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Google Poly is shutting down

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Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#101

Post by sp332 »

hundchenkatze wrote: post #70
ma2rten wrote: post #28

Every time Google is shutting down a product there are the same kind of reactions like “I will not trust google running anything more than a year”, “killedbygoogle.com”. I’m wondering, have you ever heard about this product? I for one have no clue what this is. How many more products does google have that you never heard about and that are not shut down?

Yep, I hadn't heard of this one. Several of their shutdowns have effectively been product announcements and shutdowns rolled into one for me. They announce a shutdown, I don't know what it is so I check it out. I get excited for a brief moment until I remember it's getting shutdown.

For a company with such a massive advertising network, they kinda suck at marketing their own products and services. E.g. https://twitter.com/JesseLehrich/status/1253824612179292160

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#102

Post by samizdis »

ma2rten wrote: post #28

Every time Google is shutting down a product there are the same kind of reactions like “I will not trust google running anything more than a year”, “killedbygoogle.com”. I’m wondering, have you ever heard about this product? I for one have no clue what this is. How many more products does google have that you never heard about and that are not shut down?

Yes, I know it and browse it frequently - a great resource, if you've an interest in or need for this type of 3D asset. (I used to run a 3D animation software company.)

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#103

Post by spoonjim »

cj wrote: post #55
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: since Google has firmly established a reputation for killing their own products, people who would otherwise find value in certain Google products (beyond search ads gmail and android) avoid them and never hear about them to begin with. I wonder if they are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy: google launches a product, people avoid it assuming it’ll get killed off, google says the user metrics don’t jus…

I think HN tends to overplay google's product discontinuations. If you ask someone who doesn't read HN if they've ever been frustrated with Google shutting down a product, my guess is 95%+ of people wouldn't be able to remember a single product that was shut down that they used. One solution for Google might be to brand the products without the "Google" name prefix, until Google is absolutely sure it will be around f…

Google has 2 billion users or thereabouts. 5% of that is 100 million users. Why not maintain a product for those 5% if it's easy?

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#104

Post by izacus »

amelius wrote: post #56
ma2rten wrote: post #28

Every time Google is shutting down a product there are the same kind of reactions like “I will not trust google running anything more than a year”, “killedbygoogle.com”. I’m wondering, have you ever heard about this product? I for one have no clue what this is. How many more products does google have that you never heard about and that are not shut down?

The right thing to do by Google would be to make the product available as a stand-alone application, so users can still use it even if it doesn't run on Google's infrastructure. More work, yes. But certainly much better than what they are doing now.

> The right thing to do by Google would be to make the product available as a stand-alone application, so users can still use it even if it doesn't run on Google's infrastructure.

Did any of your companies ever do that? How did it go?

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#105

Post by spicyramen »

Probably already known but people at Google get promoted because of launching new products, nobody gets promoted for maintaining an existing product. Is a mafia, Product Managers, Engineers, TPMs that want to go to next level all play the same game and the organization allows it. Ok product is released, then the team moves to the next sexy thing, and the product end up being replaced by some new team members or contractors take over and at the end, product just dies. Even worst in Cloud just playing catch-up with AWS and the same history repeats just that know you have Enterprise customers which wouldn't be happy...and what this causes is that externally and internally you have bunch of products doing the same things (messenger apps, notebooks)

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#106

Post by izacus »

udia wrote: post #25
tomcam wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were running Google, what would your strategy be regarding products that can’t support themselves?

Make the source code publicly available under a permissive open source license so the community can run the software. Scrape/generate a read-only archive of the site and host the static files for the next ~2 years before finally dropping the domain.

Did you implement this policy at any of your companies? How did it go and how much time did it take to release the software?

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#107

Post by [deleted] »

DHPersonal wrote: post #87
Junk_Collector wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely a funny one. I hadn't heard of it but it appears to be an Instagram alike for 3D models and VR. If Google was trying to establish themselves as a first mover platform in the VR space, it's odd that they would can such a product before VR itself has finished taking off. It signals that they actually have no interests in VR going forward but it's Google so you never know, they will probably have 4 of th…

Google has already shown that they're willing to try: they've made Tango (AR, discontinued), Google Glass (AR, enterprise-only), ARCore (AR, active), Cardboard (VR, discontinued), and Daydream (VR, discontinued).

[deleted]

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#108

Post by SystemOut »

virtue3 wrote: post #75
BoorishBears wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know Google Poly since I'm in game dev (but as a hobby these days, so all the art has to come from my non-3d-artist self or places like Google Poly) The fact that they won't just freeze uploads and leave it up is just stupid. People always bring up "What about maintenance costs in terms of dev time!", but at the core this is literally static assets. No fancy API, no crazy isomorphic app or something needing fat ser…

Complete second hand / third hand heresay but: The reason google kills everything is because they do everything via monorepo. So if they don't have enough devs to literally -keep a service up to date with the currently evolving stack- they have to kill the project. This is why things get killed so easily. Makes sense to me from a "why canyt you just leave it on" standpoint. But it still makes me very leeery of trusti…

This. Spent almost 3 years at Google and my view is that it is an intended side benefit of how they do development.

If something that relies on say, one of their log services, and that log service is getting end-of-lifed then all the dependent services that aren't really critical will also get shutdown. It's a forcing mechanism to keep the amount of cruft down. If that service that relies on the old service is that important they'll put the resources on the project long enough to port it to the new service.

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#109

Post by JamesBarney »

ma2rten wrote: post #28

Every time Google is shutting down a product there are the same kind of reactions like “I will not trust google running anything more than a year”, “killedbygoogle.com”. I’m wondering, have you ever heard about this product? I for one have no clue what this is. How many more products does google have that you never heard about and that are not shut down?

It's about branding and trust. Before any product is a popular one that prints money it's a small one looking for early adopters.

When those first adopters are deciding whether or not use the new product, part of that equation is what happens if this doesn't catch on? Should I trust them to jump on board now, wait, or go with someone else?

For instance if someone was choosing betwen two similar and new products from Microsoft and Google one factor weighing in Microsoft's favor is they will care about support, and an exit plan even if the product doesn't take off.

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#110

Post by BoorishBears »

virtue3 wrote: post #75
BoorishBears wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know Google Poly since I'm in game dev (but as a hobby these days, so all the art has to come from my non-3d-artist self or places like Google Poly) The fact that they won't just freeze uploads and leave it up is just stupid. People always bring up "What about maintenance costs in terms of dev time!", but at the core this is literally static assets. No fancy API, no crazy isomorphic app or something needing fat ser…

Complete second hand / third hand heresay but: The reason google kills everything is because they do everything via monorepo. So if they don't have enough devs to literally -keep a service up to date with the currently evolving stack- they have to kill the project. This is why things get killed so easily. Makes sense to me from a "why canyt you just leave it on" standpoint. But it still makes me very leeery of trusti…

That's the distinction I made above, this isn't like a traditional "app" where the core of it's functionality is dynamic

It doesn't need to stay up to date with an evolving stack

Static files in Google's equivalent of an S3 bucket with public downloads enabled, that's it.

By design these types of blob storage services "just work" as a consumer indefinitely (otherwise there wouldn't be much of a point to them)

-

I get the whole "who does it get billed to, who's going to take a day to write this script that makes the preview page" deal, but like, this is literally the one time where just a little bit of initiative can win some brownie points with minimal investment, can't they do it?

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