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Google Poly is shutting down

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Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#191

Post by ma2rten »

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.

Seems like an incomplete list because Google Poly is not on there. I double checked archive.org to make sure it wasn't removed today.

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#192

Post by chaostheory »

VikingCoder wrote: post #190
chaostheory wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a service tied to a paid $20 product called Google TiltBrush.

There's a $20 product called TiltBrush. There was Poly. Titlbrush could export / import to Poly. That was added after the launch of TiltBrush, yes? Sure, if you bought TiltBrush after Poly integration was added, I could see how that's taking away a feature you used, and that's a bummer.

Most people probably bought Tilt Brush post Poly integration due to the slow uptake of VR. I didn’t even realize Poly came out after Tilt Brush.

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#193

Post by bg24 »

guyzero wrote: post #134
hated wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agree. Cloud, health, self-driving cars, devices.. all these have the potentials to become the next big thing.

Growing from $1B to $10B is really difficult, unless you have virtually no competition.

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#194

Post by fomine3 »

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?

I think this is getting hot product thanks to iPhone 12 Pro's LIDAR camera but Google kills.

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#195

Post by fomine3 »

onion2k wrote: post #71
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?

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…

I've read a guess: As known, Google uses monorepo and own libraries, so they need to maintain all applications to keep up to date to work with libraries. That's why Google kills minor but worth services.

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#196

Post by niyikiza »

amelius wrote: post #168
izacus wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Did any of my companies ever pull a product while it was still being used? No.

Companies discontinue products all the time due to acquisitions, bankruptcy, restructuring or simply re-orienting investment and I've never seen them held to this standard of having to host it somewhere external. I'm not even really sure how that would work.

A commenter here shared an example of a similar product shut down by Microsoft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix_3D

Disclaimer: Googler, but in no way connect to the Poly team.

Edit: Added Remix 3D example.

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#197

Post by supermatt »

chaostheory wrote: post #188
arjonagelhout wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the main issue for me. With the Oculus Quest and Tilt Brush having poor export options, I have no other choice than to use either Sketchfab - which has limited uploads - or Google Poly. The ecosystem works when all services are kept alive, but when one falls, you are left with a useless piece of software. This is a shame, because the expressiveness and ease-of-use of Tilt Brush is unmatched on the Quest.

I haven't used Tilt Brush enough, but does this mean that Tilt Brush also dead or are there other export options?

There are other export options, but they are a PITA - which is why poly is listed as a major feature. People in VR art communities are particularly disappointed with this announcement.

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#198

Post by bnt »

fakedang wrote: post #171
dehrmann wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or even GCP At least you're paying for GCP.

And they aren't making a profit on it. I think it will last a bit longer though - shutting down GCP would mean admitting a huge defeat.

Beyond ML, can GCP even compete? They will never be able to catch up to AWS, and Azure is growing super fast.

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#199

Post by fakedang »

bnt wrote: post #198
fakedang wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they aren't making a profit on it. I think it will last a bit longer though - shutting down GCP would mean admitting a huge defeat.

Beyond ML, can GCP even compete? They will never be able to catch up to AWS, and Azure is growing super fast.

Tbh, they are the most user friendly of the three platforms I guess, so they could compete on that. But I doubt Google will realize that.

Re: Google Poly is shutting down

#200

Post by datagram »

throwaway34241 wrote: post #176
DHPersonal wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I’ve never been able to understand their VR approach. They actually brought ~$500 mobile VR daydream headsets to market (with their HW partners) with cameras doing inside-out positional tracking but no tracked controllers . Everyone I talked to in the VR scene at the time (at conferences etc) that had tried some HW knew 3D input was critical for UX and the near term future and this was a dead end. But Google puts a t…

Given what I know about Google culture, which has also been brought up in other threads here, this isn't that surprising. I think because of the extent to which their promotion process relies on demonstrating technical achievement, it's hard for them to get enough people to work on things if they aren't technically challenging.
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