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Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

arstechnica.com

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Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

#101

Post by fixermark »

Kaiyou wrote: post #91
fixermark wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my point of view, if it's a choice between an ecosystem of tools that Google could kill at their whim and an ecosystem of tools floated and maintained by startup companies that could dry up and die at any time, it's a bit of an illusory choice.

Go for open source tools then. If they are good enough for people to get use out of, they usually stay around. At least I can't think of an example where one disappeared for good.

That's down an axis of "strictly worse than the alternatives." With an open-source ecosystem, I have to set it up and maintain it myself, when it breaks I have to service it by myself (often without a useful community to assist, because my problems are often unique to my special-snowflake configuration), and if I get attacked I'm 100% responsible for digging out of the assault with no recourse or assistance.

None of these are concerns with either Google's online offerings or the offerings of most startups.

Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

#102

Post by noneeeed »

ryandvm wrote: post #93
jfasi wrote: post #61

Warning: Personal opinion ahead To understand why this keeps happening, you need to understand the product and engineering culture at Google. As a group, Google engineers and PMs are obsessed with promotion. At the heart of every conversation about system design or product proposal lies an unspoken (and sometimes spoken) question: will working on this get me promoted? The criteria for promotion at Google, especially…

I totally agree that this is frustrating for erudite tech users, but I'd say calling Google a "disorganized mess of a company" is kinda stretching things. The last quarterly earnings for GOOG were up 21% year/year. That's pretty insane for a company of this size. The way they operate is annoying when it's one of your favorite products that isn't pulling it's weight, but it's hard to argue that the strategy isn't soun…

To play devil's advocate, we don't know how sucessful they would be if they followed a more orderly model.

Not saying they wouldn't be, but it's entirely possible that they are successfull in spite of, not because of how they operate in much of the business. Given that the vast majority of their revenue comes from just one place, advertising, which seems to be run in a much more cautious manner, there is an argument that this might be the case.

Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

#103

Post by mcintyre1994 »

criley2 wrote: post #10

Closing inbox has really made me re-evaluate if I want to continue using Google for email, as the clusterf--- of garbage that Gmail has turned into for people with long-standing accounts is untenable. The kitchen-sink approach of gmail has created a website/app that wants to meet every need and honestly meets none. In the next 24 hours or so I'll be forced from a clean and clear perfectly rolled up and ideal notifyin…

Outlook for iOS is a pretty good app with most of the good from Inbox if you maintain near-zero inbox. I find myself using that almost all the time now because Gmail is so slow compared to it. I'd rather deal with a mobile keyboard than Gmail.

Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

#104

Post by ashelmire »

kgwgk wrote: post #78
ashelmire wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They discontinue products that don't pan out and lose them money It seems they also discontinue products that make them money and continue products that lose them money. Their exchanges with the SEC [1] seem to suggest that YouTube loses money (otherwise why wouldn't they publish the numbers?), and if that becomes known public info, it may open them up to a host of legal and political problems. Regardless, if you d…

> (otherwise why wouldn't they publish the numbers?) To prevent competitors, providers or customers from learning how profitable this particular business is. (Probably not the case here, but it’s an actual reason for companies to disclose as little as possible about their operations.)

The issue is that publicly traded companies have a duty to shareholders to disclose this data and all companies have to follow antitrust laws. Which is why the SEC is trying to get this data. It’s pretty shady, but you’re right, it is a competitive advantage (breaking antitrust laws or disclosure laws is often advantageous... hence why the laws were written).

Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

#105

Post by noneeeed »

jfasi wrote: post #61

Warning: Personal opinion ahead To understand why this keeps happening, you need to understand the product and engineering culture at Google. As a group, Google engineers and PMs are obsessed with promotion. At the heart of every conversation about system design or product proposal lies an unspoken (and sometimes spoken) question: will working on this get me promoted? The criteria for promotion at Google, especially…

Is this basically why things like Inbox, and the endless attempts at messaging, all come out as seperate products rather than enhancements to existing products, because that way you get to say you launched something new?

Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

#106

Post by thefranke »

FabHK wrote: post #77

My list of degooglifying actions (mostly from my older post [1]) * switch default search engine to DuckDuckGo (one can still use the !s bang when one wants to see what Google has) * use tracking blockers (uBlock origin, BlockBear on iOS) * use anonymous/private/porn mode browsing most of the time (except for sites I actually want to be logged in permanently) * use Zoho as a replacement for shared Google docs * use Yo…

I can also recommend Invidious [1] as a Youtube replacement. It's effectively a proxy in front of Youtube, only loading the source data (i.e. the video) in its own container. You can subscribe to channels via the builtin RSS functionality just like on Youtube. I use a redirector extension [2] in Firefox to automatically redirect any Youtube links to Invidious, since the signature for loading videos is identical.

[1] https://www.invidio.us (many other instances run on different addresses)

[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/ (Pattern: https://www.youtube.com/**, Redirect to: https://invidio.us/$2)

Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

#107

Post by PopePompus »

jfasi wrote: post #61

Warning: Personal opinion ahead To understand why this keeps happening, you need to understand the product and engineering culture at Google. As a group, Google engineers and PMs are obsessed with promotion. At the heart of every conversation about system design or product proposal lies an unspoken (and sometimes spoken) question: will working on this get me promoted? The criteria for promotion at Google, especially…

It may be that GCP isn't going anywhere, but when our organization was choosing a cloud service, we chose Amazon over Google specifically because of Google's flakiness. Google could drop cloud services tomorrow, and it would not be out of character.

Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

#109

Post by noneeeed »

hellcow wrote: post #24
gnur wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I am aware, Google hasn't shut anything down that you actually pay for. So fear mongering about GCP is just begin irrational.

The whole Nexus brand springs to mind. The best mid-tier phone available was killed and replaced with nearly the exact same specs at the highest price possible. Sent begrudgingly from a Pixel.

I'm very salty about that. I really wish they'd just release a range of perhaps 2 phones, one solid mid-range and one top-spec, that get guarenteed fast updates to Android.

I used to have a Nexus 5, and getting the latest android soon after release was a big feature. I've got a Moto Z2 Play now and there is still no sign of updating to the latest.

Re: Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand

#110

Post by Kique »

hellcow wrote: post #24
gnur wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I am aware, Google hasn't shut anything down that you actually pay for. So fear mongering about GCP is just begin irrational.

The whole Nexus brand springs to mind. The best mid-tier phone available was killed and replaced with nearly the exact same specs at the highest price possible. Sent begrudgingly from a Pixel.

The Nexus 6p was around the same price as the iPhone when it came out, think it was $500 vs $550.
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