“Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products” • Hacker News Board

Re: “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”

#171

Post by acdha » Tue, Aug 06, 2013, 1:49 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #165

skriticos2 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has flaws like all companies and individuals. I'd be careful to share sensitive information with them. That said, they have a long track record of contributing back to the community (e.g. release stuff as open source like chromium); generally support open and royalty free standards (WebM, SPDY); and generally do nice stuff like Summer of Code. If they'd turn evil over night or just stop existing, we'd still ha…

This is a joke ? WebM and SPDY aren't some altruistic gifts to the world. WebM is just an pointless nuisance. The world already has a open, video standard that is widely supported, technically superior and stewarded by a wide array of competing companies. And it's only royalty free because nobody can be bothered to sue them yet. It definitely is patent encumbered (see MPEG-LA's recent 'gift' of patents to VP8). SPDY…

It's wrong to place SPDY in the same class as WebM: it actually provides a significant, meaningful benefit versus the status quo. The performance benefits alone are worth deploying it for most sites and it's having a big, positive influence on the standards process as people learn from real-world deployment experience and start discussing how it makes web development better.

Re: “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”

#172

Post by trentmb » Tue, Aug 06, 2013, 1:56 AM UTC

quanticle wrote: post #160

sdfjkl wrote: post #33

If you build something on someone else's API, you can get fucked in a million ways. They might shut down the API (Google Reader), take away the functionality you relied on (Google Calendar), limit it (Twitter) or deprecate the version you're using, forcing you to do development work to keep working at the worst possible time for you (IOS). They might also decide that your product is very good and build a version of i…

Yeah, that's true, but it's also true that you're always building on someone else's API. I mean, even if you build a native desktop application, you're still relying on Windows, Linux or OSX APIs. Granted, those APIs tend to be more stable than the APIs for mobile clients and web clients, but it's not like there haven't been painful breaking changes on that front either. So what's your solution? Write everything in a…

If I write an app for Windows XYZ, my users can continue to run it as long as they keep using Windows XYZ, not as long as Google decides to keep running a service.

Re: “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”

#173

Post by rhubarbquid » Tue, Aug 06, 2013, 2:00 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #167

mathgladiator wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you build something on someone else's API, you can get fucked in a million ways. I feel you should mention whether or no you pay for the API and have a legitimate contract enforceable with law. This is one reason why I don't use google APIs; I can't pay for them with any sort of reasonable SLA.

You might get an SLA for money but you can't stop a product from disappearing.

But if you have a contract, you can at least expect the product to exist for the term of the contract.

Re: “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”

#174

Post by foxylad » Tue, Aug 06, 2013, 2:08 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #165

skriticos2 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has flaws like all companies and individuals. I'd be careful to share sensitive information with them. That said, they have a long track record of contributing back to the community (e.g. release stuff as open source like chromium); generally support open and royalty free standards (WebM, SPDY); and generally do nice stuff like Summer of Code. If they'd turn evil over night or just stop existing, we'd still ha…

This is a joke ? WebM and SPDY aren't some altruistic gifts to the world. WebM is just an pointless nuisance. The world already has a open, video standard that is widely supported, technically superior and stewarded by a wide array of competing companies. And it's only royalty free because nobody can be bothered to sue them yet. It definitely is patent encumbered (see MPEG-LA's recent 'gift' of patents to VP8). SPDY…

To be fair, I think there was a mix of altruism and self-interest with both technologies. Without WebM being a credible alternative, I think we'd have seen H264 licensing tighten up considerably.

And the fact that SPDY was developed unilaterally doesn't take away from Google's generosity in making it available to the world. It's generally well-regarded, and Google haven't attempted to limit it's use by other browsers in any way - much the opposite. Can you imagine Microsoft doing the same when they were the dominant browser?

Again, I'm not saying they introduced either of these technologies from pure altruism. But I am saying I'm glad they exist, and Google's approach to IP is a welcome breath of fresh air (so far).

