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Tables: Tracking work for teams

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Re: Tables: Tracking work for teams

#161

Post by gerash »

Just1689 wrote: post #15

What a useful app. Reminds me of Airtable in some ways. I enjoy a good flexible table app any day. We're all tired of the obligatory "I wonder how long before Google deprecates this...;)" but I wonder if Google would get better adoption if they explicitly published what would be needed for them not to drop the product... 1M monthly users? 3M? ...xM? or that when a project actually reaches that point.

This is an experimental project obviously and has that Area120 tag but I think there should be a uniform experimental logo/icon across all of Google products for any projects which is provided as is with no upfront commitment to long term support or sustainability.

Once the distinction between products with long-term commitment and experimental products is super clear with a uniform icon/logo then there'll be less disappointment and upset future customers

Re: Tables: Tracking work for teams

#162

Post by jfoster »

Navarr wrote: post #52
virgilp wrote: post #49

What surprises me, more than the ton of comments about Google's credibility, is that I suspect nobody even tried to get more than a superficial understanding of what the product is supposed to do and what differentiates it. Surely I can't be the first one to notice that you can't even find out what this product does? The value proposition is a series of images, but you can't look at any one image & absorb the details…

Once you've signed in, they offer this video: https://youtu.be/tedTuOvS8Dw

Sounds like spreadsheets where the data is more structured. Seems like a cool idea that could become a successor of spreadsheets. Even more convinced that Google will abandon it, though.

Re: Tables: Tracking work for teams

#163

Post by shajznnckfke »

someone7x wrote: post #97
prlambert wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Disclosure I work at Google Area 120 and would be partly responsible for this type of decision] This is a really helpful comment and I like the nod to transparency. Thank you! Not sure we could get quite so concrete publicly (there are lots of unknowns and wouldn't want to make commitments we can't keep), but aligning goals between the business, team, and users/customers is a great idea and something we can improve…

Are all these comments about the near and inevitable death of your new product at all soul-crushing? I'm a stranger on the internet and even I can feel the burn. Good luck.

I’m sure the coming promotion/fat refresher for shipping a product helps ease the suffering.

Re: Tables: Tracking work for teams

#164

Post by alasdair_ »

My gut reaction: it looks great! Also, there is no way I’d use it unless Google committed to not killing it off for at least five years.

I don’t mind trying experimental personal tools, but I really don’t want to get a whole team of people reliant on this thing, just to see it get cancelled like the hundreds of other projects Google has killed over the years.

A paid support option would be nice too - I think I saw something about a paid “support for ANY Google product” option earlier this year but I can’t find it just now.

Re: Tables: Tracking work for teams

#165

Post by myth_drannon »

cptskippy wrote: post #136
tmd83 wrote: post #73

Does anyone feels looking at Google's products lately that there's something tremendously wrong with the organization. I'm not talking about just dropping features but just quality of implementation and missing things that people should get fed up and do something during development. Like hangout > chat, let's drop the existing feature of read receipt that is even more important in the remote/work world in a product…

Google Maps use to be a hell of a tool for exploration, navigation and travel. We used it on a tablet as we drove across Scotland in 2013 and it was fantastic. It provided tons of data about your routes and allowed you to easily manage your trip. Since then they've gradually removed useful features, cluttered the UI with crap, and dumbed everything down to the point where it's almost useless. At one point they even r…

Isn't that with all the products? New teams that own the legacy code base, new PMs that need to show they are doing something... That's how all software products rot. It's normal lifecycle of products that we need to accept.

Re: Tables: Tracking work for teams

#166

Post by jjoonathan »

shajznnckfke wrote: post #163
someone7x wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are all these comments about the near and inevitable death of your new product at all soul-crushing? I'm a stranger on the internet and even I can feel the burn. Good luck.

I’m sure the coming promotion/fat refresher for shipping a product helps ease the suffering.

Have they fixed the incentives yet? Or is it still "ship = good, maintain = bad," guaranteeing that the pattern continues?

Re: Tables: Tracking work for teams

#168

Post by jfoster »

dragonwriter wrote: post #89
mrweasel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also makes you wonder: If this isn’t part of GSuite, then where does it belong in the Google organisation? If Tables is just it’s own thing, not related to search, GSuite, GCP or ads then it’s already dead. At some level it must suck to know that you’ve created a culture where people don’t even care to try out your new fancy gizmo, because they expect you to abandon to quickly it’s simply not worth investing you t…

> If this isn’t part of GSuite, then where does it belong in the Google organisation? I suspect if it were to ever emerge from the “internal incubator” Area 120 is described as, it would become a GSuite feature. > Or does Google not know that how they’re perceived? I think Google knows that people in certain circles talking nothing but that view. They probably also have real stats on how their experiments are picked…

> I think Google knows that people in certain circles talking nothing but that view. They probably also have real stats on how their experiments are picked up and used, and I suspect they aren't at all what the people who think that the perception you refer to do instead public consciousness would predict.

It has to depend a lot on what type of product/service it is, too. For anything consumer facing, I imagine they don't see this effect harming take-up at all. It probably doesn't affect businesses looking to take-up the more established services like GSuite, but I have a really hard time believing that tech-savvy businesses are looking at any new APIs or services within GCP without considering what their lifetime will be.

Re: Tables: Tracking work for teams

#169

Post by alasdair_ »

prlambert wrote: post #76
Just1689 wrote: post #15

What a useful app. Reminds me of Airtable in some ways. I enjoy a good flexible table app any day. We're all tired of the obligatory "I wonder how long before Google deprecates this...;)" but I wonder if Google would get better adoption if they explicitly published what would be needed for them not to drop the product... 1M monthly users? 3M? ...xM? or that when a project actually reaches that point.

[Disclosure I work at Google Area 120 and would be partly responsible for this type of decision] This is a really helpful comment and I like the nod to transparency. Thank you! Not sure we could get quite so concrete publicly (there are lots of unknowns and wouldn't want to make commitments we can't keep), but aligning goals between the business, team, and users/customers is a great idea and something we can improve…

This is the primary reason I don’t use new Google labs tools any more. If there was an explicit “we guarantee this will be fully supported for X length of time and migration will be easy if we kill it” I would be far more likely to adopt new tools.

Also, is Area 120 the new Google Labs? I thought they killed off the whole Labs thing a couple of years ago? (The irony is not lost on me here.)

Re: Tables: Tracking work for teams

#170

Post by [deleted] »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #148
prlambert wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Disclosure I work at Google Area 120 and would be partly responsible for this type of decision] This is a really helpful comment and I like the nod to transparency. Thank you! Not sure we could get quite so concrete publicly (there are lots of unknowns and wouldn't want to make commitments we can't keep), but aligning goals between the business, team, and users/customers is a great idea and something we can improve…

Could Google not commit to open sourcing projects in a maintainable way (public repos, k8s support versus just Borg, which no one has access to) and guarantee data export functionality as part of Takeout? This would significantly derisk attempting to use a fledgling Google service for end users. Definitely not a resourcing issue, entirely an organizational culture and philosophy decision to be made.

[deleted]
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