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Google has already pulled six products in 2023

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Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#271

Post by nobody9999 »

Nathanba wrote: post #238
jzb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 G…

>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?

>[...]

>Unless I'm being more than naive and we the users are quite LITERALLY sold out to advertisers.

Yes.

Because when you can read every email and store it for data analysis focused on "targeted" ads, you can charge your customers (that's the advertisers, in case you thought it was gmail users) more when they invade your privacy.

Stadia is (or rather, was) chump change[0] at best, and it's a lot harder to spy on everything someone does online when they're just playing games. And pausing game play to show you ads...well, that would certainly never fly.

Remember, Alphabet exists to generate profit for their shareholders -- not to make cool stuff or make their product^W users happy.

If flooding every gmail user's inbox with Goatse[1] every six minutes would increase revenue (and/or stock price), a billion people would be intimately familiar with a stranger's rectum. And GOOG would laugh all the way to the bank.

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chump%20change

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse.cx

Edit: Added the missing link, fixed formatting. Added link explaining what Goatse is, for those who are too young to have had the "pleasure" of experiencing it themselves.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#272

Post by muyuu »

walls wrote: post #242
muyuu wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

but there are many more

almost every major brand has essentially their flagship and most do worse than the Pixel

Asus, Xiaomi, Huawei, Sony, Vivo, Oppo, Motorola, OnePlus, etc etc all have high-end phones

only Apple and Samsung are doing better than Google Pixel

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#273

Post by kmlx »

cptaj wrote: post #200
kmlx wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think it's about expectations

I think its about copping out of any responsibility. Sure, go ahead. But the market will take notice if you do that.

right, that too. but i prefer the honesty of having the “beta” label than the lack of it.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#274

Post by ghaff »

lordnacho wrote: post #173
ghaff wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put in concrete terms, do you want to be one of the two engineers exiled to maintaining Reader because you pissed someone off to keep the geeks off Google’s back?

For the kind of money that's on offer? I would imagine it would suit a lot of people. Fix a few bugs, add some diagnostics, see what the customers think should be changed? Why wouldn't you, it seems like the sort of thing you could get someone to do.

Because at most companies it’s probably a recipe to not get bonuses, RSUs, promotions, good reviews, and other teams may not want to touch you—out of sight out of mind.

And guess who is high on the list if cuts are to be made?

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#275

Post by martius »

walls wrote: post #220
martius wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. So on one hand Google doesn't innovate anymore and is too shy to release anything new, and on the other hand Google can't just get things out and experiment because it would let down people…

> So on one hand Google doesn't innovate anymore and is too shy to release anything new From everything I've read here, the problem is that only innovation is rewarded with promotions. Once a product is released, the people in charge get promoted, and move on to another new project, leaving everything to die.

It's something I've heard and read many times, inside and outside of the company, but it's something I haven't really witnessed in my 4 years here.

There are many ways to be promoted and launching something new is definitely not the easiest way.

I understand that it's common to see people leave a team or product once they shipped a promo project, but products don't just die because one or two senior people leave a team.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#276

Post by amenghra »

cptaj wrote: post #200
kmlx wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think it's about expectations

I think its about copping out of any responsibility. Sure, go ahead. But the market will take notice if you do that.

It’s impossible to go back in time and tell, but I bet lots of companies were opting for Microsoft Exchange/Web Outlook around 2007-2008, because Gmail was advertised as beta.

If they had removed the beta label sooner, they might have attracted businesses to GSuite sooner?

It’s a fine line to walk: you want to iterate quickly on one hand but some users need stability on the other.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#277

Post by shakna »

barry-cotter wrote: post #157
jacquesm wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google really messed up their roll outs of new products so often that it is almost a meme. You'd be hard pressed to pick a 'worst', between Google Glass, Google Plus, Google Wave and so on the list is long and getting longer all the time. It would be a lot smarter if they launched these separately so that they do not impact the trust relationship people have with their main brand. I don't know any other company besid…

Clear worst has got to be whatever they rolled out that was worse than GChat. Just astonishing to go from best in class to unusable in one go.

That might have been Google Buzz? Which automatically followed people it thought you knew. Like automatically linking someone to an abusive spouse they'd run from, and exposing all their chats to them.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#278

Post by agentdrtran »

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.

they did this alrady with Tables, they labeled it an area120 project. they really need to do this for more stuff

https://tables.area120.google.com/u/0/about

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#279

Post by detourdog »

brookst wrote: post #265
detourdog wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just trying to emphasize that most people only care about results. I think it minimizes Google's problems to think it is some technical stack problem. The problem is that Google has a disconnect with some quanity of users on what good search results look like. If Google and the users can't agree on the correct search results... Who is wrong the person doing the searching or google?

User: good search results mean I get the answer I’m looking for within seconds of clicking the top organic result. Google: good search results mean the user clicks on an ad this time but the results look plausible enough they’ll come back for their next search.

I can't even figure out what I'm looking at when searching google. I get completely overwhelmed. I remember when I use to be able to craft google searches and get one result.

Re: Google has already pulled six products in 2023

#280

Post by [deleted] »

apexalpha wrote: post #165
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?

>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. Surely the people on Hackrnews understand that no one outside of tech enthusiasts even knows about this, right? I have to imagine so... they're smart people and surely sometimes interact with regular people in real life?! But on a more serious…

[deleted]
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