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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Just in case some people are confused: There are two different things with the same name -

- Android Auto vehicle communication technology that mirrors your phone's screen to a vehicle's head unit.

- Android Auto phone app that displays the same interface on your phone's screen like a normal app (e.g. mount your phone up high and use directly, or use some other screen mirroring technology to send it to the head unit).

Only the SECOND is being discontinued, not the first. This is still bad news for people who rely on it, but has no impact on Android Auto communications system.

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The fact that the situation exists where Google has two products that do the same thing and one of them has the same name as another of their products that does something different is just bad news overall. It's great that this specific instance will be resolved soon but are Google, as an organisation, learning any broader lessons at all?

In this case, these are very complementary and can even be considered the same thing. the core Android auto idea is to give a driving interface with limited features, less distractions, large legible texts etc. It is by default displayed in the car displays but there can be cars which do not support this. For those situations Google had a solution to display the same interface on the phone. This was especially useful for people to get used to this technology before upgrading their car. Google probably decided that there are enough bee cars and enough after market units with this technology that they don't have to support this anymore. I think it is too early considering there are a lot of older cars on the road and there is a acute shortage of new cars.

The lesson, I guess, is that if you print money from some other dominant business unit, you don't have to have any other good ideas or execution.

Google has tons of other good ideas. They just seem to suck at executing them. And specifically, at evolving and supporting them.

Why do you think that is?

I worked there 11 1/2 years.

An engineer gets promotion from "having impact." Improving an existing app is usually not enough impact. Replacing it with some shiny new thing is. Once it's out there, you ideally transfer to something else where you can also have impact, or you quit & join an outside company.

As many people have pointed out, your own manager cannot promote you; only the Promotion Committee can (although your manager can certainly help).

I suspect it’s cultural - maybe starting new apps is seen as more desirable than making existing apps better.

And if you keep starting new apps you can’t keep iterating/updating/maintaining all the old ones too without spreading your engineering talent too thinly.

Google’s internal culture, at least from the outside, doesn’t seem to be one that often releases a bad product and iterates it into a good one - sometimes they do, but with most either it gets lots of interest/users from day 1 of general release or it’s quickly abandoned.

What seems broken at Google is the iteration process. I'll let more informed others speculate as to why.

But I would contrast it with Apple (who seem to spend much longer in the pre-release baking stage + have a more mature user feedback cycle post-release [for hardware...]) and Amazon (spray and pray + iterate like crazy + a more mature deprecation and support story) and Microsoft (developers, developers, developers [and especially enterprise developers]).

Google culture seems to be : they release a bad product and they make it worse. Android Auto is crap. Never worked

At least these are two similar "driving mode android app" products.

I feel like Microsoft is a worse offender at this. As soon as they get some traction with one product they start overloading the name. Think of all the unrelated products crammed together under the umbrellas: ".*365", "Visual Studio .*", "Surface .*"

LIVE* and POWER*

It basically like having a responsive website that works with both mobile/desktop web. But in this case it's mobile/auto interface. Not really two different products, just maintaining two different UIs built using the same underlying language and core system.

They probably just measured how much people with new devices are using the phone version + projected 3-4yrs into the future and saw it declining even further (it'd probably take about ~2yrs for the release to hit mainstream).

Then evaluated whether it was worth slowing down product development and new releases to support two UI versions.

It could be better for customers in the end as the number of used cars without a screen dwindles each year and they can improve the product quicker.

The other question is what Apple is doing...

From the link in the article to https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/7/18535644/google-assistant-... , this "Google Assistant driving mode" looks like yet another "ML"-style the-product-manager-thinks-the-computer-should-tell-the-user-what-to-see experience instead of one that just shows the user stuff they ask for. Maybe that's just the homescreen and the actual UX for using it isn't that bad, but it's not promising so far.

I'd rather the first be discontinued, since I've never been able to get it to work properly. I've since got a gooseneck phone holder that holds my phone up over my car's AA screen, and use the second instead. Oh well, I suppose I'm not shocked by this decision.

What make/model car do you have and what doesn't work properly? I ask because I've never really encountered an issue with it other than the Waze UI suddenly disappearing.

I've used it in various cars (Ford Fusion, VW Tiguan, Audi Q5, Nissan Rogue) and it seems to have different issues with each car. On one the screen locks up, on another the volume doesn't work right, on a third the voice commands don't always work. I'm sure it's a nightmare for Google trying to make it work right with all the different automotive head units out there.

I honestly wonder if it's just your phone. I've been in 3 of the 4 you listed with a Pixel 1 and 3. With the fusion + Pixel 1 I did have one freeze in the very first version that supported AA, but no issues after the next patch.

Because having an interface that works is so 1985.

Fwiw, it works great in my 2017 Volvo.

and then there's "Android Automotive" which is installed directly on the car by the OEM.

Honestly the branding is just terrible.

This is what I thought it alluded to... I thought there was an "Android Automotive" phone app to support in-car "Android Automotive" system to unlock doors, remotely control AC, etc... I was thinking "oh no" looks like Android Automotive was short lived. Polestar owners are going to be pissed.

Google is just soooo bad at names and branding.

At this point in time I have no idea what the current TV platform is called (google TV, android TV, chrome TV), and to be honest I don't really care since I've lost interest in trying to follow...

I still do not understand that Google announcement.

I use Google Auto on my car display. It starts when I connect the phone with a USB cable.

At the same time, I see on the phone that an app as started. Isn't this Google Auto? In other words, could I uninstall today the Google Auto app and still project on my car display?

I'd love to be able to do that. And be able to start Maps and search, instead of saying Maps can't run while Android Auto runs.

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