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Google is about to learn a tough lesson

blog.calbucci.com

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Re: Google is about to learn a tough lesson

#71

Post by saraid216 »

zanny wrote: post #54
danilocampos wrote: post #28

So, what's going to happen, exactly? "Influencers" who liked Google Reader, now jilted, are going to use their magic influence beam to halt the growth of Android, to erode the dominance of Google in search, and prevent the regulatory approval of self-driving cars? Google has quite a few heavy responsibilities on their hands. They have to manage growth and competition in hugely complex, emerging fields. The lesson the…

> RSS is dead What other technology is pervasively available to subscribe to discretized rich text articles, that will automatically fetch new entries, and maintain a history of viewed / favorited articles? RSS serves a very critical function on the Internet - automated retrieval of content from dedicated sources picked by a user. It was never a "platform" or a business model. It is syndication. The end. Everything f…

Yeah, none of those are actually part of the spec. What you're describing isn't RSS: it's the ease-of-use automation that was layered on top of RSS that was made easy to do because RSS was a fairly strict format. (I remember many examples of my newsreader breaking because the spec wasn't followed correctly.)

What you're really describing isn't RSS. It's a web archiver.

Re: Google is about to learn a tough lesson

#72

Post by nlawalker »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #17

What are "influencers" going to do about it? Give Reader a bad review? Complain about the death of a product no one knew existed? I don't see how they have any leverage in this situation. The comparison with Microsoft's Word Count incident seems weakly relevant.

>> What are "influencers" going to do about it? Give Reader a bad review?

No, but you may start seeing instances of phrases like "I wonder how long it will be until FeatureX/ProductY gets the boot like Reader did" or "Perhaps this product will languish for years without innovation like Reader" or "Maybe Google will opt to ignore users of this product too" in the press related to Google products. Next time Google kills a product, the media will reflect about how it's "just as bad as what they did with Reader in 2013." Killing widely used products is now something Google does; it is a behavior they are now strongly associated with.

In terms of influencers, it's not about the individual product, it's about the behavior of the company that operated it. Don't piss off the people that give you free advertising by taking out features they like, even if they're the only ones who use them.

>> a product no one knew existed

While I find that a stretch, the point the article was making is that no one needs to know of the existence of Reader for this to have a negative impact on Google. Except for the influencers, who did.

Re: Google is about to learn a tough lesson

#73

Post by IgorPartola »

tikhonj wrote: post #62
giblfiz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait... your saying that because they are discontinuing a product? I'm not suggesting that google is/isn't evil these days, but I would suggest that there is absolutely no moral aspect to discontinuing a feed reader.

I think it's more a reaction to their general recent policy of doing far less away from their core business. They used to have a ton of projects with a very relaxed attitude about making money from any given project. Now that they've given up on focusing on that much beyond their bottom line, they're acting much more like other large companies which is not necessarily a good thing.

Like self driving cars and Google Glass? Or the cheap/free fiber optic Internet access? Or free Wi-Fi in NYC? I do not think you know what evil means...

Re: Google is about to learn a tough lesson

#74

Post by saraid216 »

crander wrote: post #44
notatoad wrote: post #11

Perhaps google learns a tough lesson. Or perhaps bloggers who think they are "influencers" are going to learn a tough lesson about how much impact their influence really has. Google knows what they're doing. They haven't forgotten the outrage that happened after they stripped the social features out of reader and replaced it with the +1 button. They knew all those people and more would be pissed. And they decided it…

No, they hoped it wouldn't mater. Unless they've perfected the ability to predict the future they and everyone else won't know for quite some time.

How will we tell whether or not it matters?

Re: Google is about to learn a tough lesson

#75

Post by saraid216 »

OGinparadise wrote: post #9

Google officially lost the "we're not Facebook /Microsoft /Apple [other "evil empire"] company." They have played that game for way too long and many people fell for it. Since Larry Page took over, Google has lost it's soul; now it's just a greedy, money grubbing machine. Nothing is sacred anymore, no matter how much they repeat http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/

Out of curiosity, when was the last time they trotted out that philosophy?

