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Tables: Tracking work for teams

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Re: Tables: Tracking work for teams

#351

Post by andromeduck »

prlambert wrote: post #173
gerash wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an experimental project obviously and has that Area120 tag but I think there should be a uniform experimental logo/icon across all of Google products for any projects which is provided as is with no upfront commitment to long term support or sustainability. Once the distinction between products with long-term commitment and experimental products is super clear with a uniform icon/logo then there'll be less di…

Just to confirm, the Area 120 labelling is meant to do exactly that. Area 120 projects do not have long-term commitments, explicitly. But the goal is for the successful ones to graduate to be a fully supported Google product and gain those commitments at that time (we have a number of examples of that happening).

Because Google labs was just too confusing right?

Re: Tables: Tracking work for teams

#352

Post by unixhero »

anticensor wrote: post #138
unixhero wrote: post #64

The following is a sarcastic joke. Probably prescient. --------------- NOTICE Tables will be sunset starting 1 november 2022. From that date and onwards Tables is read i ly and you may export your data. January 31 2023 Tables will be shutdown and your data abd instances will be unavailable from here on.

Is it a joke or a real insider info?

A joke, an attempt at humour.

It is not insider information.

Re: Tables: Tracking work for teams

#353

Post by Terretta »

carliny wrote: post #346
crazygringo wrote: post #193

As a product, this looks super-cool. However, I've got to be honest: while I'd play around with it while it's part of Area 120, there's no way I'd use it in a business until it officially became part of G Suite, as a core service . If Keep and Tasks are core services, then this needs to be too. That becomes a guarantee that it'll stick around basically forever. So it's very exciting to see Google launch something lik…

Hey there! Tables PM here -- thanks for writing an honest opinion about what factors you're considering before wanting to use it for a business; I really appreciate that feedback and it's very helpful for us to hear. I know our team would love to have people try Tables for lightweight work tracking use cases, even if it's not for a mission-critical business need. At the end of the day, we want Tables to help people a…

How are you addressing business data compliance?

A kanban central like this essentially contains a snapshot of the company and its direction, “outside”.

RBAC w/ segregation of duties on the admin side and least privilege assurances, audit trails, SOC2, HIPAA, etc. etc... ?

Re: Tables: Tracking work for teams

#354

Post by crazygringo »

carliny wrote: post #346
crazygringo wrote: post #193

As a product, this looks super-cool. However, I've got to be honest: while I'd play around with it while it's part of Area 120, there's no way I'd use it in a business until it officially became part of G Suite, as a core service . If Keep and Tasks are core services, then this needs to be too. That becomes a guarantee that it'll stick around basically forever. So it's very exciting to see Google launch something lik…

Hey there! Tables PM here -- thanks for writing an honest opinion about what factors you're considering before wanting to use it for a business; I really appreciate that feedback and it's very helpful for us to hear. I know our team would love to have people try Tables for lightweight work tracking use cases, even if it's not for a mission-critical business need. At the end of the day, we want Tables to help people a…

Well nice job carliny in launching it, well done! And good luck.

I could see a lot of small groups adopting this -- college extracurricular groups, a team at a church, friends organizing a short film -- and if you're focusing on usage metrics, that whole universe could prove to be far larger than the business market, at least before it's included in G Suite. Think of how many people use Forms+Sheets for that stuff right now.

However, my $0.02 would be that, right now, if I were one of those, I'd look at the landing page and assume that I'd quickly run into a limit and be tricked into paying $10/user/mo., so I'd avoid even trying it out. The 1,000-row limit seems like something I might easily run into, for example if I were simply importing all the alums from the organization's 30-year history.

I wonder if you couldn't come up with a better separation between free and paid that didn't depend on storage, but solely on features? For example, imagine if Sheets were free but charged if you wanted to use pivot tables and database connectors -- something like that. (Also, total storage is hard to estimate in advance, perhaps better to have a limit on attachments per-row? E.g. 64 KB, and it will automatically convert images to JPEG with lower quality/resolution as necessary? Otherwise everything is stored as a link to someone's Drive file?)

I just think if you communicated this as "100% free" but then with a "paid business integration add-on" or something, people would be a lot more willing to try it out. Again, best of luck!

