Why not open source the hardware design, BOM, software and dump it on GitHub?
Why would they? Just to be nice? Since when do large companies give things away?
Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
151–160 of 259 posts
Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
#152At this point, I think issue is not about products Google build, it is about how Google put their incentives in place. - Build new shiny thing -> promoted - Support shiny thing -> it's not difficult, everyone can do it This type of culture is influencing future direction of Google products, they put together awesome team, solve problem and get from 0 to 1, then team moves on, others don't have incentive to make 1 to…
I think this is both obsolete and subtly wrong. Big corps want products with global impact. When a product is new, it's evaluated for its potential. When it's been around for a while, it's evaluated on how well its growth is matching the estimated impact. Eventually, growth has stopped. If the product lands at an active base of a billion users or so, it's a success and people definitely can make a career out of maint…
google will never get a new service to a billion users right now
They have the netflix problem (or does nexflix have the Google problem)
they have killed off soo many projects that no one want to invest their time into new ones unless they reach the multi-year stage, and they can not reach the multi-year stage unless they get millions of users...
It is a catch 22, and neither company seems to want to address or even acknowledge is a problem for them
Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a meme that people love and there's some truth to it, but also a number of ways in which it's inaccurate. Sure you can get promoted for launching a new thing, but you can also get promoted for fixing a first pass implementation, for scaling something from a small user base to a large user base, and so on, as long as you can show the "impact" of the change – whether that's revenue, savings, productivity, impro…
The problem honestly has nothing to do with SWE/PM incentives. The problem here, as noted, isn't going from 0->1. The problem is business strategy and leadership, and the ability for multiple stakeholders to rally around a xfn initiative to ensure it receives dedicated care & feeding to take it from 1->100. When you step outside the eng bubble, the incentives problems absolutely apply when discussing issues Google ha…
Another issue is about the clients. In the AR-space, "Enterprise customers" is the secret code to say "military clients".
If Google has the policy to not work with the DoD, then it makes its options very limited (Magic Leap doesn't have such restrictions as far as I know).
The same way they likely didn't appreciate when they were associated with Boston Dynamics.
So, if you can't sell your product for its main useful usage, then it's a bit difficult :/
Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is both obsolete and subtly wrong. Big corps want products with global impact. When a product is new, it's evaluated for its potential. When it's been around for a while, it's evaluated on how well its growth is matching the estimated impact. Eventually, growth has stopped. If the product lands at an active base of a billion users or so, it's a success and people definitely can make a career out of maint…
google will never get a new service to a billion users right now They have the netflix problem (or does nexflix have the Google problem) they have killed off soo many projects that no one want to invest their time into new ones unless they reach the multi-year stage, and they can not reach the multi-year stage unless they get millions of users... It is a catch 22, and neither company seems to want to address or even…
I don't think Netflix has a particular problem; maintaining series for more than a couple of seasons has always been hard in broadcasting. It's easier to spot now because people have complete visibility: instead of caring about a couple of series in key time slots, they can know care about all series, so it's more noticeable that most series die a sad death. Addressing off-ramps in a nicer way would be an innovation. The problem is that production costs are so high, that keeping a losing franchise running is extremely expensive.
On the other hand, Google plays in a field where maintenance costs are a rounding error. You can basically freeze a product and keep it running forever for pennies, and these products get embedded in our daily lives, which is why killing it looks so bad - I can always pick up a new series with zero effort, whereas migrating off a productive service takes time and effort.
Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
#155If you have a money printer it's hard to care about other things.
Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stadia failed as a business, not as a product or technical solution. I work on Google Play, we've been going for a decade, no sign of stopping now. Much of what I and the many people around me do is maintenance – making things go faster, making things error less, etc. Some of that is done with new features, some is transparent to users (or app developers). I don't see this culture that HN seems so convinced about. I…
>> Stadia failed as a business, not as a product or technical solution. Stadia failed as a business because it failed to get adoption by developers and gamers / users. It failed to get adoption by developers and gamers because Google has a reputation for killing things. Google has a reputation for killing things because it's leadership does not have a vision outside of advertising and its internal culture does not re…
> Stadia failed as a business because it failed to get adoption by developers and gamers / users.
