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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

#231

Post by ArtDev »

burtonator wrote: post #173

I'm a developer of an app on Firebase. I really like the current iteration of Firebase but it's definitely languishing compared to what's happening at AWS. Firebase is great for our use case as it handles auth easily and has sort of a JSON-put API as well as support for blobs via cloud storage. https://getpolarized.io/ ... if you're interested. Anyway. This keeps me up at night. Google has a history of just flat out…

Firebase is an example of something that I would use except that I know Google is "behind it".

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

#232

Post by bad_user »

jfasi wrote: post #117
throw_away wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you get a company that throws stuff at the wall to see if it sticks, and if it doesn't kills it immediately. I would love if they followed this strategy. Instead, you have products like reader and inbox with many passionate users, which demonstrate some wall stickiness, and they're killed rather than monetized. Monetize me. I recognize that the things I like cost money. Figure out how to make money off me! I would…

The metric you need to keep in mind here is revenue per employee. Keeping one product up and running necessarily means withholding engineers from another. As an extreme example, ads engineers make Google many times their salary, benefits, and ephemeral costs, and even non-revenue-generating services like Photos and Assistant indirectly drive traffic to the money makers. Meanwhile, consider Reader. A product with only…

I disagree.

Google killing Reader was very shortsighted because they’ve hurt the open web in an effort to promote Google+. And it was all an effort to promote Google+, nothing more.

Reader was perfect the way it was and could have been left unmaintained. Don’t tell me that Google couldn’t spare an intern for the occasional fix.

And I don’t have any numbers however I’m willing to bet that Reader was, as a social network, far more popular and active than Google+ ever was.

Also such metrics don’t count the brand damage. I will never forgive Google for killing Reader and as a result I have rejected again and again Google’s products. Even at work I just convinced everyone that we must not depend on Google’s Firebase because we can’t trust Google.

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

#235

Post by falsedan »

steven2012 wrote: post #140
TheTruth1234 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, but to you and any other GOOGLE EMPLOYEES Are you not internally aware of this? Do you just carry on regardless? What happens when you voice this issue internally? As an ex-Google fan boy, the title of this article has been true for years and it's what poisoned me (and no doubt many others) against you. So you must be aware of it. What's your take? I'm super curious as to why you gave up tech (brand) leadersh…

Google as a company is worth almost $1T. It's hard to argue that's the wrong approach when they are so ridiculously successful.

Amazon and Apple have similar market caps and yet don't have this product discombobulation

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

#236

Post by drb91 »

radarsat1 wrote: post #49
tikkabhuna wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. Gmail doesn't seem to have that much customisation. I don't understand why the "Social, Promotions, Updates, Forums" are baked in without being able to customise them. The Inbox bundles seem to be slightly renamed categories that Gmail has, but with the ability that they're always on the main page and being able to create your own. Why couldn't this be easily ported back over to Gmail and tweaked…

> I don't understand why the "Social, Promotions, Updates, Forums" are baked in without being able to customise them. Isn't this because it's a categorization they do using global information, like spam filtering? If so they would only be able to support the specific categories they are trained for across all users, so they couldn't support custom categories.

All of those labels can describe social media notifications. The chance you agree with someone else on what they are is under 50%. Promotions should probably just be 'spam' in any email client that works for you. This approach of positivist classification is simply boneheaded.

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

#237

Post by compiler-guy »

jfasi wrote: post #168
PopePompus wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can’t share with you how much GCP is making in revenue, but I can assure you it’s enough that it won’t get dropped, ever. I’ll put my money where my mouth is: I’m now preparing to expand my own team’s operations into GCP and away from AWS because of how good their ML offerings are.

People were saying this about Google+ for years. "It's a 'bet the company' level of commitment."

Yet here we are.

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

#238

Post by sigmaml »

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…

It is anecdata, but in my reasonably large group of acquaintances and fellow professionals (hundreds), I haven't heard this complaint in ages!

In any case, if you are having spam delivered to your inbox in GMail, it is very easy to train it to detect spam. Mark as many such as you can, and report them as spam. GMail learns very quickly.

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

#239

Post by jarjoura »

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…

Facebook operates similarly. They created a culture of working on things that interest you as long as it can show meaningful impact. If you can show maintenance of something impactful, then you can work on it.

It's really no different in the startup world. If your startup can't show growth in users or profits, then you shutdown.

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

#240

Post by compiler-guy »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #189
TheTruth1234 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, but to you and any other GOOGLE EMPLOYEES Are you not internally aware of this? Do you just carry on regardless? What happens when you voice this issue internally? As an ex-Google fan boy, the title of this article has been true for years and it's what poisoned me (and no doubt many others) against you. So you must be aware of it. What's your take? I'm super curious as to why you gave up tech (brand) leadersh…

>Thanks, but to you and any other GOOGLE EMPLOYEES > Are you not internally aware of this? "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his [exceptionally generous] salary [and RSUs, bonuses] depends upon his not understanding it!" - Upton Sinclair (approximately)

Strangely, I would say many if not most Googlers understand this situation, and that it is bad. The rank and file are mostly unhappy with it.

But the rank and file can't change it.

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