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Project Starline expands testing through an early access program

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Re: Project Starline expands testing through an early access program

#51

Post by weeblewobble »

matai_kolila wrote: post #42
a1371 wrote: post #33

The cards are definitely stacked against this when it's at Google. Because of: 1. Google's solid track record of killing things because they didn't grow quickly, after a half hearted effort. Stadia being the latest example. 2. Google being pretty bad at cracking the corporate communication space. Teams and Zoom ate its lunch. 3. Google not having a strategy behind communication tools in general. Meet, Hangouts, Chat,…

It's a super fun thing to be the first person to comment about #1 on literally everything Google does, but it's silly and wrong to think that's a valid criticism. For every product Google kills, it's launched dozens of wildly successful products you've been taking for granted for over a decade in some cases: Gmail, search, Drive, Photos, Chromecast, Chrome, Books, Flights, Scholar, AdSense, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Ke…

thank you. it's the definition of a middlebrow dismissal

Re: Project Starline expands testing through an early access program

#52

Post by xani_ »

matai_kolila wrote: post #42
a1371 wrote: post #33

The cards are definitely stacked against this when it's at Google. Because of: 1. Google's solid track record of killing things because they didn't grow quickly, after a half hearted effort. Stadia being the latest example. 2. Google being pretty bad at cracking the corporate communication space. Teams and Zoom ate its lunch. 3. Google not having a strategy behind communication tools in general. Meet, Hangouts, Chat,…

It's a super fun thing to be the first person to comment about #1 on literally everything Google does, but it's silly and wrong to think that's a valid criticism. For every product Google kills, it's launched dozens of wildly successful products you've been taking for granted for over a decade in some cases: Gmail, search, Drive, Photos, Chromecast, Chrome, Books, Flights, Scholar, AdSense, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Ke…

> For every product Google kills, it's launched dozens of wildly successful products you've been taking for granted for over a decade in some cases: Gmail, search, Drive, Photos, Chromecast, Chrome, Books, Flights, Scholar, AdSense, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Keep, Translate, Maps...

More like for every 10 products they kill they maybe let one live... Have you not seen killed by google ?

> Google can and does support dozens of good products, and pretending otherwise is getting tiresome. If your best criticism is, "I dunno if Google will support this long term" that, to me, means you couldn't come up with anything better to say, which means it's a pretty damn cool product.

It's pretty fucking important to know that if you're going to splurge a bunch of money to put it in your offices. You're just being ignorant at that point.

Re: Project Starline expands testing through an early access program

#53

Post by BlueTankEngine »

a1371 wrote: post #33

The cards are definitely stacked against this when it's at Google. Because of: 1. Google's solid track record of killing things because they didn't grow quickly, after a half hearted effort. Stadia being the latest example. 2. Google being pretty bad at cracking the corporate communication space. Teams and Zoom ate its lunch. 3. Google not having a strategy behind communication tools in general. Meet, Hangouts, Chat,…

I apologize if this comes off as aggressive, but all four of your points are totally wrong and I am sick of seeing these ideas parroted all over HN.

1. Google does not have a solid track record of killing things. IF you actually go through the list of all the "products" Google has "killed", you find that 95% of them are just consolidated into other areas of the Google product stack. Stadia was a herculean undertaking that involved a capital deployment that, at the time, was unprecedented in the gaming space. Stadia wasn't killed because it didn't grow quickly, it was killed because it didn't grow at all and was losing money, not to mention failing to acquire market share. Would you prefer the product be destroyed to put it on indefinite life support like Amazon has done with Twitch?

2. Google is an absolute giant in corporate communications via G-Suite. Just because their video chat didn't win out doesn't mean they have no competency in the space.

3. Google now does have a strategy for comms tools. Workplace text chat is part of the Gmail end of G-Suite, all video chat is under Meet. This would slip right into their new Meet ecosystem. Unfortunately many of the people who parrot your talking points also were the ones criticizing google for attempting to reign in their comms ecosystem because it was "killing" products, when in reality they were just being re-bundled

4. Google delivers legendary levels of hardware support for their Pixel devices, the absolute best in the Android ecosystem. Not to mention they run the single most compatible smart home ecosystem and have supported Chromecast for a decade.

