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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

#31

Post by tikkabhuna »

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…

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 with user config?

In Inbox I had a "Mailing List" bundle that had all my techy subscriptions and when I had free time I could see them. I could easily mark the entire bundle as read.

I'm tempted to start using one of my domains as my email address and point it at a different provider, but I'll see how Gmail fares over the next few months.

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

#32

Post by m-p-3 »

nerdjon wrote: post #14
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #2

Well in that case losing Google Reader was all worth it.

I am still upset about that. That single service being shut down is what started me to distance myself from all google services except search when possible (including making the decision to actually pay for services when necessary)

I pay for an Inoreader supporter account. It's cheap, it works, I don't have to maintain it, and it ensure some revenue to the developers to keep it going.

I'm keeping my gmail.com because it's my main personal online identity, despite hating the UI.

If I could pay to retain access to Google Inbox if I could like I'm already paying for Google One to hopefully gain some resemblance of support if shit hits the fan.

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

#33

Post by adolph »

forgotAgain wrote: post #21
hello_friendos wrote: post #11

Still sad about Google reader closing I've been hesitant to put my faith in any new Google product since.

Given the push back against social media these days, Google could get a lot of good karma by resurrecting Reader.

Who'd trust them to keep a service running at this point?

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

#34

Post by mark_l_watson »

Well, I think it is wrong to rely on any company’s products and always have plan B options. I just switched to using G Suite for maintaining my collection of research material, emails, online storage, and most importantly using cloud search to find things quickly. This is convenient but I could adapt in a day if they shut down all these services. I use my own domain, keep google Takeout backups, and could get by nicely using spotlight on a Mac to search all my old research PDFs and notes.

Compute platforms are a different story: if we as developers keep our cloud based systems ‘portable’ we miss value of specific AWS/GCP/Azure services and APIs. So, I would argue that it is very important for Google to provide better support and stability for GCP and everything else really is much less important.

EDIT: I forgot to add: I have purchased about $300 in google play movies and books, so I would be annoyed if for some reason those stopped being available.

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

#35

Post by meddlepal »

Google's two (maybe three) core Google-branded products to non-tech people are Search, Gmail and maybe Chrome. I don't think non-techies could even tell you what some of the other products are or did. I would also wager most people outside of tech don't realize YouTube is owned by Google.

Tech people pay a lot of attention to this stuff, but casual user's don't notice or don't care.

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

#36

Post by o10449366 »

There isn't a single new Google product that I'm excited about. Even if there was, at this point I would be apprehensive at best given their track record of abandonment. It seems to be that they've forgotten how to innovate compared to their competitors. Facebook, despite their controversies, bought Instagram and managed to recapture the young market with new features and improvements. Amazon has been making strides with AWS and its Prime ecosystem. Google has been... Making more redundant messaging apps?

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

#37

Post by holtalanm »

jaimex2 wrote: post #20
holdenc wrote: post #7

Hopefully Google will see this and better understand why Microsoft is beating them in cloud services. When I moved about a TB of S3 data into their cloud storage (as a cross-vendor backup) one of their product evangelists called me just to say hello. I was floored. But I mentioned that their constant shut downs are making me wary of a larger Google Cloud commitment.

Its too late for them. No one would trust their business to a company with a reputation of closing down services for no reason or worse yet entire business accounts with no ability appeal.

this is another concern I would have. The complete inability to get ahold of a real person when dealing with google support is just silly.

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

#38

Post by ryandvm »

chii wrote: post #15
blakesterz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting quote, makes more sense now. I guess they're running things more like a university than a business? All the internal drama and products make perfect sense now.

> more like a university than a business which is wrong for google to behave this way, as the focus of university is to produce _new_ research, and a business's focus is to produce sustainable service for profit. Google should have a graduation mechanism for a product they launch, where they publicly announce that a product is out of beta, and can be depended on to exist. And if the product isn't ready to be supporte…

I'd say they run it like a marketplace. If a product isn't generating revenue, it gets axed. Which, given the size of Google is probably about the only way to run things. Hierarchies don't scale indefinitely. How many companies have we seen collapse due to an inability to react to ever changing market demands? Besides having an oracle for a CEO, I'd say running your company as a bunch of autonomous business units is probably the only solution.

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

#39

Post by johannes1234321 »

jaimex2 wrote: post #13

Damaging? Its very clear the damage is done. I thought the whole point of Alphabet was to try and hide the Google brand so customers trust to use it.

> Damaging? Its very clear the damage is done.

In the HN community certainly, but also for consumers?

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

#40

Post by chopin »

jacknews wrote: post #17

I'm not so sure. In the eyes of users of those products, perhaps, but if those products are not succeeding, ie not becoming widely popular/turning a profit, I guess google are calculating limited collateral damage from shutting them down. I think the brand is tarnishing for more abstract reasons; privacy/surveillance, complicity in chinese censorship, being a (the?) prime example of tech-leveraged inequality (stories…

The problem is that the damage is cumulative. Each step may have little collateral damage but each is a step in the same direction where your reputation becomes bad.
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