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Google is shutting down Stadia

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Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#551
post #291

Story time. I left Google in 2017 after Fiber (which I worked on) was unceremoniously mothballed. I mean it still exists bu tall expansion palns stopped and it went into maintenance mode. Before leaving one of the teams some of us considered joining was the then unlaunched Stadia team. This was an effort out of Cloud I guess to create value added GCP services. Ultimately it never went anywhere because the team didn't…

> I mean it still exists bu tall expansion palns stopped and it went into maintenance mode.

Google Fiber is currently microtrenching in front of my house, and continues to move into more cities here. Did they restart, or did their mothballing just mean that they aren't entering new geographic regions?

TBH, I'm super excited about it because the only other high-speed option we have is Comcast and it is super unreliable and the data cap sucks, but I'm also mentally preparing for the day they get bored of it and shut the whole thing down.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#552
post #43

Just a couple of months ago. "Stadia is not shutting down. Rest assured we're always working on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro." https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656

Google needs to restructure their incentives before it wrecks the company. I have no doubt whoever launched Stadia got promoted and then bounced to a different product and didn't care about whether Stadia was a success long term. Google's ad money printer masks the rot underneath, Google is literally a meme at this point for shutting down products. No serious business or developer is going to trust them. If governmen…

It's curious to me that there hasn't been an evolution in re-exit strategies. You want to get bought by Google, then sold by Google. Why don't we hear about something getting sold off by Google instead of just shut down? Is it just a given that if Google can't make it work, nobody can?

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#553
post #43

Just a couple of months ago. "Stadia is not shutting down. Rest assured we're always working on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro." https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656

archived for posterity:

https://archive.ph/W3F3g

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google needs to restructure their incentives before it wrecks the company. I have no doubt whoever launched Stadia got promoted and then bounced to a different product and didn't care about whether Stadia was a success long term. Google's ad money printer masks the rot underneath, Google is literally a meme at this point for shutting down products. No serious business or developer is going to trust them. If governmen…

The thing that baffles me is that this has been a known issue for a long time, and yet there doesn't seem to be any significant moves to improve this. Can someone please explain what Sundar Pichai's big goals as a CEO are? That's a genuine question. He doesn't seem to be solving existing issues related to culture and incentives. And the company hasn't landed any big wins recently. I mostly see increased monetization…

>Can someone please explain what Sundar Pichai's big goals as a CEO are?

The same goal as most other Fortune 500 companies CEO, to earn as much money as possible for themselves while they are at it.

It is funny I was extremely sceptical but I remember all the hype around Sundar Pichai becoming CEO and how it would improve Google. Repeating something similar to what Satya Nadella did to Microsoft. And it wasn't media / VC or submarine PR article hype, it was real hype on HN, by Silicon Valley fellows. And Google wasn't considered "evil" back then, even though nothing much has changed, only the perception of the public.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#556
post #43

Just a couple of months ago. "Stadia is not shutting down. Rest assured we're always working on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro." https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656

Google needs to restructure their incentives before it wrecks the company. I have no doubt whoever launched Stadia got promoted and then bounced to a different product and didn't care about whether Stadia was a success long term. Google's ad money printer masks the rot underneath, Google is literally a meme at this point for shutting down products. No serious business or developer is going to trust them. If governmen…

In that sense Google is the Anti-Microsoft. Microsoft makes the scrappiest products but as long as they are not total failures MS is committed to them in a way that is borderline ridiculous. Google makes good products but seems to have the attention span of three year old toddler.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#557

Google's product strategy.. Google: We're going to launch a fancy new product in an already-crowded field, not market it at all, and everyone will jump on board and love it! Everyone else: No way, it's a PITA to port to, and knowing Google, they're going to sunset it soon. Google: No we won't, we're fully dedicated to this thing Everyone else: No way, they haven't added meaningful features in years and they're going…

Partial list of products where this applies: Meebo, Buzz, Orkut, Google+, Notebook, SideWiki, Schemer, Spaces, Checkout, Directory, Sync, Hangouts, iGoogle, Knol, Lively, Moderator, ....

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree with you, but I downvoted your comment because > We devoted an entire month of resources to this project and thought that was enough! ...is not just wildly inaccurate, but also disrespectful to the people who spent years working on it.

Imagine you go to work at Baby Mulching LLC. This company has existed for two decades, and is dedicated to dropping infants into industrial shredders. Everyone hates Baby Mulching LLC, and they're an enormous black stain on your resume, because there is one single thing they do, and it's grind up children. On your first day, you're asked to design a big toothed wheel. You ask your boss, will this be used to mulch bab…

What relationship does this anecdote have to this scenario exactly, other than tenuously drawing a connection between Google and baby grinding?

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#559
post #43

Just a couple of months ago. "Stadia is not shutting down. Rest assured we're always working on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro." https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656

Google needs to restructure their incentives before it wrecks the company. I have no doubt whoever launched Stadia got promoted and then bounced to a different product and didn't care about whether Stadia was a success long term. Google's ad money printer masks the rot underneath, Google is literally a meme at this point for shutting down products. No serious business or developer is going to trust them. If governmen…

Yup, he was promoted to VP before moving on to Fitbit.

Re: Google is shutting down Stadia

#560
post #43

Just a couple of months ago. "Stadia is not shutting down. Rest assured we're always working on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro." https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656

Google needs to restructure their incentives before it wrecks the company. I have no doubt whoever launched Stadia got promoted and then bounced to a different product and didn't care about whether Stadia was a success long term. Google's ad money printer masks the rot underneath, Google is literally a meme at this point for shutting down products. No serious business or developer is going to trust them. If governmen…

I was at Google 2014-2018. It appeared that Larry & Sergey didn't understand incentives, despite otherwise being very smart guys. They just didn't seem to get it. At all. There were lots of smart, motivated people but the incentive structure was completely set up to reward launching products and moving on. Some of the Stadia folks were insanely good at playing the promo game.

There was talk about the need to "land" rather than just launch but it never got baked into the promo process (or if it did, it certainly didn't appear that way to people below VP level...). My understanding is it's still that way.

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