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Comment by steego | Hacker News Reader

The fact that you're tired of people complaining about Google discontinuing products tells me that Google may have a problem convincing people to adopt new services. If the majority of people don't believe Google is really invested in products until it's successful, it's going to be an uphill battle for Google when it comes to launching new services.

Google's strategy to discontinue services comes with natural consequences. One of those consequences is it burns bridges with certain types of early adopters and creates distrust when those early adopters complain in popular forums like Hacker News.

UPDATE: It may be in Google's best interest to start publically committing to a service's life span and support to preemptively address the leftover feelings of abandonment from other discontinued services.

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> The fact that you're tired of people complaining about Google discontinuing products tells me that Google may have a problem convincing people to adopt new services.

Exactly that, IMO. Arguably, people who voice their negative opinions are doing Google a favour by at least trying to draw attention to the problem.

It's entirely up to Google as to which products they create, operate and terminate. I've no argument with their right to do whatever they want in that respect - it's their time, money and resources which are being expended. But equally, it's users' time and effort being sunk in to discovering a product, learning about it, integrating it into their lives and using it. There are only so many instances of being jerked around that they'll tolerate before consciously swerving new products.

I think Keep is a pretty handy tool that's convenient and helpful. But I won't be using it. I relied on Notebook, until that was killed off. The lesson I took from seeing services being killed off that I or friends/colleagues used was that it's just a bit safer to use equivalent established services from dedicated providers. They might not be as tightly integrated with other Google services, but it's a trade-off I'll make for continuity's sake.

> The fact that you're tired of people complaining about Google discontinuing products tells me that Google may have a problem convincing people to adopt new services.

Or there's a very vocal minority of people here on Hacker News that are really upset about Reader being shut down and use any opportunity to mention about it. I highly doubt it's a majority of people who distrust Google products because they might get shut down at some point in the future.

> I highly doubt it's a majority of people who distrust Google products because they might get shut down at some point in the future.

I used to think that, but I found myself questioning using certain Google products because I questioned their long term viability, and I've never been the "victim" of any service shutdowns. It's not rational, but the thought was there and I suspect I'm not the only one.

UPDATE: Look at the number of posts where people joke how long it will take before it gets shut down. Google has effectively branded itself as a company that creates ill conceived social applications in a vacuum only to shut them down or superficially rebrand them 19 months later. They have an image problem.

> It may be in Google's best interest to start publically committing to a service's life span and support

For paid services, they often do this, its called the "deprecation policy".

For other services, they may not at launch. Then again, the complaints may be from a loud group on internet fora, but they may not represent, despite their loudness, a significant barrier to adoption in Google's experience, so addressing them may not be something worthwhile for Google to do.

> but they may not represent, despite their loudness, a significant barrier to adoption in Google's experience

You might be right, but I'd argue that measuring for this is probably trickier than it seems.

Complaints from loud groups may not initially represent quieter groups, but persistently loud groups have a tendency to shape the thinking of quieter people. Influence is usually slow and gradual at first, but with enough persistence, the message tends to sound more true over time. Repeated ideas tend to quickly overtake if nobody has a vested interest in challenging them. They become these subconscious truisms that people parrot when they hear keywords. By the time that's spread, it's probably too late.

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