Google has already pulled six products in 2023 • Hacker News Board

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#241

Post by ortusdux » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 1:39 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #100

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #98

Earlier 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.

When Gmail finally left beta after 4+ years it had well over 100m users. Some argued that the beta label slowed early adoption, while others felt that it allowed more leniency with regards to problems and downtime. I could see members of the first group have a lingering desire to avoid new products getting stuck in beta.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#242

Post by walls » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 1:42 PM UTC

muyuu wrote: post #210

illiarian wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the Pixel is a success and it doesn't make sense to compare a high-end line of products on a per-unit basis to cheapo phones Compare it to high end products then, and you'd still come up short. There's also the reason why I pointed out "in the context of Google, and Google products": it's a tiny product made at great effort and expense that Google clearly doesn't know what to do about (they haven't even support…

compare it to high-end lines and Google is #3 in some markets and #4 in others, which is unmitigated success companies don't get to #3 or #4 in some of the most lucrative sectors in the world and then just decide to close shop because they're not #1 or #2 there are a bunch of profitable companies that ONLY make money in Pixel's sector, are recognised brands and they are already behind the Pixel in market share it's e…

When there are really only 3-4 high end phones that's not a great ranking.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#243

Post by skazazes » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 1:43 PM UTC

dannyw wrote: post #121

bombcar wrote: post #103

Earlier 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.

This is perfectly supported.

You would think this, but one wrong move and its all gone. In the process of migrating away from GSuite for my personal domain/email hosting, my had-already-existed-prior-to-GSuite google account was closed., unrecoverably as far as I can tell. I lost a literal lifetimes worth of school and personal work that I had naively assumed was safe, and of course there is no actual support available to a one man closed GSuite account.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#244

Post by jabradoodle » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 1:44 PM UTC

mehdix wrote: post #203

tweenagedream wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at Google so am perhaps biased, but that article is from 2019 and cloud is now a 20B/yr business and growing. Why does it keep coming up?

IIRC, because Google is the only major cloud provider that made such statement.

They didn't though? The source is a single article claiming to have spoken to insiders, which was subsequently denied and never confirmed.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#245

Post by romwell » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 1:46 PM UTC

remirk wrote: post #29

The dedicated Streetview app was finally killed because streetview is already integrated in regular google maps. To me, that seems like a good reason to discontinue the dedicated app. I don't get the reasoning behind this article. Half of this list is side projects which didn't work out, which is understandable to a certain degree. The article feels like blogspam riding on the hypetrain of people disliking when googl…

>The article feels like blogspam riding on the hypetrain of people disliking when google discontinues products like Stadia.

Stadia and CodeJam are more than enough.

Perhaps there wouldn't be "blogspam" like this if Google didn't regularly provided content by shutting down things that people actually loved.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#246

Post by ChildOfChaos » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 1:46 PM UTC

Honestly still missing Stadia so much.

Not a heavy gamer, but Stadia was awesome for game nights with friends and also the play while someone watches along feature was great.

I'd always wanted to play Red Dead redemption 2 (which was on Stadia) but my PC can run it, so I bought it for my birthday, 110 gb download, had to install the epic launcher, then the rockstar launcher, then it complained about not being able to verify the files, then it locked me out of my account due to some linking issue between the two, then it just kept refusing to start saying it was already running and then many, many hours later, I was able to sit down and play it for an hour and a half which is all i wanted, which wasn't really worth it in the end.

Why is the user experience and entry into gaming so rough/awful?

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#247

Post by romwell » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 1:47 PM UTC

vaasuu wrote: post #156

remirk wrote: post #29

The dedicated Streetview app was finally killed because streetview is already integrated in regular google maps. To me, that seems like a good reason to discontinue the dedicated app. I don't get the reasoning behind this article. Half of this list is side projects which didn't work out, which is understandable to a certain degree. The article feels like blogspam riding on the hypetrain of people disliking when googl…

I mostly used the Street View app to capture 360° spherical panoramas, offline, on-device. Now that Google has killed the app, I can’t capture those photos! The app worked fine a month ago, why not let me use it, as it worked offline‽ No one seems to be talking about this issue. I haven’t found suitable replacement apps to capture photospheres on a (i)Phone. The suggested Street View Studio doesn’t let you capture Ph…

>Now that Google has killed the app, I can’t capture those photos! The app worked fine a month ago, why not let me use it, as it worked offline‽

Laughs/cries in Picasa

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#248

Post by lolinder » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 1:48 PM UTC

voytec wrote: post #219

wolrah wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was Gmail ever sold as unlimited? When it came out the big deal was that it offered 1GB, which absolutely destroyed the 5-10MB most free providers were offering at the time. I recall a time where they were raising the limit constantly and even advertised that fact, that for most users your available space was going to increase faster than you could use it, but there was always a limit somewhere.

Wasn't it marketed as unlimited during invite-only beta?

No, 1GB was the starting point and was considered insane at the time. Then they eventually added a counter where the storage space grew all the time. They finally capped that out—maybe that's what you're thinking of?

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#249

Post by aleksiy123 » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 1:48 PM UTC

chongli wrote: post #19

bigyikes wrote: post #6

Surely 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?

I've never worked at Google so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Everything I've heard (mostly on HN) about working there is that there are simply too many perverse incentives to abandon products. People get promoted for creating exciting new products and then leave those products behind at their new position. Up-and-comers are also incentivized to do the same thing. There seems to be no appetite whatsoever for h…

This comes up literally every google thread. At this point it feels like a meme which originated on HN at some point. People keep repeating because it sounds plausible.

The promo system has changed in the last year. So to some extent this info is outdated.

And while obviously culture and incentives play a role I think the statement that this is the major reason for Google killing products is largely false.

New grads aren't making any big decisions about products.

And Google has many steady seniors because of the high tenure rate. In fact the one of the major complaints is that it is too steady , too bureaucratic and too slow.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#250

Post by detourdog » Thu, Apr 13, 2023, 1:50 PM UTC

edude03 wrote: post #186

iLoveOncall wrote: post #64

Earlier 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…

I remember when the cloud started to become a buzzword I thought of it as a tool for people that didn't want to maintain their own local compute resources and a rent seeking business opportunity for people that did. I never imagined that not owning one's data would become the norm. I also have no intention of using cloud services that aren't forced on me.