Re: “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”

#175

Post by rhubarbquid » Tue, Aug 06, 2013, 2:10 AM UTC

anuaitt wrote: post #13

foobarbazqux wrote: post #7

If you work on something for 3-4 months, that's $30-40K at valley rates. To do this for free with the intention to enhance the product offering of a megacorp basically sends the message that you don't value your time. Of course said megacorp is not going to give you the time of day. They start to pay attention when the dollar value of your account is large enough. Start charging for your app. Then you can say, "I wan…

It is difficult to charge money from India as Individuals, paypal does not accept money for India nowadays and it is near to impossible to attach a international payment gateway. I thought of donation as well but again paypal issue.

I don't know how things work in India, but in the US you would definitely want to set up some sort of business entity, even if it's just you for a number of reasons. Is it hard to form a business there, and would doing so help you accept payments? Could you sell it to customers who are in India to get things started?

Re: “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”

#176

Post by foxylad » Tue, Aug 06, 2013, 2:12 AM UTC

trentmb wrote: post #172

quanticle wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's true, but it's also true that you're always building on someone else's API. I mean, even if you build a native desktop application, you're still relying on Windows, Linux or OSX APIs. Granted, those APIs tend to be more stable than the APIs for mobile clients and web clients, but it's not like there haven't been painful breaking changes on that front either. So what's your solution? Write everything in a…

If I write an app for Windows XYZ, my users can continue to run it as long as they keep using Windows XYZ, not as long as Google decides to keep running a service.

I thought Microsoft could kill a Windows app they didn't like these days. Maybe I'm wrong, and your point stands for earlier versions of Windows and Linux.

Re: “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”

#177

Post by cupcake-unicorn » Tue, Aug 06, 2013, 2:15 AM UTC

Can someone take the time to explain to me what this means for someone who has an interest in developing Android apps that may make use of Google APIs? I don't know how quotas work and why it sounds like you could request an increase when you hit a limit, wouldn't they want you to move to a paid tier?

Does this mean that as soon as your app becomes popular, you are doomed to fail?

I've looked briefly at a few Google APIs and they seem strange. So there's no longer a straight search API, you have to put some params on a "custom search API" that only has something like 100 searches per day? But on the other hand, hit the Google Local Business API and you can make 10k requests...and then there are APIs that were shut down all together, like translation. This is really weird to me. Is it supposed to make any sense?

Re: “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”

#178

Post by karangoeluw » Tue, Aug 06, 2013, 2:15 AM UTC

tedsanders wrote: post #133

karangoeluw wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google are terrible at support. FTFY

Could you offer arguments or anecdotes about why you think Google is terrible at support? Snarky, four-character comments like yours do not add much value to the discussion.

I had to contact someone about something in regards to my Adsense account. Submitted the ticket 4 times - once every week. Got automated responses, and no human reply.

My G+ account has been "under review" for 4 months (no shit). I feel helpless because there is no way of contacting a human (or even a machine for that matter) about this.

I had a glitch with one of my apps on GAE, again no support!

For a company this big, you'd expect them to have decent support by email AND by phone.

Re: “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”

#179

Post by trentmb » Tue, Aug 06, 2013, 2:31 AM UTC

foxylad wrote: post #176

trentmb wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I write an app for Windows XYZ, my users can continue to run it as long as they keep using Windows XYZ, not as long as Google decides to keep running a service.

I thought Microsoft could kill a Windows app they didn't like these days. Maybe I'm wrong, and your point stands for earlier versions of Windows and Linux.

I was using 'Windows XYZ' as a placeholder, but yes, my point was w.r.t to earlier versions of Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.

Re: “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”

#180

Post by joseph_cooney » Tue, Aug 06, 2013, 3:28 AM UTC

adestefan wrote: post #89

davidjgraph wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't patronise me. I've been developing commercially for 20 years now, I'm not exactly wet behind the ears, nor easily persuaded by anything but facts. I've evaluated what they are doing on their technical merit. If you want me to give you a detailed explanation of why I prefer their system, it'd probably take about an hour, so it's a bit much as a HN comment. I genuinely think their direction with the API I'm using…

> I've evaluated what they are doing on their technical merit That's your problem. Google is phenomenal on their technical merit. It's the softer, people skills (support, listening to bug reports, etc.) where they constantly shoot themselves in the foot.

I score Apple and Microsoft pretty low on these two measures also. Support MS are OK to good, but listening to bug reports seems to be hard to do at scale. Can anyone provide any examples of people doing it really well?