Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by magduf » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 6:53 PM UTC

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.

This comment is not without merit, and it's a good point. Everyone here is complaining about this, yet it's true: Google is still highly profitable. Would they be more profitable if they had a more seemingly-sensible management and weren't pissing people off with this behavior? It's impossible to say I think. Perhaps it eventually will bite them in the ass though, because it doesn't really seem like a good way to run a company long-term. But for now, it's definitely making the executives a lot of money, as well as many engineers.

I think all this does show how dysfunctional many human organizations are where chasing the new shiny is rewarded much more than keeping things stable and running correctly. Can you imagine if airplane manufacturers were run this way?

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

#322

Post by mStreamTeam » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #213

o10449366 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I know a lot of "non-techies" that switched to using iPhones just for iMessage because Google's messaging ecosystem is confusing and seems to change every 12 months. I also know a lot of non-techies that use Google Play Music to upload and manage their own music libraries. It's rumored that Play Music is going to be killed in the next few months as Google pushes YouTube music subscriptions instead. The pr…

I'm dying to know more information about Google Music. I'm one of the people who uploaded their entire library up there, and while it vaguely exists as a backup of a 20XX version on a hard drive somewhere, losing access to it would be pretty crippling to my every-day listening. I'm absolutely not interested in a Spotify-like subscription to a revolving library that I don't control; Google no longer letting me listen…

I'm working on a self-hosted alternative to google music. The server part stable and the mobile apps are being actively worked on. Check it out here:

https://mstream.io/

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

#323

Post by ddenisen » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

nadezhda18 wrote: post #257

Goronmon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's combination of: * The person who pushed for the Inbox project got the promotion/raise they desired and move onto other new projects for further advancement. * Inbox was too good at quickly managing email, and Google would prefer you spend more time fighting the interface in Gmail and seeing ads than getting this done efficiently. Call me cynical but that's where I'm at with Google at this point.

> Google would prefer you spend more time fighting the interface in Gmail and seeing ads Do you see ads in Gmail? I don't anymore and it feels it has been like since a very long time. (and my AdBlock os turned off on Gmail)

I've started seeing ads disguised as emails (similar to promotional reddit "posts") in the "new" Gmail app I've switched to after being forced off Inbox. I think the ads only show up on free accounts. I have another Google account through my employer (for work email) and I don't see ads there.

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

#324

Post by munk-a » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 6:58 PM UTC

eeeeeeeeeeeee wrote: post #314

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…

Probably also explains why their messaging strategy is completely incomprehensible too. I still have no idea what apps do what, which ones provide video or audio or text or both. I have a hangouts and voice app on my phone and they appear to have duplicate functionality. I’m not joking — I receive the same notifications on both.

I was super pleased the other day when I needed to fall back on a personal device to join a meeting via GSuite and realized that because it was a meetup my hangouts app didn't work for it.

I also enjoy that calendar is also a separate and distinct thing so it's possible for me to get three notifications for a single meeting.

Now that's what I call usability and a solid product! If only they could improve this experience by raising the price of their business suite by 20% then I'd be really tickled!

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

#325

Post by user5994461 » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 6:58 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #311

user5994461 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And this is exactly the problem about Google! They only care about direct metrics: Product A generates only x million $ per year -> it must be canceled. Microsoft doesn't consider a product unless it can generate more than $100M a year. It's a general mode of operation for big companies, not limited to Google.

How much money do you think AWS loses still supporting old deprecated services like running EC2 instances outside of a VPC and SimpleDB? I’m not aware of a single feature on AWS that has ever been abandoned.

I don't know of any service that was dropped on either of AWS or GCP. Features are dropped though, they can't be ordered from new accounts then they disappear eventually.

I don't think that you can order older instances, or run instances outside of a VPC, not sure if non-HVM AMI are still supported.

AWS has a strategy of leaving offerings to rot and making a new thing that you have to migrate to yourself. For example, the 3 different types of reserved instances or ELB vs ALB. It has its pros and cons. Google has less products that are more capable and feature complete.

They are both rather new and creating new products instead of removing products, it will take one more decade to see how they handle depreciation of core products, when any actually gets retired.

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

#326

Post by compiler-guy » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 7:01 PM UTC

jfasi wrote: post #293

compiler-guy wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Maybe from the outside it seemed that way, but from the inside just about everyone except Vic Gundotra and his org, no one considered it a serious contender. Just about everyone I know knew Google+ was misguided and orthogonal to the business, meanwhile the consensus internally is that GCP is an obvious extension of the infrastructure work that is going to get done anyway.

When you "bet the company", you are committing to making it your business. It's a plan to pivot to that being the most important thing you do.

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

#327

Post by munk-a » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 7:01 PM UTC

user5994461 wrote: post #300

yoodenvranx wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile, consider Reader. A product with only a couple million users, mostly pointy-headed techie types, that doesn’t drive business to any money-making effort, And this is exactly the problem about Google! They only care about direct metrics: Product A generates only x million $ per year -> it must be canceled. But what those direct metrics do not show is the long term trust which is destroyed by such short-term…

> And this is exactly the problem about Google! They only care about direct metrics: Product A generates only x million $ per year -> it must be canceled. Microsoft doesn't consider a product unless it can generate more than $100M a year. It's a general mode of operation for big companies, not limited to Google.

Uh, but Microsoft is more conservative in both launching and canceling products. If MSFT said "Access can now do all the things that spreadsheets were used for so we're dropping Excel" the streets would be aflame with the protests of millions.

I also think this is a place where MSFT's application first (not app) development strategy shines. There are still folks out there running Excel98 and you can feel free to try and pry it out of their cold uncaring hands, they will fight you for it.

Don't launch and offer BS you're not going to support!

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

#328

Post by magduf » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

cc439 wrote: post #161

annodomini2019 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably Google Drive as well.

Good point. Funny enough, the Google Drive desktop application was killed and replaced with Drive File Stream which broke the offline usefulness of Google Drive.

Luckily, there's open-source tools for Google Drive, such as "grive".

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

#329

Post by JohnWilcox » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 7:03 PM UTC

blihp wrote: post #302

Customers/users/developers don't care what the reasons are, only that it continues to happen. What is especially irksome to many is that they are shutting down products/services that found an audience... just not one large enough, fast enough to Google's taste. The more they shut down products, the longer many are going to wait before even considering using one of their new products/services especially if there's a c…

It’s odd that Google/Alphabet doesn’t understand this basic negative feedback loop.

It has become apparent to me, even if you ignore the rot that has pervaded throughout the organization, which is manifesting itself in Search results.

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

#330

Post by wvenable » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

user5994461 wrote: post #300

yoodenvranx wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile, consider Reader. A product with only a couple million users, mostly pointy-headed techie types, that doesn’t drive business to any money-making effort, And this is exactly the problem about Google! They only care about direct metrics: Product A generates only x million $ per year -> it must be canceled. But what those direct metrics do not show is the long term trust which is destroyed by such short-term…

> And this is exactly the problem about Google! They only care about direct metrics: Product A generates only x million $ per year -> it must be canceled. Microsoft doesn't consider a product unless it can generate more than $100M a year. It's a general mode of operation for big companies, not limited to Google.

Yet, for some reason Microsoft keeps updating calculator and notepad in Windows.