Can you even name a division that Google could just spinoff in your world? Stadia couldn't sustain itself without the Google Cloud backing it. Really tired of all the HNers essentially making up this narrative about Google when it rally doesn't exist.

Re: Project Starline expands testing through an early access program

#54

Post by oh_sigh »

ehmmmmmmmm wrote: post #50

Something I think which really needs to be discussed. Why do tech companies always put a token black person in their PR videos but yet their hiring doesn't reflect that?

Because there aren't enough qualified black people to hire, but that doesn't mean that black people don't exist.

Look at some harrowing stats on who takes the AP CS exam: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/still-no-african-americans...

Re: Project Starline expands testing through an early access program

#56

Post by twobitshifter »

jjcon wrote: post #38
twobitshifter wrote: post #5

This is my favorite Google project. I hope it becomes something that we all can use. To me, at least, this is more useful than meeting in vr with no legs.

Why do you need legs for conference calls? Also you can totally have legs in VR. Not only are there leg trackers but Meta has already announced they have worked out inferenced leg kinematics coming next year and other apps already have them (VRChat etc).

To clarify, the presence of legs wouldn’t make me prefer VR to this (a hologram that doesn’t need a headset)

Re: Project Starline expands testing through an early access program

#57

Post by xani_ »

a1371 wrote: post #33

The cards are definitely stacked against this when it's at Google. Because of: 1. Google's solid track record of killing things because they didn't grow quickly, after a half hearted effort. Stadia being the latest example. 2. Google being pretty bad at cracking the corporate communication space. Teams and Zoom ate its lunch. 3. Google not having a strategy behind communication tools in general. Meet, Hangouts, Chat,…

> Google being pretty bad at cracking the corporate communication space. Teams and Zoom ate it's lunch.

That really perplexes me. They had multiple both video and text chats. Their video chat was one of better ones even way before Zoom.

All they need to do is stop making tech demos and make one app doing it. But they just make one sorta kinda decent one, throw it away, and make another one to replace it.

Re: Project Starline expands testing through an early access program

#58

Post by vineyardmike »

xani_ wrote: post #52
matai_kolila wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a super fun thing to be the first person to comment about #1 on literally everything Google does, but it's silly and wrong to think that's a valid criticism. For every product Google kills, it's launched dozens of wildly successful products you've been taking for granted for over a decade in some cases: Gmail, search, Drive, Photos, Chromecast, Chrome, Books, Flights, Scholar, AdSense, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Ke…

> For every product Google kills, it's launched dozens of wildly successful products you've been taking for granted for over a decade in some cases: Gmail, search, Drive, Photos, Chromecast, Chrome, Books, Flights, Scholar, AdSense, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Keep, Translate, Maps... More like for every 10 products they kill they maybe let one live... Have you not seen killed by google ? > Google can and does support do…

> It's pretty fucking important to know that if you're going to splurge a bunch of money to put it in your offices. You're just being ignorant at that point.

Companies don’t kill things that have support contracts and enterprise agreements.

Look at GSuite. What’s been killed?

Fuck even apple won’t kill the orphaned MacBook Pro with touchbar for support contract reasons.

Re: Project Starline expands testing through an early access program

#59

Post by ehmmmmmmmm »

oh_sigh wrote: post #54
ehmmmmmmmm wrote: post #50

Something I think which really needs to be discussed. Why do tech companies always put a token black person in their PR videos but yet their hiring doesn't reflect that?

Because there aren't enough qualified black people to hire, but that doesn't mean that black people don't exist. Look at some harrowing stats on who takes the AP CS exam: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/still-no-african-americans...

Sure, but it also feels slightly pretentious. Is representation in PR what the community wants? Why not actually uplifting the community such that artifical representation isn't necessary?
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