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Introducing Google Helpouts

googleblog.blogspot.com

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Re: Introducing Google Helpouts

#31

Post by ewzimm »

bambax wrote: post #12
dingaling wrote: post #5

An interesting new avenue for Google, where the results and satisfaction are entirely subjective, according to perception of the customer. With search results or Gmail they can hand-wave away dis-satisfaction my saying the 99th percentile are happy, but this is one-on-one. I can see the Money Back Guarantee being quite a support burden. But why are Google doing this? It's not really "organizing the World's informatio…

Agreed. It may be useful but I don't see how it fits Google's overall mission; Google Answers were more relevant and they killed it (a long time ago). Maybe the strategy is to eventually make sessions public? which would actually add value for the community. Or it's a cheap ploy to get people to use Google+ (and if so, good luck with that).

This is the core concept of organizing the world's information. If you think otherwise, you don't realize that the majority of the world's information is held by individuals for brief periods of time and specific to its application. The generalized consensus has already been archived, but insights into emergent things that come up in life have not. Connecting people with each other to give advice about situations that can't be predicted but can be categorized is the next step.

Re: Introducing Google Helpouts

#32

Post by ancarda »

detst wrote: post #27
ancarda wrote: post #20

My initial reaction is "cool, but I won't use it as it'll be shutdown soon enough". I wonder if enough people avoid new Google products due to shutdown fears so it leads to a product ultimately being shutdown due to neglect. A bit of a vicious cycle.

> I wonder if enough people avoid new Google products due to shutdown fears [...] I doubt it. That attitude is mostly a HN/geek thing. I like that they're willing to try things and test for viability in the real world. I'd rather have something and for it go away than to never have it at all. (And yes, I do understand the frustrations with Reader but I wouldn't go back in time and never use it from the start)

This wasn't about Reader specifically. Google has shutdown a lot of products. The latest being Google Checkout, which makes people nervous of building their business on Google's software. Since this service is paid, I could be netting a lot of money through it, only for it to fizzle out.

Re: Introducing Google Helpouts

#33

Post by risratorn »

yanivs wrote: post #29

Looks good but just not something that fits Google's DNA. A smaller & hungrier startup could have been a better place for this kind of marketplace

The first thing I thought when I read that was "they launch this after they shut down stuff like Google Reader".

I guess it's all about making money now for google. If something is profitable it has to go :(

Re: Introducing Google Helpouts

#35

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

Interesting product. As others have pointed out, there are a number of similar services, many of them vertically-focused.

Google says it's starting small, but Helpouts is already quite broad. Covering lots of subjects won't be such a problem if Google leverages search and YouTube to promote relevant providers, but I'm not sure it will.

Re: Introducing Google Helpouts

#37

Post by ekianjo »

BrandonY wrote: post #9
xb95 wrote: post #2

This would help with the times I've just wanted to ask someone "so, does this shirt actually go with these pants, or am I totally crazy?" All joking aside, this could be interesting. It makes me think of that service that existed for a while where you could ask a question of a topic area, and it would send an IM to people and ask them to answer it. I forget what it was called, but I used it for a little while. The pa…

Are you thinking of Aardvark? I think Google bought that a while back and then discontinued it.

Aardvark was great at the time. I especially loved the integration with gmail, it made it very seamless to think about something and just drop a question in a couple of seconds. It's a shame they stopped it.

Re: Introducing Google Helpouts

#38

Post by panabee »

dingaling wrote: post #5

An interesting new avenue for Google, where the results and satisfaction are entirely subjective, according to perception of the customer. With search results or Gmail they can hand-wave away dis-satisfaction my saying the 99th percentile are happy, but this is one-on-one. I can see the Money Back Guarantee being quite a support burden. But why are Google doing this? It's not really "organizing the World's informatio…

it is helping to make information universally accessible, which is part of the company's mission. lots of information cannot get organized yet because it's still contained inside people's minds. if you see each individual as an information source -- much like a website -- then helpouts is organizing the information by lumping the sources into well-defined categories and showing when that "information" is available as well as its quality.

Re: Introducing Google Helpouts

#40

Post by cromwellian »

Reader derangement syndrome strikes again. Summarizing the thread, if you're are an early adopter of anything, you run the risk it won't be here in a year. That's what we tolerate in the tech arena, start ups throwing lots of good and dumb ideas at the wall to see what sticks, evolution in action. How many people who built their business on Facebook's F8 platform went belly up due to changes?

Google is a company that is constantly experimenting with new products and services. Yes, some of them will fail. That's the cost of innovation. It's really sad we've forgotten that. Failure is an acceptable risk to move forward. If you're risk averse, leave the opportunity to others to jump in and place their bets if Helpouts is a winning platform for them.

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