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Google has already pulled six products in 2023

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Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#172
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?

Do you think anyone beside who are vocal (HN/tech crowd esp) care about this 'killed by google' and refrain from using their main source of revenue such as Search, Gmail, Android, Youtube, Map, Photos? Zilch. GCP/Gsuite's money pouring clients are enterprise customers (not HN crowd), who for the large majority won't bother much about that either. So they clearly know their act doesn't actually make a dent in their revenue stream, but in fact that spring cleaning is a win for them.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#173
post #31
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never worked at Google so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Everything I've heard (mostly on HN) about working there is that there are simply too many perverse incentives to abandon products. People get promoted for creating exciting new products and then leave those products behind at their new position. Up-and-comers are also incentivized to do the same thing. There seems to be no appetite whatsoever for h…

Put in concrete terms, do you want to be one of the two engineers exiled to maintaining Reader because you pissed someone off to keep the geeks off Google’s back?

For the kind of money that's on offer? I would imagine it would suit a lot of people. Fix a few bugs, add some diagnostics, see what the customers think should be changed? Why wouldn't you, it seems like the sort of thing you could get someone to do.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#174
post #69
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other company has a literal graveyard of products? https://killedbygoogle.com

Amazon and Microsoft would have graveyeards just as large, if compiled via the same criteria. You know all that shit Google gets about chat apps? Microsoft has also launched and killed more than a dozen of them. Jeff Bezos used to brag about how many failed products they launched and killed. So it comes back to the question that ed_mercer had: why is there such a double standard? Why does somebody obsessively maintai…

Why are you and ed_mercer so intent on defending Google here? I mean I HATE Microsoft and I have to admit they do a much better job of handling product shutdowns than Google.

Microsoft tells you the dog is going to "Aunt Joy Ann's farm" and gives you a puppy.

Google blasts the dog right in front of you and leaves you to bury the poor thing.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#175
post #120
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.

Reputation may not affect Google's ad based revenue, but it absolutely affects their ability to profit in lines of business outside of ads.

Google might have made more inroads with enterprises with G suite and GCP if they didn't have that reputation. The gaming industry is a 200 billion/year market that Google could've captured a decent size of if potential customers trusted that they wouldn't quickly give up. All of that represents billions of dollars in lost opportunities.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google search is in great perils because of lack of quality search results.

I think both things are true. Googles results got stagnant and Google overall was complacent. ChatGPT is capitalising on this.

I'm just trying to emphasize that most people only care about results. I think it minimizes Google's problems to think it is some technical stack problem. The problem is that Google has a disconnect with some quanity of users on what good search results look like. If Google and the users can't agree on the correct search results... Who is wrong the person doing the searching or google?

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#177
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…

Killing hardware products via software creates more e-waste.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#179
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet OpenAI is losing money on every prompt interaction you do. Estimates of the computational power required and the number of users, are that if was not for Microsoft cash injection it would be bankrupt by now.

It has started to monetise and Microsoft’s pockets are deep enough to cover the difference until profitability is achieved.

But it could become a new Concorde, on the way to the mythical AGI... only affordable for some, never profitable.
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