331–340 of 371 posts
Why 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?
What other company has a literal graveyard of products? https://killedbygoogle.com
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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 know your question was rethorical but I'm counting 7 chat / messaging platforms : Hangouts (2013): A messaging platform that integrated with Google+ and Gmail, offering text, voice, and video communication. Google Messages (formerly Android Messages, 2014): An SMS, MMS, and RCS messaging application for Android devices. Google Spaces (2016): A group messaging app that allowed users to create "spaces" for sharing li…
I have neither asked for, nor received, a single feature from what I bought, I just want it to continue working. With prior products, they were "free" so it was kind of acceptable that they were discontinued, but now I have a real tangible thing, that Google has just decided to shut off and that's that.
I will never buy something without open standards again. My expectation is that at some point in the life of these cameras they would support RTSP but they never did, and I now see more than ever that that was a feature, not a bug. I will never make that mistake again.
HN has 2 perma-front page topics: Google shutting down something noone has ever heard of Is it just me or has Google search gotten worse?
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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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> 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.
That's a bit of a bummer, but probably fine. Just one of those things about working at a grown up company rather than a scrappy upstart.
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You could say the same about Google Earth on mobile. Do you need a separate app? I’m honestly surprised it still exists.
Google earth on mobile lets you load up local KML files, which I don't think normal maps does
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> 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. Yes, but we're not the people making the product decisions. Stadia's shutdown was inevitable in part because we had already established this distrust, and also because leadership handled every aspect of it incredibly poorly. It was technicall…
> Stadia's shutdown was inevitable in part because we had already established this distrust, and also because leadership handled every aspect of it incredibly poorly. It was technically impressive, but the economics relied on the addressable market actually being willing to go all-in on the service. This is what I don’t understand. Is leadership really this dumb or are we missing large pieces of context? The prevaili…
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> 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. Yes, but we're not the people making the product decisions. Stadia's shutdown was inevitable in part because we had already established this distrust, and also because leadership handled every aspect of it incredibly poorly. It was technicall…
> Stadia's shutdown was inevitable in part because we had already established this distrust, and also because leadership handled every aspect of it incredibly poorly. It was technically impressive, but the economics relied on the addressable market actually being willing to go all-in on the service. This is what I don’t understand. Is leadership really this dumb or are we missing large pieces of context? The prevaili…
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?
It’s interesting to me that they continue to spawn and nix products like this despite the reputation damage it causes. I think the 'problem' is that reputation damage doesn't really impact Google's revenue. They get the overwhelming majority of their money from publishing adverts, with a significant amount on their own properties (search and YouTube). It really doesn't matter if a bunch of gamers decide Stadia screwe…
But it's not a unique problem. I think their peers in the giant mature technology company business tend to take fewer shots and put more investment in the ones they do take.
But they also still kill products eventually. I can't load music on the iPod shuffle I still have in a drawer. My windows 95 disks aren't very useful. The Amazon store I did Christmas shopping at a couple years ago is some kind of boutique clothing store now.
But I do think Google's decisions always seem to feel more sudden, that once they give up on a product, they pull the band-aid off way more quickly. And I do think they seem to take more shots that don't work out.