Re: Google is about to learn a tough lesson

#76

Post by xaa »

danilocampos wrote: post #28

So, what's going to happen, exactly? "Influencers" who liked Google Reader, now jilted, are going to use their magic influence beam to halt the growth of Android, to erode the dominance of Google in search, and prevent the regulatory approval of self-driving cars? Google has quite a few heavy responsibilities on their hands. They have to manage growth and competition in hugely complex, emerging fields. The lesson the…

Search, which provides the majority of Google's revenue, is precarious because there are very low costs for someone to switch to another service.

To combat this problem, Google started providing all these associated services -- Finance, Reader, Blogger, etc, etc -- so that people would begin to use their Google ID as a significant component of their online identity. These services were never supposed to be profitable, they were supposed to provide a competitive "moat" for search.

If people begin to take their data out of Google services -- which is the only rational response given Google's repeated and blatant disregard toward its "customers" -- these customers might start looking toward Bing and DDG very soon. Then Google will have a problem.

Even Android could have a problem if people begin asking the question, "what happens if/when Google sunsets Play? Will I still have access to my apps?"

Re: Google is about to learn a tough lesson

#77

Post by alenonimo »

notatoad wrote: post #11

Perhaps google learns a tough lesson. Or perhaps bloggers who think they are "influencers" are going to learn a tough lesson about how much impact their influence really has. Google knows what they're doing. They haven't forgotten the outrage that happened after they stripped the social features out of reader and replaced it with the +1 button. They knew all those people and more would be pissed. And they decided it…

It's not the same thing. When G+ killed Google Reader's "sharebro" social network, Google Reader still was the best feed reader of the market by a long shot. Just like now, there was nowhere to run. Heck, I kept using it, just like anyone complaining. I kept recommending it because it was GReader or a fucking magazine-layout shitty app.

But now they are definetely killing it, and it will affect the users in a different way. They are trashing away the app so there's no way a user can simply adapt. Before you could say "well, at least I can keep reading the feeds". Now you got nothing.

About influencers, well, there are lots of people with a good chunk of influence using GReader. They might make a dent on how people perceive Google's app reliability. Even a small one could end up in some financial loss. If it would be significant to them, only time will tell.

By the way, have you noticed that the Google+ still didn't catch up? What if it's Google Reader users fault? Think about it.

Re: Google is about to learn a tough lesson

#78

Post by ktsmith »

thomaslangston wrote: post #21
ktsmith wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's odd. I think the speculation that some reader features are being rolled into plus is accurate and google wants their internal people dog fooding those implementations.

If they were rolling it into G+, they would have announced that first. It simply doesn't make sense to lose your users and then try to regain them, instead of providing a migration strategy.

That might make sense if they are a one to one equivalent. I think it is unlikely to be the case however. Losing a few million users of a niche product doesn't matter to Google if it wasn't a large revenue stream. Rolling out features that fit the Google+ scheme as they are ready makes more sense to me.

Re: Google is about to learn a tough lesson

#80

Post by r00fus »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #22

The right way to respond to this backlash would be to make Reader a paid app and tell people it'll stay while enough pay for it (and of course be transparent about user count etc). I can't see Google going that way though, it was free and if they don't want to pay to support it there's no reason to expect them to.

Reader is getting the axe because it's getting in the way of the new protege project, G+.

They can't have anything holding Google from becoming what they think Facebook should be.

In fact, they don't just want to become/defeat Facebook, but also Apple (see Nexus/Chromebook) and Amazon (see Shopping Express), not to mention Groupon (see Offers). By trying to be all things, they will become none.

They are on the path to becoming Microsoft. I desperately hope that the Glass/Driverless-car part of the company prevails in corporate culture. I fear that will not be the case.

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