If You Wanna Be A Phone Company, You Can’t Go Dead | Hacker News Reader

If You Wanna Be A Phone Company, You Can’t Go Dead

techcrunch.com

20 pointsjmorin0079 comments

Here's a prime example of why I'm going to wait and see whether Google takes its customers seriously before lavishing significant amounts of time and attention on building a Google App that's completely hostage to their infrastructure.

Half a day of downtime. No explanation on the blog. Nothing you can do but wait and hope. I mean, my $7.95 web host didn't always have great customer service, but I had the option to leave, with less than a day of work.

Yeah, I realize that GrandCentral is an acquisition. Maybe their infrastructure isn't up to the "Google standard" -- they wrote it in PHP, or something. Maybe they've been Dodgeballed. Maybe Google Apps will be run by a better manager from a different division with a much bigger customer service budget. Maybe. But I'm sure that Google has more incentive to keep GrandCentral up -- or at least answer questions about it -- than they would have for my lousy Google App.

What almost concerns me more is the fact that GrandCentral has barely been updated since Google acquired them.

I took it as a vote of confidence that they'd be around for a while when Google bought them, but I've been starting to wonder lately if they've been Dodgeballed...

If you look at google acquisitions they usually integrate the ones that deal with Adsense pretty quickly. The mobile acquisitions really have yet to pan out. I wouldn't be surprised if this is more or less the story with GC. Google is desperately trying to become a mobile player, but it's unfamiliar territory and probably a money loser at the moment. It's like they're acquiring these companies with shotgun style without really planning out their future integration.

I use GrandCentral as the phone equivalent of a throwaway email address -- it's great as a number to give out to people who you don't want to give your actual phone number. But I wouldn't trust it for anything more -- today isn't the first time I've had issues with it.

Shoulda used Erlang! :P

Maybe a better title would have been "If you want to be a phone company, you can't go dead without being restarted by your supervisor" ;)

For once, I agree with Arrington's linkbait-worthy tone.

Grandcentral is kind of more important of a service than others, and downtime is unacceptable.

GrandCentral's CTO: "I knew DreamHost's rates were too good to be true..." :P

"failure is not an option" its a fact of life. Things happen, it sucks but its how lessons are learned

Reply on news.ycombinator.com