411–420 of 626 posts
Killing google reader. This for me was their turning point.
From TFA:
> the turning point was the assassination of Google Reader — for which I will never forgive them, and try to regularly exert a small vengeance by mentioning it
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AAA games are targeted at casuals.
I thought one of the selling points of Stadia was it would let you play games that need a $500 graphics card, without buying a $500 graphics card. And in my mind, those are enthusiast games, because only enthusiasts are spending $500 on a graphics card.
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> implement it yourself. It’s not very difficult But that's not where others failed. Instead, it's coming up with the idea, realizing that it's a truly good idea, that was the important thing. (Remember, Yahoo and other(s) didn't want to buy Google and the algorithm, when they had the chance.) Maybe if you replace "totally low hanging fruit" , with "It was undiscovered winner-takes-it-all markets" I'd agree. In hinds…
> Remember, Yahoo and other(s) didn't want to buy Google The big guys at that time were blinded by their own success, Google wanted users to do their search and leave the site which was completely opposite to what the Yahoo's of that day wanted to do, they wanted users to hang out on their portal.
They have the means to keep the product alive and keep trying until they make it, if they really believe in the vision and if it was part of their long term strategy.
Look at Microsoft, Bing have been struggling for years but they're still sticking with it. They waited until it was clear that it couldn't be salvaged before killing Windows phone. And XBOX also had a tough start, and was bleeding money for years.
Half of the problem is that Google kills product before giving them a chance. The other half is that they launch new product randomly "to see what sticks", instead of focusing on a strategy.
I feel like some of these perspectives are very tech industry focused rather than gamer focused. As a gamer, I think Stadia failed because the system they created doesn't make sense. You had to buy games at real $40-$60 prices but you could only play them through this limited service. I don't think anyone wants that. Compare that to paying the same price for a regular PC game which you can play via streaming using a…
That’s where the market is moving towards however. A lot of the game you "purchased" on the other platforms refuse to work if you can’t connect to their weird anti-piracy scheme.
I agree with the article. Stadia was an interesting offer. The revolving free games coming with the pro subscription was a good deal and the idea of being able to keep playing games at their rendering best without having to fuss and constantly upgrade a PC - by far the worst platform to game for occasional players like me - sounded great.
Stadia issue was for most it wasn’t offering what it claimed to offer. Games didn’t look that good on the free tier for exemple and as pointed no one trusts Google so I didn’t want to invest more than the strict minimum. Apparently I have played Cyberpunk for free so that’s nice.
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Something like Shadow PC makes way more sense, and is why I choose it. It’s just a cloud PC, and even supports SteamVR.
But that's really focused on long term commitments. First they had an almost year-long waiting list. Now you have to pay a hefty commissioning fee. For me that makes no sense as a cloud setup. The benefit of cloud is paying when you need it (like when I travel and didn't bring my PC) and not when I don't need it. Stadia did offer that but because you had to pay for the games it also wasn't worthwhile. I use plutosphe…
And, there hasn’t been a waitlist for some time now. At least in California. I was up and running within 30 minutes of starting my subscription, and can cancel any time.
And, regardless of the exact implementation, the Shadow approach is infinitely more desirable to me than the complete lock in, and limited selection, of Stadia.
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> I'd like to get off Gmail for other reasons, but it's a pain. I used to think that, but I was actually surprised how easy it was to get off GMail. I gave Fastmail my credit card number, clicked a few buttons in their UI to get my mail transferred over, moved my MX records, and I was done. I ended up migrating contacts, too, but that was just a couple more clicks in Fastmail's UI, as they have an OAuth flow that int…
I've always used a custom domain not with google, but the reason I would find it hard to get off gmail is the list of sites that only offer a 'login with gmail' with the only alternative being 'login with facebook'. And the list is getting consistently bigger, with many developers getting in on the trend of "passwords are too risky, just let Google handle it". If there is ever a day Google turns off sso for free Gmai…
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At least for Google, I don’t think you can call what they did with search low hanging fruit. Their solution was anything but, and it was truly innovative (at the time) and their success was well deserved. I do agree that they’re victims of their early success, but rather that it proves that it’s rather difficult to make multiple successful products. When you own a whole ecosystem, like Microsoft and Apple do, it make…
Search was full of low-hanging fruit. TF-IDF was well-known. PageRank less so but when the nascent internet has so much signal-to-noise it’s often hard to go wrong. Execution was key—- especially compute efficiency—- but a lot of those are nerdy problems detached from real people. Which is wear Google does well. Stadia was a rich technical problem with an application area that’s accessible to Googlers. Even if Google…
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Android Maps Docs Go /shrug I dunno, I think it’s fair to say they’ve had a few winners.
Okay, Drive/Docs/Photos qualifies I think. (But also fuck 'em for ruining Picasa :D) Google Workspaces has to be a money printer. Go doesn't make them money directly. Similarly k8s is great, but doesn't make them money. (At best it's the classic commoditize your complement strategy. Though I have no idea where Go comes from. Well, I guess if you hire enough language developers you're bound to eventually get a new lan…
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I’d be curious as to the elevator pitch presented to Google execs and why they bought into it. Wasn’t anyone thinking about the issues you brought up? Seems like fundamental issues. To think they spent millions and millions on this service only to close it down in short order. Typical Google but what other company does this repeatedly with 4-year precision.
The further your lifestyle is from that of a Silicon Valley developer, the further FAANG is from serving your needs. No one devs on a 8 year old budget laptop or a slow internet connection. Some devs forget that those even exist.