Re: Tables: Tracking work for teams

#355

Post by timmg »

codingdave wrote: post #298
timmg wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never expected that kind of response from HN ;) Just kidding. I do think it's a very fair concern for people to have. Google has that reputation. But honestly, many things on HN are from startups that may go away. And it isn't just Google. I was a huge fan of Apple's Aperture, for example, and they let that die on the vine. For us, we think there is a real need for this kind of product. And we hope the one we built…

> we think there is a real need for this kind of product. I believe the comments covered that as well - this feels like a new flavor matching existing products. With the lack of trust in Google to keep it alive, combined with the fact that it just doesn't look to be innovative... it simply does not sound compelling. If we got it wrong and there is more to it than "Google's attempt at AirTable", then perhaps the commu…

> If we got it wrong and there is more to it than "Google's attempt at AirTable", then perhaps the communication on what this product is supposed to be has missed the mark.

You say Airtable. Others have said Monday.com. Others have said Asana and Notion, etc.

The fact that there are a lot of products in this space -- in my opinion -- shows that there is a real need. It also shows that no one has quite got it right. Of course there are similarities between our product and others. "Tables of data" is not a new concept. "No-code" is not new.

This launch is our first step. We expect to grow with our users. And we hope we can delight them.

Re: Tables: Tracking work for teams

#356

Post by crazygringo »

loteck wrote: post #330
crazygringo wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to worry about Keep. It's part of G Suite core services, which means corporations have long-term contracts with Google that basically guarantees it stays around. Not to mention that Keep is deeply integrated with Gmail, Cal, Docs, etc. No matter how lightweight of a tool it may seem, Keep isn't going away. G Suite is very conservative and careful with changes they make around their core services.

"Conservative" is one way to say it. Perhaps another way to view it is that development of some G Suite core apps has stopped [0], which should perhaps give one pause. [0] https://support.google.com/docs/answer/9228272?hl=en

That help article is just for Docs, and is also extremely limited. I suggest you take a look at the G Suite updates blog instead:

https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/

You'll be fairly overwhelmed in reading it, I imagine.

Re: Tables: Tracking work for teams

#357

Post by jhayward »

bigbossman wrote: post #235

Meta-comment: it's hilarious how every other comment is about how Google is going to kill this project. Next time a VC asks you "what are you going to do if Google builds X too?" send them a link to this discussion!

The correct answer to that is "build a frictionless transition feature so that when they cancel the product we can pick up all their paying customers with no acquisition costs."

Also, "send them flowers every product birthday to thank them for validating the product and growing my future customer base."

Re: Tables: Tracking work for teams

#358

Post by jiofih »

AlphaSite wrote: post #313
edoceo wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been well more than 205 failed startups in the last 10 years and so many more since G started. Google kill count is high but startup failure is much much higher

I, not sure if absolute numbers are worth looking at. What are the %s.

I thought that would be understood implicitly - how many google products do you know, maybe 10 to 20? That’s a < 10% success rate, pretty comparable to startups in general.

Re: Tables: Tracking work for teams

#359

Post by allenu »

dragonwriter wrote: post #78

Apparently, “Area 120” is the Google Unit for products that launch without any textual explanation of what they are or how to use them, just low-information-density YouTube walkthroughs.

It looks like an internal incubator (i.e. small startup-ish group). I would treat products from such teams with a grain of salt. I've had previous experience with such teams and projects at another large software company. I think such groups are a way for large, lumbering companies to test out new ideas in the market, with the full expectation that they will likely not be hugely successful. In the off-chance that they are, then the BigCo will put more resources into it. I think that's why you typically see very few marketing resources or support for such things. I suppose from that perspective, it really is a "startup", although they don't have the hunger that a real startup would, since if the projects fails, I doubt people would be out of jobs.

If Google doesn't think it's worth putting the full G Suite backing behind this, then I wouldn't trust it beyond a fun thing to play with.

Re: Tables: Tracking work for teams

#360

Post by sixdimensional »

ako wrote: post #341
catmanjan wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think we are crawling towards a future of low/no-code Friendly reminder that low/no-code is just newspeak for "COTS"

With low code you're still programming, just not by writing code but visually defining your program. it's more like 4GL and RAD of the 90's.

I'm in agreement - low code these days seems to be somewhat 4GL and somewhat beyond - "visual programming" or "visual development". Kind of drag-and-drop with some light scripting mixed in possibly.
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