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Google Kills Cloud Print

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Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#321

Post by kllrnohj »

crehn wrote: post #316
kllrnohj wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So this works in theory until there is a really bad bug in some part of the code base and there is no one who knows how to fix it. 10 years of production usage tends to have hammered out all the "really bad bugs." Sure it's possible that something goes wrong, but it's also extremely unlikely that it does unless something in it changes. Which, if you freeze it & silo it off, doesn't really happen. A huge amount of s…

Still, the risk and maintenance/ownership burden is there.

Yes, of course, but the point is it's a very, very small cost. It's basically zero for a company with Google's resources. Meanwhile killing it is actually costly. Not to engineering, but to PR and reputation.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#322

Post by Mindwipe »

scarface74 wrote: post #301
konschubert wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How are they a really good startup builder? What have they built in house that has been a success since Gmail? After flailing around for a decade, almost all of their profit is still based on ads. They are less diversified than any of the big tech companies besides Facebook.

I think it's been notable in the current hubbub about Stadia some have been pointing towards Gmail, Maps etc as proof Google doesn't kill everything.

But the thing is all the examples seem to be more than five years old, because god help me but they don't seem to have done anything in quite a while to be honest.

Google desperately needs to rethink how it moves into new areas and launches new products. "You'll get it when it arrives" seems like such a terrible attitude to take with the general public.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#323

Post by iamaelephant »

scarface74 wrote: post #301
konschubert wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How are they a really good startup builder? What have they built in house that has been a success since Gmail? After flailing around for a decade, almost all of their profit is still based on ads. They are less diversified than any of the big tech companies besides Facebook.

Android, Chromebook, the Home series, Maps, Drive, Google Cloud, Docs/Sheets and many more. A lot has happened since Gmail.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#324

Post by chalst »

scarface74 wrote: post #301
konschubert wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How are they a really good startup builder? What have they built in house that has been a success since Gmail? After flailing around for a decade, almost all of their profit is still based on ads. They are less diversified than any of the big tech companies besides Facebook.

Maps counts, I think. But that's going back awhile.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#325

Post by drewda »

birdyrooster wrote: post #279
konschubert wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You just described the official purpose of https://area120.google.com/

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#326

Post by Mindwipe »

mushufasa wrote: post #260
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #159

Earlier 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 if they just sold their low-margin-yet-profitable businesses instead of killing them? There are several tech PE firms that specialize in that niche. KKR bought Corel (of WordPerfect fame) recently. I'm also confident someone at Google already had this obvious idea. Any ex-googlers know why they chose not to / cannot do this?

They did it with Sketchup I guess.

But that was also an acquisition, so I guess it lifted out of Google's infrastructure more easily.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#328

Post by leonlag »

radlad wrote: post #256
reportgunner wrote: post #239

I would understand the need for a "Cloud" print if you'd need to print in another country that you never visit, but what does someone need a cloud print for otherwise ?

- Printing from Chromebooks - Printing easily from Linux - Printing from your phone - etc.

> - Printing easily from Linux

This is as easy as it can be without needing cloud print though

> - Printing from Chromebooks

> - Printing from your phone

This is an artificial restriction created by google. There is already a network printing protocol that works without the "cloud". You just have to support it.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#329

Post by bouvin »

_wldu wrote: post #261
rgbrenner wrote: post #228

Earlier 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.

It seems pretty bold and visionary to me. They've lucked out with gmail, chrome, golang, android, maps, etc. and they still have the best search in the world. Having a HIPPO tell everyone what to do, how to do it and when is not visionary. Letting engineers do what they want and then making money from the ideas is.

They bought Maps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#History

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#330

Post by kllrnohj »

mattlondon wrote: post #318
kllrnohj wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter-argument: Just let it sit there and keep working? Outside of security patches, if there even are any, there's always the option of "just stop touching it." After all, the whole pitch of elastic compute is you only pay for what you use. It's not like resources are being freed up for other things here. The software industry is always on this treadmill of churn, leading to stable products continuing to have a co…

> Just let it sit there and keep working? Sounds simple but sometimes it is not so easy. E.g. it might be written in Python 2 for all we know. Should they leave it on Python 2 with zero security updates, or invest lots of time porting to python 3? Obviously there will likely be a million other internal examples of the python 2 to 3 migration that we don't know about.

> Should they leave it on Python 2 with zero security updates, or invest lots of time porting to python 3?

Leave it, of course. The only meaningful security risk at this point is something like heartbleed. We're talking security issue in 10 year battle hardened protocol. This is a fantastically rare case. Not something you need headcount on a constant basis to deal with.

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