manage to stay so innovative after having found their rainmaker product? However, they should probably sell their successful startups instead of killing them. But I guess they don’t need the money.
I almost think they let their engineers launch products just so they can’t quit and go to another company.
Re: Google Kills Cloud Print
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
They might not be wrong. Engineers who could be maintaining mildly profitable products could be invented new products that have some percentage chance of being much more profitable. If someone did the math and said the expected value of "engineer working on new projects" was bigger than the expected value of of the the profits of an existing project divided by the number of engineers needed to maintain it, then it'd…
What's the expected value of not having your brand known for routinely canceling products without much notice? It seems like any company would have to be crazy to want to depend on any new Google service for anything important - and that's bad for Google.
>any company would have to be crazy to want to depend on any new Google service for anything important
If the company has an equally good alternative available, chances are Google wouldn't have launched theirs in the first place.