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Google Poly is shutting down

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Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#131

Post by onion2k »

SystemOut wrote: post #99
onion2k wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've not only heard of it, I use it frequently. It's by far the easiest way to access permissively licensed (Creative Commons attribution mostly) content for making things in WebGL. Given the fact that Poly is essentially a very basic CRUD app with simple files attached there's can't really be a good reason to shut it down - it's simple, mature, and can't take much more than a few hours of maintenance a month for a s…

They have a real problem finding developers that will want to work on it. You don't get promoted at Google for maintaining a product that isn't growing.

I'm sure that's what Google developers tell themselves to feel better about being unable to keep something running for more than a couple of years, but the fact is Google could easily recruit developers to maintain things. They pay well, they make things people have heard of, and not everyone is insanely ambitious that they actively refuse to work on things that won't further their career.

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#132

Post by VikingCoder »

So, can we download everything that we can, and host it somewhere else?

No, really?

I see some of the content has a license that would appear to allow it. But do any of us have the time, energy, and resources to sit down and do it?

This certainly isn't the first or last time some website with interesting content is going to go down. Maybe we should all get better at forking open source content as a matter of course.

If we don't, then I think criticizing Google for not being willing to host it is pretty lame.

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#133

Post by bhouston »

pjmlp wrote: post #112

For those that aren't aware, Poly was introduced at a Google IO, alongside Sceneform and Filament, frameworks for 3D development on Android with focus on AR/VR, with managed and native APIs. Their development is on maintenance mode for months now, and even the Android team is using Unity or pure C++ frameworks, instead of Java, or now Kotlin first APIs. Just waiting for them to lose interest on Android, ChromeOS or e…

Wait, Filament is on life support?

There is activity there:

https://github.com/google/filament/graphs/contributors

https://github.com/google/filament/releases

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#134

Post by guyzero »

hated wrote: post #124
guyzero wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's revenue is more diversified today than it's ever been. This is a facile take.

Says the commenter with zero evidence to support their claims.

Come on, anyone can read GOOG financial statements.

https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/20201030_alphabet_10Q.pd...

Q3 2019, ads were 84% of revenue Q3 2020, ads were 81% of revenue

It's not a massive change, but it's changing and ads are at the lowest percentage of overall revenue they've ever been.

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#135

Post by duhi88 »

NoOneNew wrote: post #96
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, but what about the people who did? Here's the thing, Google is a big company. When a big company offers a service or product you expect a long shelf life so you can justify the time/money investment to use it. If you stumble across an open source or just some other random project by a single dev, you have an instinctive expectation that the project could die at any time. Thus, you invest your effort accordingly…

They could continue to host these services for basically free...I guess the security vulnerabilities would grow over time, making them liable.

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#136

Post by perryizgr8 »

neom wrote: post #81
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?

Google, apparently, lists all it's products here: https://about.google/intl/en_us/products/#all-products - I'd never heard of Google Duo.

Duo is pretty big. It's pre-installed on every single android phone, and on Samsung phones it is the default video calling app too.

Also, you cannot remove it. You can uninstall the icon, but the underlying code is so deeply integrated into the OS that people can still call you and you will get a Duo video call even after uninstalling it.

Quite a menace.

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#137

Post by grawprog »

VikingCoder wrote: post #116
grawprog wrote: post #14

>We appreciate you trusting us to host your assets and provide a space where they can shine. Well, I guess that was a mistake for whoever did. That almost reads like a hint of self awareness for their continued killing of things they release.

You act like there's zero value to having someone else host your assets FOR A WHILE. There is value. Yes, there's also cost to having to re-host your assets somewhere else.

I didn't say there was zero value, my statement also came with the assumption that upon starting this service, google never made it clear it would be temporary. I may be wrong about that.

Also, not everyone can afford to re-host their assets, not everyone will be able to, some might not even realize it'll be lost.

The broken trust comes from the idea that google likely promoted this as something that will be a new ongoing community that's now being shutdown unceremoniously.

The lack of trust towards Google's products come not just from the services they're providing they shut down, but they try to build up communities then abandon them with no recourse.

It wasn't just the assets they hosted, it was the people they were trying to bring together that are now scattered again because they trusted google.

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#139

Post by pqb »

neom wrote: post #81
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?

Google, apparently, lists all it's products here: https://about.google/intl/en_us/products/#all-products - I'd never heard of Google Duo.

That's actually (at least recently) quite "popular" product I would say, because they included it in most Android smartphones to offer video calls. I am tempted to say Google Duo is spread on millions of devices, however it is kind of an app, which is rarely used at all by most of users. Also, there are thousands of competitors, where even Google Meet does feels better than Duo.

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#140

Post by mikestew »

hated wrote: post #124
guyzero wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's revenue is more diversified today than it's ever been. This is a facile take.

Says the commenter with zero evidence to support their claims.

There's no posted evidence for the idea that Google only makes money on advertising, either. Can we have a discussion where we assume that everyone isn't an idiot who needs a link for every statement? Or do you seriously think advertising is the only way Google makes money? If so, sibling comment posted some nice links that one would do well to read.
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