Nonsense. It failed to attract developers because it was an unsure new platform so of course most of them wouldn't spend hours to develop for it. They were always going to need convincing (with money of course), which took Google too long, but around a year or so in there were multiple heavy hitters in the form of Red Dead Redemption 2, Hitman, Ubisoft's entire catalogue (and an Ubisoft+ integration), EA Games' most new games, Destiny 2, alongside a ton of indie games. By the time Stadia shut down, it didn't really have a catalogue problem. Problem is, Google bungled the rollout and took too long to start doing this - they banked on the initial release being highly successful, but didn't start massively investing in games until later on.
For gamers, fear of Google shutting it down played a part, of course. But so did all the extremely negative coverage, from everywhere, that Stadia is dead on arrival which only reinforced that fear. Had Google actually told everyone their shutdown plan (reimburse everyone for all games), a lot of gamers would have overcome those fears (what was there to lose, really?).
Technically, the platform was amazing. To this day the best UX by far of out cloud gaming platforms. Quality upgrades were lacking though.
To sum up, Google failed in their strategy and marketing. Had they 1) promised to reimburse everyone in case the platform was shut down before X years 2) given away Stadia Premiere packs to anyone they can (like YouTube Premium subscribers, etc.) 3) enticed big studios to port games, all things they eventually ended up doing, Stadia would have been a roaring success and would be undergoing a hardware refresh at the moment. Instead, it just reinforces that Google sucks at b2c and shouldn't be trusted.
Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google Glass wasn't really AR, more like a smart watch taped to your face, so I can imagine there being little business adoption. HoloLens seems much more promising, but development still seems to be slow. I'd love to see AR succeed but with the current price I doubt it'll gain popularity in the near future.
Microsoft has laid off entire HoloLens team. It's dead.
Bummer, I visited a museum* using HoloLens to bring a command bunker to life, and even though it felt a bit gimmicky, it was really interesting and I could immediately see it being super useful in tons of other museums (e.g. seeing dinosaurs, explain physics/astrology concepts, show vehicles that no longer exist, etc. etc.)
* Musée de la Libération de Paris - musée du Général Leclerc - musée Jean Moulin - yes, that's actual full name
Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
#158More than 10 years later, it's still not good enough for business adoption? Wow. When it was first released, it was really neat. I'd imagine that we'd all be wearing AR glasses by now.
It's not that it's "not good enough" it's that it doesn't solve any real problems. I used to work at an agency with vertical dedicated to immersive tech. We did a ton of experimentation, prototyping and building demo experiences for AR visors and lots of related devices. Companies paid us loads of money to build glitzy experiences and come up with clever uses for their tech. We made a lot of neat gimmicky things that were fun for a minute or two but nothing that anyone would ever want to deploy at scale. Phone-based AR is basically already deployed at massive scale and we haven't seen any followup to Pokemon Go in over 5 years. AR just isn't a useful idea. Maybe another order of magnitude improvement in the visual quality and battery life would breath new life, but otherwise it's just a dead end.
Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
google will never get a new service to a billion users right now They have the netflix problem (or does nexflix have the Google problem) they have killed off soo many projects that no one want to invest their time into new ones unless they reach the multi-year stage, and they can not reach the multi-year stage unless they get millions of users... It is a catch 22, and neither company seems to want to address or even…
I don't think Netflix has a particular problem; maintaining series for more than a couple of seasons has always been hard in broadcasting. It's easier to spot now because people have complete visibility: instead of caring about a couple of series in key time slots, they can know care about all series, so it's more noticeable that most series die a sad death. Addressing off-ramps in a nicer way would be an innovation.…
Netflix is different from traditional broadcasting in that they always order an entire season. That makes the cancellations more dramatic because instead of a pilot or few episodes like in the past they instead keep performing a Firefly on their viewers over and over again.
Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
google will never get a new service to a billion users right now They have the netflix problem (or does nexflix have the Google problem) they have killed off soo many projects that no one want to invest their time into new ones unless they reach the multi-year stage, and they can not reach the multi-year stage unless they get millions of users... It is a catch 22, and neither company seems to want to address or even…
I don't think Netflix has a particular problem; maintaining series for more than a couple of seasons has always been hard in broadcasting. It's easier to spot now because people have complete visibility: instead of caring about a couple of series in key time slots, they can know care about all series, so it's more noticeable that most series die a sad death. Addressing off-ramps in a nicer way would be an innovation.…
The joke I've heard is "six seasons and a movie" that goes back to broadcast TV series. Something about contracts running six years, so costs balloon after that, and a one-time movie is much easier to schedule a group of actors for. I've long wondered why Netflix doesn't do it more often. I'm sore about the cancellation of "Santa Clarita Diet" and I think it could easily be wrapped up in a movie.