Wether it lasts or not, this surely has to be an issue for Google innovations going forward? If the perception is that any new thing will die, especially not-consumer-scale things, then how do they build traction?
This is presumably a core feature of Google Cloud, and if you’re already using their other cloud products, I can’t imagine being too worried about features randomly going away.
(Disclaimer: While I work for Let’s Encrypt, this is my own opinion and not necessarily that of my employers)
And that's before we take customer service into the equation.
Play Music died after 9 years, and that even featured paid souscriptions...the logic of "paid for and around" doesnt seem to be a solid argument, esp for a company making money primarily off of data - as of 2021 their cloud business is only 5% of their revenue, ~74% of their revenue is ad based the rest is devices (nest, phones), and Youtube.
I think its pretty reasonable to be concerned about the longevity of this product - maybe we will be wrong, but.
I get your beef with google service availability longterm and the google list of killed products, but this is an instance of a service which in true Internet form "routes around damage"
This isn't the killer "what if google stop" problem area. ACME based certification doesn't care: find another TA, and move on with your life.
mainly I suspect this is to pacify people inside GKE who don't like calling outside of the protected space to get certificates to exist.
Assuming there is a reason to switch, the switch back is not without cost. Ergo, either way, I'm not using this. Then again I don't use GCP for the same reason.
My bigger point is that logical or not, my perception appears to be common. And that may hurt Google's ability to get traction with unique services in the future.
No one cares about Google's CA, but perhaps this perception issue is a real problem?
What's fascinating to me is the apparent irrationality, from people who otherwise tend to pride themselves on being rational.
I can understand people saying they'll never deal with Google again because they killed their favorite free product or whatever. That's fair. But the attempt to justify that position as some sort of rational risk calculation, taking the actual facts of the matter into account, is misguided.
In some cases this is due to a lack of info and disinterest in correcting that, but many other cases just seem to be emotion masquerading as a thought process.
And I would suggest that if they'd just killed reader, then OK, stuff like that happens. But Google has killed a Lot of things. Probably for good reason. But they get a reputation for being "flighty" when it comes to new things.
Sure it's emotional, but that reputation comes into my thinking when I make product choices. I'll use HERE maps over Google maps etc. And I'm not terribly inclined to make their stuff part of my critical work flow.
So sure I'll Google search and YouTube all day long. But I'll use AWS or Azure over GCP. 90% because I can get someone on the phone. 9% because I wonder when Google will decide to kill GCP. And 1% because I don't trust the Google AI not ti just terminate my account with no recourse.
(I feel like Google just doesn't understand branding. I remember when they launched the Pixel C after the Chromebook Pixel, and it ran Android instead of ChromeOS. What was once a Chrome brand became an Android brand. I guess because Chrome was doing pretty well at the time, and Android just reminded people of slow phones that ran out of battery instantly. Sigh!)
not "(Google Cloud) Print"
https://twitter.com/YoungbloodJoe/status/1504107839262011403
If that’s true, Google’s products aren’t subject to cancelation in the way that any given web service is.
In any case, given their ethical bankruptcy, I wouldn’t use anything from them given the choice.
My point is though that while you say "most don't have that extreme a position", I'm not sure what % it is. And does that perception, that it exists at all, hinder them from future rollout?