Also, i don't know who out there is heavily invested in a $35 audio dongle. I love mine, but it still works just as well today as it did yesterday and not being able to order more isn't causing me any anxiety.
Where is this storyline / narrative that this is always about Google Reader coming from? It is downright nonsensical at this point, and is clearly false.
People lose detail in older memories; Google Reader did a pretty good job and had few awful problems, so it is remembered fondly. The death notice was a big shock to people who relied on it heavily, so it is remembered vividly.
I set up a Tiny RSS server and have been reasonably content.
The day Google Reader announced it was going away, me and everyone else found Feedly and said "hey, this is basically the same thing and I can switch easily" and bam, they grew like crazy.
Literally a half million users showed up on Feedly in 2 days. http://blog.feedly.com/priorities-keeping-the-site-up-and-ad...
Photos is not the same although has many similar features.
Guess which company didn't get the contract.
Choosing GCP over Azure or AWS seems like such a dangerous move. Same with migrating 5k users to gmail. Outlook and others may have weaknesses, but they are predictable.
Not really. All it would take would be liability for privacy violations.
They can't be turned down for any reason. End of story.
I agree with you on drive, but docs is missing lots of features compared to msoffice (macros, excel functions, offline storage and runs) and google hasn’t been building tons of stuff into docs for a while.
I think they are fine for small orgs, but big orgs pay for lots of support and customization.
Google really is not seeing the bigger picture here at all.
Also, the Google Search API (not the site search) which was useful was killed off as well.
Most people probably remember Google Labs, iGoogle homepage and Google Answers too.
Google Desktop was pretty popular as well.
[ there is a theme here ]
If something is not an instant mainstream hit, Google might can it. That's a risk if you plan on trying out something new from Google before your uncle is asking you how to set it up.
Just the other day I was using the adb trick I learned on hn to uninstall the normally unremovable Plus app from my phone..
In response to the most recent reports of its demise Google explicitly denied the rumored shutdown date and committed to supporting classic Hangouts until all users transition to Hangouts Chat: https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/12/03/hangouts-executive-...
It does give me some anxiety. Because there are no and, unless google ships a replacement, probably will never be anything equivalent.
The chromecasts as devices are quite weird. Their usability for most things are just horrible. But they are simple devices. Once you get over the hurdle of how to use it becomes functional. Everything supports it. It took weeks frustration to get my parents to learn the chromecast, and it requires dedication. Now they love it, but apparently now I have to find something entirely different for audio. And I expect there to be a ton of compromises to even get to the clunkyness of the chromecast.
The value of the chromecast is the software support. Something only few could do not because it is hard but because you need the market penetration. And google does have a tight lid on the software integration.
That way they can sell the chromecast with ridiculous margins. Not sure how they reason canning chromecast audio, it's basically free money.
These are on the other hand the same people who ask (or are being told by) the nerds which browser to use, which email provider to choose etc, so the collective HN/techie opinion still has far-reaching implications.
The multiple Google chat applications.
The only two successful Google consumer products are gmail and maps... almost everything else they acquired.
This one always comes up a lot for some reason (I really don't understand what point is being made), but I'll point out that maps was actually acquired. But, it's been so long since that it's been a) thoroughly ship of theseus-ed such that I'd be surprised if there's more than minor fragments of the original codebase remaining and b) sprouted large new features that are under the 'maps' umbrella but could easily be standalone apps in their own right (example: public transit support in google maps; there's a whole marketplace of apps that just do that).
Similarly for docs, android, etc - maybe they were started with an acquisition but given the amount of change and work done on top of that: so what?
I dunno, Search seems pretty successful.
> almost everything else they acquired.
Android was neither successful nor much like what became successful when they acquired it.