Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise • Hacker News Board

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#211

Post by taeric » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 4:54 PM UTC

eastbound wrote: post #168

toyg wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> You can basically freeze a product and keep it running forever for pennies We’re moving to a security culture where a Cloud product not only has to be constantly rewritten to keep its features (not only upgrade libraries but also swap out the old Apache libs), but logs must be constantly inspected to address security risks, and GDPR issues have to be automatically lodged with CNIL. This “let’s keep this service onl…

Yes and no. Things do need monitoring and support. But hardening is doable, as well. With more and more use solidifying exactly what to allow.

Upgrades and new features often make hardening tougher, due to a combinitorial explosion in exposed surface area.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#212

Post by aplusbi » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 4:56 PM UTC

phpisthebest wrote: post #152

bla3 wrote: post #79

Earlier 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 would bet that the majority of non-techies couldn't name a single discontinued Google product.

Outside of the tech world Google still has a stellar reputation. Most people don't seem to care/know/notice any of the privacy issues, support issues or product continuation issues.

So I think your statement has some merit for certain types of products - ones that are targeted at the tech crowd - but overall I don't think it's generally true.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#213

Post by toyg » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 4:57 PM UTC

phpisthebest wrote: post #185

toyg wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

2 "Seasons" of a netflix show is not even 1 season of broadcast... Most Broadcast shows run 20-24 Episodes per Season. Netflix is 10 at the most, some 6 episodes. per "season" That is part of their problem, and why the cancellations feel even more abrupt and why people do not want to invest time in them. it is hard to tell a compelling story in 6 episodes of TV. So if a netflix series get 2 seasons, 12 Episode. it is…

> 2 "Seasons" of a netflix show is not even 1 season of broadcast

I'd say most of their episodes are longer, on average. But that's not entirely relevant anyway, the main cost is in setting up the production as a whole.

> it is hard to tell a compelling story in 6 episodes of TV.

It's even harder to do it in one episode - the pilot.

In the past, a lot of pilots would be produced and never seen by anyone but execs. Then something like 5% of projects would be picked to air, and typically be given two seasons to iron out any problems - because it would look bad on execs who had fought to use a scarce slot for it, so there was a level of continued support for a while. Episodes were very short in length, and being effectively just containers for ads, it was alright to schedule tried-and-tested material, even if performing in a relatively mediocre manner.

Pilots are now less necessary, Netflix will invest on screenplays; but that means that a lot of the selection previously made by execs is now made by viewers. NF execs have less skin in the game, because there isn't a real limit to the amount of picks they can have. Netflix needs subscriber numbers to grow, so it needs big hits more than tv channels did. They have no incentive to continue pushing nonperforming series.

> Most of the popular shows on broadcast would never had made it to be popular under the netflix model

I'd argue that most of the series produced under the NF model would never even have existed on broadcast.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#214

Post by deelowe » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 4:57 PM UTC

sleepytimetea wrote: post #200

deelowe wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a lot of really impressive tech in glass. Especially for 10 years ago. I have no doubt that with continued focus and funding, they could have build something truly impressive. Unfortunately, glass was a pet project of Sergey's and he decided to exit stage left fairly quickly once some of his unsavory behaviors started becoming known publicly. This was just a few months after the launch. Once he was no longe…

Unsavory behaviors with Google Glasses ?

No. He got caught up in some me too type stuff and quietly disappeared from the limelight as rumors started surfacing.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#215

Post by gowld » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

hotpotamus wrote: post #160

toyg wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's no 6-season cutoff. It was just an estimate of a successful show.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#216

Post by isk517 » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

skeletal88 wrote: post #195

phpisthebest wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 "Seasons" of a netflix show is not even 1 season of broadcast... Most Broadcast shows run 20-24 Episodes per Season. Netflix is 10 at the most, some 6 episodes. per "season" That is part of their problem, and why the cancellations feel even more abrupt and why people do not want to invest time in them. it is hard to tell a compelling story in 6 episodes of TV. So if a netflix series get 2 seasons, 12 Episode. it is…

Depends on the country, it is totally ok for some british detective/crime series to have 6 episode seasons, because each episode is an hour or 1,5 long, they are not filled with pointless stuff to make them longer, etc. I recommend Line of duty.

The short series format works if you write a story that is suited to it. When done right it feels like the middle ground between movies and a full TV series, not as starved for time as a movie and moves much faster than a 12-24 episode TV series. Of course the issue with Netflix is they tend to take what would traditionally be a 24 episode TV series, break it down into small parts, then cancel it at a inconvenient point in the story.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#217

Post by ghaff » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 5:03 PM UTC

meh8881 wrote: post #207

hotpotamus wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a joke from Community about open ended TV shows typically having enough narrative steam to get a compelling run of six seasons and a movie at best. Not a financial thing. Community has crawled through the trenches to get its six seasons and now finally a movie and I wish them the best.

Sometimes shows naturally have a 1 or 2 season arc and sometimes (rarely) they go out strong at 6 or 7. But, yeah, for me sometime around season 5--even if a show has successfully mixed things up a bit--I find tuning in for new episodes more and more optional in most cases.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#218

Post by onion2k » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 5:05 PM UTC

aplusbi wrote: post #212

phpisthebest wrote: post #152

Earlier 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 would bet that the majority of non-techies couldn't name a single discontinued Google product. Outside of the tech world Google still has a stellar reputation. Most people don't seem to care/know/notice any of the privacy issues, support issues or product continuation issues. So I think your statement has some merit for certain types of products - ones that are targeted at the tech crowd - but overall I don't think…

I would bet that the majority of non-techies couldn't name a single discontinued Google product.

There are 283 products listed on Killed By Google. If you're right then Google must have a massive problem communicating with non-techies. What's the point in launching anything new if they're so bad at getting users?

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#219

Post by kleene_op » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 5:09 PM UTC

throwaw12 wrote: post #25

At 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 true not just for google but for everyone as well.

How many times have people just given up on doing the extra mile? I know I did.

Re: Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

#220

Post by jsnell » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 5:11 PM UTC

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #112

danpalmer wrote: post #105

Earlier 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…

> It has become a meme: https://killedbygoogle.com/

Yes. It being a meme is exactly the problem. It just gets repeated over and over with no regard to the facts, in a kind of positive feedback loop.

If you did the same for Google's peer companies like Amazon and Microsoft (using the same criteria and same level of obsession), you'd find that the Amazon Abattoir is doing brisk business and the Murdered by Microsoft website would need pagination. But for whatever reason, when those companies launch a product, their past failures are not trotted out. When they inevitably kill their failures, the reaction is "about time, nobody used that product anyway" rather than the mass hysteria.

This is Google Glass! A product 99.99% of HN readers would have claimed was killed a decade ago. "Killed by Google" has been claiming it was dead for a long time, but I'm sure will now dishonestly find a way to double-count it.