Hacker News: LOL! Google has so many messaging apps, their product strategy sucks!
Google: They're right, we need to focus our messaging strategy. Let's consolidate our platforms.
Hacker News: OMG! Google deprecates everything! Classic Google
Google: They're right, we need to focus our messaging strategy. Let's consolidate our platforms.
Hacker News: OMG! Google deprecates everything! Classic Google
>> I complain about Google having too many competing/overlapping products, so I can't really complain when they close/merge them.
But I tend to agree that "Hacker News" is right to complain in both cases. Messaging is one of those areas where the existence of products you (the consumer) don't use can hurt you, so criticism #1 stuck. The only fix played right into criticism #2.
Does that mean #2 isn't a real problem? No, in general it's even worse than problem #1. The real lesson to be drawn here is that, if you get into a "bad" situation, you may not have a "good" way out.
This message traditionally got hammered home by tragedies, but tragedies are massively unpopular with modern audiences.
Launching terrible services is bad. Shutting down services that people have genuinely come to rely on is also bad. But shutting down services that were meritless to begin with -- not a problem, but at the same a good opportunity to criticize Google for their aimless, lukewarm product strategy. Or complete lack of product strategy. Hard to tell.
The real fix is to have a cohesive vision and try to only create products that have merit, high quality and serious commitment behind it. A failure now and then is one thing -- every large company has a little graveyard of failed products -- but to keep making the same mistake repeatedly is something else entirely.
If you have developers working on competing products, you're wasting developer time.
If you inevitably shut down products, you're wasting developer time.
They are the same phenomenon.
The coherent recommendation isn't for more or fewer products, it's for some kind of product strategy.
I had completely forgotten about Allo until I read this headline.