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Average product lifespan of Google products before it kills them

gcemetery.co

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Re: Average product lifespan of Google products before it kills them

#81

Post by jbay808 »

kylec wrote: post #27
jedberg wrote: post #15

I noticed in the "recent deaths" section, YouTube for 3DS. This made me laugh, because at Netflix, supporting the 3DS was always a big pain. Regardless, Netflix still supports it to this day. In fact, as far as I know, Netflix has only ever killed support for one platform -- The PS2. And that was only because there were only about 10 people left using it. So we sent them all Rokus and told them we're discontinuing PS…

Netflix support for the Wii is also being discontinued: https://www.polygon.com/wii/2018/11/11/18085282/wii-netflix-...

That's too bad. I liked Netflix's UI better on the Wii than on any other platform I've used it on.

Re: Average product lifespan of Google products before it kills them

#82

Post by xref »

alteria wrote: post #78
ladberg wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, they purposefully kept features off Google Maps on iOS to make Android look better, then brought them in once Apple made Apple Maps.

Do you know any articles about this? Would like to learn more.

Specifically turn-by-turn navigation, which Android had via Google Maps but you had to buy an expensive app on iOS like Garmin or TomTom. It was a real killer feature.

Apple and Google had been long time collaborators but the relationship was finally cooling off as iOS and Android competed more aggressively. Google continually pushed the rollout date for turn by turn on iOS so it was always “6 months away.”

Eventually Apple bought some mapping companies and when they were near complete Google finally added turn by turn to its iOS map app. Apple had a reaaalllll rough rollout the first ~3 years of Apple Maps I’d say, and for years after still nobody trusted Apple Maps. But they were no longer at the mercy of Google.

Re: Average product lifespan of Google products before it kills them

#83

Post by sorenjan »

dmurray wrote: post #55
sct202 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix is the last app that works on my Sony Google TV from 2011. The YouTube app shut off after like 2015, but 8 years later Netflix is still trucking.

Why don't these devices run Android? Pretty sure you can run YouTube on a 2011 Android release. That's not important to Sony, of course, but even for new hardware it seems easier to make it run Android and shovel your bloatware on it than to develop your own half-assed OS for each TV model.

Youtube's required Android version is listed as varying depending on device on Google Play, but on apkmirror.com it says that the minimum version is Android 4.4+. That was released in 2013.

https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/youtube/youtube-14-...

Re: Average product lifespan of Google products before it kills them

#86

Post by macintux »

xref wrote: post #82
alteria wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know any articles about this? Would like to learn more.

Specifically turn-by-turn navigation, which Android had via Google Maps but you had to buy an expensive app on iOS like Garmin or TomTom. It was a real killer feature. Apple and Google had been long time collaborators but the relationship was finally cooling off as iOS and Android competed more aggressively. Google continually pushed the rollout date for turn by turn on iOS so it was always “6 months away.” Eventuall…

I believe vector images were also a point of contention.

Re: Average product lifespan of Google products before it kills them

#87

Post by jrochkind1 »

"The average lifespan of a discontinued Google product is 4 years and 1 month."

"The average lifespan of a DISCONTINUED Google product..."

Note this does not mean the average lifespan of a Google product is 4 years. There numbers do not include products which have NOT been killed.

Re: Average product lifespan of Google products before it kills them

#88

Post by anoncake »

joshuamorton wrote: post #56
ThatPlayer wrote: post #50

Like always, I have issues with these lists. Project Ara is there despite never actually launching a product. Or Google Glass is on there despite a new Google Glass hardware that was released this year. They also list Google Sky Map ( https://gcemetery.co/google-sky-map/ ) which they call discontinued because Google released it as open source and handed over reigns to another group of developers, but looking at the g…

About a quarter of the projects in the graveyard had replacements, and often automated transfers to the new tools (writely, a bunch of analytics tools, songza, etc.) Another quarter were explicitly experimental (labs, glass, ara, etc.). And another handful are products that no longer make sense in the modern world (google desktop, various toolbars, browser sync, the gmail notifier, etc.) Hell, one of them is apparent…

> Another quarter were explicitly experimental (labs, glass, ara, etc.).

How many years was Gmail in "beta"?

Re: Average product lifespan of Google products before it kills them

#89

Post by turk73 »

I don't see Google Windowing Toolkit, the ill-conceived Java->Javascript cross compiler that so many companies adopted and then got stuffed when Google decided to move on and made it "open source."

It was a total POS idea (because the "Java" was not really Java, but a subset of sorta-Java), but several companies I worked for had Google FaN BoIs who got their company to adopt it. The cost of converting those apps to Angular later on was enormous. Oh shit, Angular 1 -> Angular 2 was another total fuck up!

My experience with GWT makes me second-guess ever wanting to do anything with Golang.

Re: Average product lifespan of Google products before it kills them

#90

Post by lostmsu »

ethbro wrote: post #8
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #2

Does no one at Google HQ ever have the guts to raise their hand and bring this up? It's a meme by now.

There have been some comments on here about how career advancement optimization at Google involves hopping between projects, staying long enough to launch, and then moving on. Whereas doing good work on product maintenance or evolution is much less rewarding. True or not, it would explain a lot about how Google (as a whole) behaves towards products.

Feels like someone higher up should walk through some of the now dead projects, and fire management team members, who wasted resources on those. Especially highly promoted and/or repeat offenders. Might actually spark some real innovation.
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