My startup for a time being was only using Google Checkout. Here lies the problem. Can't trust Google with building APIs when they reorganize. This is surprising to me, but I wonder if Google Maps could close down....
Mapping is such a core part of the mobile OS experience I can't see them shuttering it. Separate from that, they use it to show ads and promote their other services (like Google Plus).
I doubt they'll kill it, but would you be confident the APIs will be there in a few years? Between Apple and the mass defections to OpenStreetMap et al when they raised pricing, their third-party use is not what it was.
As a (for context, Android) user, changes to Google Maps have already adversely affected me. I (until very recently) lived in NYC. The best way to tell what direction you were facing when you came above ground from being on the subway was to look at the direction of traffic aligning with the arrows on Google Maps... but they decided that was no longer an important map feature and got rid of it. I would frequently be…
Umm... Google maps has a compass... which rotates with you as you turn. Just look at your icon on the map, at has an arrow facing the direction you are.
Well, no. Some devices have a compass in them, and Google Maps uses it if possible.
If your device has no inbuilt compass (think iPhone 3G, from memory), there's nothing Google Maps can do about it.
I can't imagine ever building something that relies on a Google service at this point. There is a lot of collateral damage when they do things like this, damage that hurts them when even when it comes to developers like me who've never written a single line of code that integrates with Google Checkout.
I got yelled at for telling people that :-) Or more seriously when I worked at Google a third party came to me excited about a new Google service that I knew was like the half baked 20% project of a new employee and getting little traction. I suggested they hold off on committing until it was more fully baked. Long story short it got back to the guy and I got scolded for 'sabotaging' a project (which vanished without…
> but worried about the difference between the project "inside" the plex vs the view of it outside the walls. Personally I think that bringing some more discipline to that was one of the better things Larry has done as CEO so far.
Wasn't that the point of Labs? To allow experimental projects to get used by people outside Google?
If this was because checkout was a commercial failure they need to make that public knowledge. Otherwise this does make it seem like you can't rely on any Google product that's not part of their core offering. I'm specifically thinking of Google Voice & Keep.
> Otherwise this does make it seem like you can't rely on any Google product that's not part of their core offering.
Given history, yeah, you don't want to be seriously dependent on anything non-core.
My startup for a time being was only using Google Checkout. Here lies the problem. Can't trust Google with building APIs when they reorganize. This is surprising to me, but I wonder if Google Maps could close down....
The more relevant question is not whether Google Maps could close down but whether it will change in a manner that adversely affects you. For example, with their new vector-based system, will Google phase out tiles at some point? There are some apps that might be incompatible with vector-based data, so this could matter. Or more relevantly, will Google restrict API access? Think of Twitter -- it's never closed its Tw…
They recently got rid of topographic data for the mobile Maps application. For serious stuff, relying on your phone is a bad idea - you need a real map - but for casual walks, having some idea of elevations was really handy, and now it's gone.
If this was because checkout was a commercial failure they need to make that public knowledge. Otherwise this does make it seem like you can't rely on any Google product that's not part of their core offering. I'm specifically thinking of Google Voice & Keep.
Personally, I would find it understandable if Google closed checkout because they failed to generate solid profits from it. I saw only after my comment that checkout was deprecated in part because they have another existing product in the same space, Google wallet.
This is insanely bad timing. They should shut it down in January of 2014 after all the E-commerce retailers make all their money. No one in Ecommerce wants to touch their tech stack during the only quarter that matters to them. [edit] Apparently the shutdown was announced in May. Regardless, it probably would have been better to shut it down in September, than right before Cyber Monday.
Can't really pick a best. The reason why I write that recurring billing is hard is because the business cases vary so widely, so the answer is usually: It depends (on your location, userbase, what you're selling...). I started out writing a couple of integrations and you think "hey, why are there so many processors, that's unnecessary!". And then you do a couple dozen and you start to see the picture. I CAN definitel…
If it's any consolation my bank pays off my credit card every 30 days. When I signed up the credit card would get payed on the 1st of the month. Over the years that date has drifted to now be the 20th. So even the big players haven't solved this recurring payment problem.
I still think that offering "every N days" and "Nth day of the month" would cover 99% of use-cases. The big problem I ran into was when my credit-card expired, PayPal paid a recurring bill late as it had to do an "e-cheque" that had a long delay on it. So the payment happened late.
The WTF happened the next month, after I fixed the credit card issue - every future bill had the same long delay on it. Somehow their "Pxtl pays on X day of the month" had gotten shifted. So I was getting late notifications every month.
I got yelled at for telling people that :-) Or more seriously when I worked at Google a third party came to me excited about a new Google service that I knew was like the half baked 20% project of a new employee and getting little traction. I suggested they hold off on committing until it was more fully baked. Long story short it got back to the guy and I got scolded for 'sabotaging' a project (which vanished without…
> but worried about the difference between the project "inside" the plex vs the view of it outside the walls. Personally I think that bringing some more discipline to that was one of the better things Larry has done as CEO so far. Wasn't that the point of Labs? To allow experimental projects to get used by people outside Google?
Yes, as far as I could tell that was part of the Labs mission (this was between 2006 and 2010). The confounding factor at the time was that "labs" was one of about four different ways something went from idea into "production" (aka visible outside Google), a tremendous amount depended on the project manager you worked with. There were people who had been at Google long enough that they could get an idea from first successful build to production in a month, knocking down all the various stubs of process that were in the way (like Marissa's UI review). These folks were well regarded by the fact that they got a lot of stuff done. Pretty much anyone, with the right set of people, could ship nearly anything. The downside was that sometimes things that came out were not as baked as they might appear to someone on the outside.