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Google has already pulled six products in 2023

toolhub.tech

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Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#111

Post by kennyadam »

vitus wrote: post #21
bigyikes wrote: post #6

Surely the people working at Google understand how all these shutdowns look to outsiders, right? I have to imagine so… they’re smart people, and a ton of them lurk here on HN. It’s interesting to me that they continue to spawn and nix products like this despite the reputation damage it causes. Anyone wanna bet on if/when Bard gets axed?

> Surely the people working at Google understand how all these shutdowns look to outsiders, right? I have to imagine so… they’re smart people, and a ton of them lurk here on HN. Yes, but we're not the people making the product decisions. Stadia's shutdown was inevitable in part because we had already established this distrust, and also because leadership handled every aspect of it incredibly poorly. It was technicall…

Bard should have been released as an upgrade to Google Assistant imo. Imagine how much better a voice assistant would be if you could actually hold a decent back and forth conversation with it without having to know the exact phrasing needed to accomplish something.

Google Assistant still feels so stunted and lifeless when I know Google can produce more realistic generated speech audio, interpret requests in plain English and respond in a helpful manner.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#112

Post by arcbyte »

londons_explore wrote: post #100
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Half of this list is side projects which didn't work out, which is understandable to a certain degree What happens to the people who bet on them? Do they even have a point of contact if e.g. an integration breaks? That’s the point. They’re half-baked products being put out and pulled with no care in the world. That’s the brand. Which means when a Stadia comes out, a product that could have worked if people trusted…

They really just need clear branding between "This is a side project, we might take it away with just a months notice" and "This is a product we will give you many years notice and a migration path if we decide to get rid of it". I think they should label everything in the former category "experimental". Put the label right in the logo so it is really obvious.

They used to do public betas. I remember Gmail being labeled beta in the early days.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#113

Post by muyuu »

donkeyd wrote: post #91
digdigdag wrote: post #79

Beyond the serious dependability questions Google raises, I feel bad for the millions of units of OnHub, Nest, Stadia, and other hardware that are still perfectly functional, but rendered obsolete because of what amounts to high level, corporate financial decisions. Any company engaging in mass market IoT sales should be compelled, for the sake of consumer confidence and protection, of an "exit plan" to allow fully l…

> I feel bad for the millions of units of [...] Stadia In their defense, Stadia consisted of a ChromeCast and a controller which are both still useful.

according to the article, they are refunding all Stadia hardware and software purchases done through their store

they don't say the same about their wiretap wifi router thingy

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#114

Post by pipeline_peak »

bigyikes wrote: post #6

Surely the people working at Google understand how all these shutdowns look to outsiders, right? I have to imagine so… they’re smart people, and a ton of them lurk here on HN. It’s interesting to me that they continue to spawn and nix products like this despite the reputation damage it causes. Anyone wanna bet on if/when Bard gets axed?

> Surely the people working at Google understand how all these shutdowns look to outsiders, right?

Yeah, outside of tech enthusiasts, the majority of people don’t care.

Street view was an app for marketing. In 2010 it looked really cool and helped their image.

None of these projects/products looked financially feasible. And a code jam? Jesus Christ, my public library hosts code meetups.

This blog post is boring and weird. It comes off as a weak attempt to find more reasons to hate Google.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#115

Post by jabradoodle »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #98
remirk wrote: post #29

The dedicated Streetview app was finally killed because streetview is already integrated in regular google maps. To me, that seems like a good reason to discontinue the dedicated app. I don't get the reasoning behind this article. Half of this list is side projects which didn't work out, which is understandable to a certain degree. The article feels like blogspam riding on the hypetrain of people disliking when googl…

> Half of this list is side projects which didn't work out, which is understandable to a certain degree What happens to the people who bet on them? Do they even have a point of contact if e.g. an integration breaks? That’s the point. They’re half-baked products being put out and pulled with no care in the world. That’s the brand. Which means when a Stadia comes out, a product that could have worked if people trusted…

> Because half the crap Google ships are “side projects which didn’t work out,” a list which apparently now includes its cloud.

What do you mean by this? It seems GCP has around 10pc market share and growing.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#117

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

jsnell wrote: post #72
imgabe wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other companies kill projects when they’ve clearly failed and basically nobody is using. Google will kill things that are moderately successful and people are dependent on, but they aren’t a blockbuster success that makes a difference compared to their ad revenue. But mostly we’ve just never forgiven them for killing Google Reader. And we never will.

Which product on this list do you think was "moderately successful" and had "people depend on it"?

Stadia, for one.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#118

Post by joezydeco »

eknkc wrote: post #78
creshal wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even G-Suite isn't really getting that much support, it's on life support at best. There's so many missing features and bugs and just painfully unergonomic workflows that have been ignored for 10+ years at this point; the long overdue and minimal UI facelift recently didn't really solve any pain points.

It is not compatible with a lot of stuff. Can't subscribe to youtube premium family. Can't use android automotive. Can't use this that etc. I switched to my old basic google account for google services and probably move my domains away from gsuite at this point.

Just got a new car with Android Automotive and this is incredibly aggravating. Maybe it's for the best that I use a dummy gmail account with the service but it just shows I'm paying Google to be a lesser class citizen and maybe it's time to migrate the whole thing.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#119

Post by esperent »

jsnell wrote: post #72
imgabe wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other companies kill projects when they’ve clearly failed and basically nobody is using. Google will kill things that are moderately successful and people are dependent on, but they aren’t a blockbuster success that makes a difference compared to their ad revenue. But mostly we’ve just never forgiven them for killing Google Reader. And we never will.

Which product on this list do you think was "moderately successful" and had "people depend on it"?

Stadia. Many game developers had spent months or even years of their life developing Stadia ports or exclusives and then it was cancelled without any warning.

As to whether it was successful - I mean, it didn't exist long enough to answer that question.

Other things that come to mind are Chromecast Audio and OnHub.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#120

Post by trasz3 »

bigyikes wrote: post #6

Surely the people working at Google understand how all these shutdowns look to outsiders, right? I have to imagine so… they’re smart people, and a ton of them lurk here on HN. It’s interesting to me that they continue to spawn and nix products like this despite the reputation damage it causes. Anyone wanna bet on if/when Bard gets axed?

>It’s interesting to me that they continue to spawn and nix products like this despite the reputation damage it causes.

I guess this means a "reputation" doesn't influence their profits. Some companies aren't in impression-making business, or even pretending-to-be-trying-to-make-their-customers-happy business.

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