Google is shutting down Area 120’s popular ‘Rivet’ kids reading app | Hacker News Reader

Google is shutting down Area 120’s popular ‘Rivet’ kids reading app

9to5google.com

29 pointsshacrw18 comments

Google has no brand sense left. This is an app used by so many kids, who love it, and they are shutting it down. Instead they shouldn't have launched it. I understand user studies, but this makes no sense. And no matter how they brand it ( they literally opened a new division Area 120) which speacializes in killing products. lol), this is BS.

Where's the product strategy? vision? If they wanted to study the demand and then move it Assistant eventually, then they should've launched it on the Assistant in the first place.

The mass userbase of the native app doesn't validate whether people will find the assistant experience frictionless.

Anyways, i am just spitballing (maybe this time they have a strategy!), but one thing is quite clear that they're actively destroying brand value across demographics.

I love google products so this is kind of frustrating. I've been wondering for past 2-3 years whether they even realise how brand image damage stuff like this causes?

Also, I am just a college student and I'd love to know from SV folks if you think that apart from the old Google products, their is lack of vision in new products? lack of vision in new PMs? Is Google not able to attract good talent anymore in terms of Product Strategy, Mgmt, Branding? Is it deteriorating? I've always felt that Google is terrible at perception management.

Happy to be corrected in case something above didn't make sense :)

Sundar Pichai has no sense of leadership skills that I can note from outside of the company. He exudes no passion, no sense of optimism, and completely lacks vision. I’ve seen him speak at Google I/O and time and again, it’s just AI and people.

He needs to turn Google’s brand into Goodwill. Like Nike did. Like Apple did. Like his predecessors at Google did.

Pardon me if this is harsh, but literally being honest how I feel.

Sundar feels like an immature executive when it comes to building an image about himself and the company. Wallstreet probably likes his results and growth numbers, but there is more to stock price and performance to running a company. When he is gone, his successors will feel the pain and debt he has left behind.

Not harsh at all. I follow Google very closely. At one point literally 5-10 consecutive speeches/ keynotes/ interviews by Pichai over a period of 3 years appeared to be the same charismaless, PR written statements. It's fine if it's the same thing (in case you want to articulate a particular vision), the problem is it's dull, boring, no vision at all. Pichai is hailed as a great PM for stuff like Chrome etc.

But I don't see what he has brought to the table as the CEO. I feel like Google has a lot of great engineers who've stuck around for 15-20 years, that's their core asset, but they need more direction, vision, strategy. Apple has a solid team of designers and product people who've stuck around for decades. Google needs more product people or more importantly a strong directive from the top (Pichai) to dominate in an area like hardware, AR.

Like one thing which I am especially baffled by is Google's lack of action in the AR space. Meanwhile, Apple's been ramping up small acquistions over the past 3-4 years to assemble solid talent,IP. It's going to take a lot of time for Google to catch up in AR.

At this point, why would anyone use a consumer facing product from Google? I would go as far as to say that using any Google product outside of core web tracking and ad services seems super risky.

Yeah, even in Google app, Assistant I saw some good stuff in the beginning but the past 1.5 years has just been random stuff.

In case of Android where customizability is what people boost about, Apple's been doing a lot of good custom stuff natively.

Apple did such an amazing job with Shortcuts(yes i know it's acquired), Google just recently launched Blocks, even that's shit. Though, there are third party communities like Automate, Macrodroid, then Google comes up with half-fledged launch.

Heck, when I heard Google isn't doing a virtual I/O this year, it sent off such a weak vibe.

I mostly see it from a product+$ point of view. Stadia is the new one where I feel Google is def committed. Apart from that the old guard( 1B+ apps) is doing fine. Area 120 is just a way to kill stuff, though i think 1-2 things have been integrated in main apps.

I am divided on Google's culture of experimentation. So far it's not been impressive( long-term or short-term). Take ATAP, X Labs and now Area 120. In the beginning this (X labs, ATAP) was what I liked a lot about Google, but as a public company repeated experiments which don't turn into products is demotivating.

And their main competition is Apple. Apple ships opinions( firm product vision ) whereas Google's been shipping experiments. Facebook too in some ways.

https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/1297115699408711681

It's funny, I almost mentioned Stadia in my initial post talking about how skeptical I was about people purchasing the service and in-service licenses for games.

I fear that people who invest in Stadia are in for a rude awakening.

yeah, you might be right, I feel like Google's upto some good stuff with Stadia. Only one thing: maybe they shouldn't have launched as it's quite incomplete. Why the fuck would they want to piss off gaming community+developers.

And by the time Stadia improves in 2-3 years, there might be significant churn - both from gamers and developers. Like the experience might be good, but is it mindblowing?

And just today Amazon announced Luna: https://9to5google.com/2020/09/24/amazon-luna-brings-stadia-...

That Youtube integration which they talked about at launch will be interesting to see (when it comes...)

Remember when apps couldn't be "shut down"? At worst they wouldn't get updates, and as long as you had the installer or executable, you could still run it, even without the continuous support of a giant multinational corporation?

Yes, and I also remember a time when people were afraid that someone might be listening in on their conversations at home or being watched by their TVs.

Today people think those things are features and pay for them for some reason.

Area 120 is not "real" google. It's Google's startup incubator, kind of like an internal YCombinator.

Most Area 120 projects get killed by design if they don't show enough success early on.

Using an Area 120 product is like using a new Product Hunt product: You have to realize the Lindy Effect applies

That's probably the idea, but if you have any sense (and experience of using Google for 10+ years) left, you treat anything Google like using a new Product Hunt product. If you're expecting anything long-term from them at all, you're soon in for a surprise.

I‘m sure the children using this app know all about Google‘s internal divisions.

now they will remember that google kills products.. unfortunately it's happening to an educational product that many of them love and use to learn

Don’t care. It’s got the Google name attached to it, the negative association accumulates to google itself.

“But it’s an internal incubator” is meaningless to both me, and end consumers.

The sentiments here seem to be generally "Why launch anything at all" or "Stop killing things". I think there's a middle ground that google doesn't seem to see: if there are passionate people involved, why not let these things grow on their own? Spin them out, give the lead developers a paid year off in return for a 10% equity stake or similar. Or if no one wants it, why not sell/gift it? Why throw all this potential away?

The core problem is that Google has absolutely destroyed their good will. Most people seem to assume that new Google services will either be awful, or be awesome and then immediately cancelled.

Google needs to focus on rebuilding trust. Nothing else matters.

Never use Google! Never ever! Except for search... if you don't care about privacy. Or if you are an advertiser who'd rather pay Google and support the evil than work hard on their product or service.

Right after Area 120 released a product that we’re supposed to integrate into our core business work flows.

Is google completely oblivious to the fact that nobody trusts them?

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