I've heard of half of those. Never used any (street view is included in maps, so I never used a dedicated app).
Google has already pulled six products in 2023
231–240 of 371 posts
Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
Extremely disingenuous point you're making about OnHub. Nintendo didn't remotely remove functionalities from the Gameboy Color. Google did that with OnHub. Arguing "it's hardware" doesn't work when the features are cloud-based and the company shuts down the servers. It's bait and switch, pure and simple.
So is the expectation for every single cloud-connected item or online product that the servers remain online ad vitam aeternam so that future archeologists can still use the item when it's rediscovered and restored in 10,000 years? You just have the wrong expectation for online products.
At least they could just release the server-side code when they've had enough, but they don't even want to do that.
Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023
#233Surely the people working at Google understand how all these shutdowns look to outsiders, right? I have to imagine so… they’re smart people, and a ton of them lurk here on HN. It’s interesting to me that they continue to spawn and nix products like this despite the reputation damage it causes. Anyone wanna bet on if/when Bard gets axed?
Do you think anyone beside who are vocal (HN/tech crowd esp) care about this 'killed by google' and refrain from using their main source of revenue such as Search, Gmail, Android, Youtube, Map, Photos? Zilch. GCP/Gsuite's money pouring clients are enterprise customers (not HN crowd), who for the large majority won't bother much about that either. So they clearly know their act doesn't actually make a dent in their re…
of course people do. anytime you have to buy into a google product that could be killed off anytime. It was the primary reason stadia never took off - you had to buy stadia only game licenses that no one was confident would still exist later.
Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
So is the expectation for every single cloud-connected item or online product that the servers remain online ad vitam aeternam so that future archeologists can still use the item when it's rediscovered and restored in 10,000 years? You just have the wrong expectation for online products.
As a software engineer I can see why you say that but as a consumer you have to ask yourself, who does a product that is designed to be reliant on the cloud benefit? Wifi routers with mesh existed before and will continue to exist after the onhub and they don’t require a cloud connection, so it seems like the cloud connection was designed to mostly benefit Google. As a consumer, especially a tech savvy one we should…
As a software engineer, I want what I made to last.
Sadly, that sentiment doesn't seem to be popular these days.
Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still have the weird issue where I have a google domain with email and stuff, and the same email address is somehow also a separate google account of the personal variety. No idea how it somehow kinda works and when it’ll finally explode in my face.
Get your domain hosted by another service, pronto. You're risking losing everything if Google decides to brick your account(s) by decision or accident.
I have a backup of my email, and my domain DNS/registrar is not Google, so the real worst I'll be hit with is a loss of email for a bit as the DNS updates.
Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have gotten over them killing Google Reader. But I will never forgive them if they decided to kill Google Keep.
I am convinced at this point that the brass at Google doesn't even know about Keep. It'd be dead a long time ago.
I have the same suspicion regarding Google Podcasts. The UI is stable and it doesn't seem to try very hard to promote ads or podcasts I'm not already subscribed to. I do worry that someone in Google management will realize that this product exists and decide that it's in their personal interest to either "improve" it by rearranging the entire UI until it's unusable, or just shut it down entirely.
Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Half of this list is side projects which didn't work out, which is understandable to a certain degree What happens to the people who bet on them? Do they even have a point of contact if e.g. an integration breaks? That’s the point. They’re half-baked products being put out and pulled with no care in the world. That’s the brand. Which means when a Stadia comes out, a product that could have worked if people trusted…
They really just need clear branding between "This is a side project, we might take it away with just a months notice" and "This is a product we will give you many years notice and a migration path if we decide to get rid of it". I think they should label everything in the former category "experimental". Put the label right in the logo so it is really obvious.
Why would I invest in games/hardware for Stadia if Google themselves admit that it might get shutdown at anytime?
Lying to consumers is the safer (short term) bet.
Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023
#238Why does Google get grilled so badly for pulling products? Don’t other companies do the exact same thing, and isn’t it their full right to abandon projects when it no longer makes sense?
They have a history of pulling projects that people like, and seem capricious / chaotic about it. How many different chat / messaging platforms has Google put out in the last ten years, for example? Other companies cancel things, but I’m not aware of any that seem to do so as often. Google started developing a reputation for this more than a decade ago and has just kept doing it if not even doing it more often! Is it…
I think it only seems worse from Google because their product shutdowns don't seem to be tied to financials and if that isn't the case then it makes them unpredictable to us as consumers. Let's remember that Google offers a lot of their products entirely for free. Yet the reason for shutting down Stadia was: "it hasn't gained the traction with users that we expected".
But how does that make logical sense given that Gmail is free which means it costs money to Google and yet it gets to live forever but Stadia has paying customers and it's not good enough?
It seems wild, it initially makes no sense. Unless I'm being more than naive and we the users are quite LITERALLY sold out to advertisers. I always assumed it was a bit exaggerated. But then you still have to wonder why the Stadia users can't be sold out for a profit but the Gmail users can be? Video too expensive? I guess that must be it.
Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
Other companies kill projects when they’ve clearly failed and basically nobody is using. Google will kill things that are moderately successful and people are dependent on, but they aren’t a blockbuster success that makes a difference compared to their ad revenue. But mostly we’ve just never forgiven them for killing Google Reader. And we never will.
Which product on this list do you think was "moderately successful" and had "people depend on it"?
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Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
They really just need clear branding between "This is a side project, we might take it away with just a months notice" and "This is a product we will give you many years notice and a migration path if we decide to get rid of it". I think they should label everything in the former category "experimental". Put the label right in the logo so it is really obvious.
Why would I invest in games/hardware for Stadia if Google themselves admit that it might get shutdown at anytime? Lying to consumers is the safer (short term) bet.
Stadia presumably would not have the experimental label because it was such a large investment.