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Comment by etempleton | Hacker News Reader

A lot of companies, Google included, seem to lack focus and vision. Google is doing a million things and seems half committed to most of them. How many products and services have Google launched, neglected, and then killed in short time?

Look at Stadia. What was that? Why even try if you aren’t going to follow through.

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It feels like big tech companies enforce a vicious cycle on the software landscape.

Step 0: Someone has a good idea and builds a solid product around it.

Step 1: BigCo sees the new growth budding out of the software landscape.

Step 2a: BigCo buys the new property, refuses to take risks with their new acquisition, and eventually shutters it when it stops printing money.

Step 2b: BigCo sues the new entrant into the ground.

Step 2c: BigCo launches a competitor/fork, gains market share by operating it at a loss, then shutters it when it fails to turn a profit.

Step 3: Innovation is stifled, start over.

Seen it so many times as a customer of startups. “This is an awesome SaaS!”

Then they sell it to BigCo, and less than a year later it is at best loosely integrated or worse sunset. Innovation and this form of capitalism is not a good match if we value innovation as a society.

Probably that is also why we read so many comments saying “We did this 20 years ago with…” here when new tech is released. A long repeating cycle where only scraps of innovation is kept.

I wonder if the root of the issue is profit expectations. Their main business, Google search, makes mad cash. Why would Google keep something around that makes only a tiny fraction of what their main business does?

Why try new things at all? Because they realize that they need to diversify and try to find something that can bring in money to rival their main business in case their main business goes away.

I don't agree with this cycle, by the way. How can something make the same amount of money as google search if they don't put the same sort of resources into promotion and give it time to grow? But, I don't have an MBA.

I dunno about that. Once upon time, after search but before the modern era, they built (or bought and then integrated) very useful things like Android or Maps or Docs or Gmail. But they still took risks back then.

> very useful things like Android or Maps or Docs or Gmail

Which have become an overengineered mess with stagnating core features and a trickle of fresh, ad related nuisances.

True :( Especially Maps

I agree. Part of the conversation around Stadia before launch was, “how long until they kill it.” That is their reputation as a company.

> I wonder if the root of the issue is profit expectations.

When I was a youngster I was taught that capitalism promoted hard work and innovation, but it seems like that's only true during a growth phase. Once you've got a cash cow there is no reason to innovate, once you've sold or licensed a patent you can cruise on royalties, and if some upstart threatens you then sue, slander, or buy them. Beyond a certain tipping point the need for profit hampers if not outright suppresses innovation.

because there is only so much you can grow the main cash cow. would you rather have a company that makes 1 billion a year on 90% profit margin, or a company that makes 2 billion a year on 60% profit margin but is diversified?

Stadia has not been cancelled. It's a rumor. It has traction only because Google has cancelled too many products. Go read the HN thread on it, people there were calling it poorly sourced.

At this point I'll be shocked if Stadia isn't cancelled, that's just what Google does and their customers know it by now. It's become a self fulfilling prophecy.

There was a discussion about this just yesterday or so (sorry, on mobile, hard to find).

But I think a while ago they already pivoted to selling/renting the underlying tech to other businesses instead of trying to be a game marketplace. What's left of consumer Stadia is just dying day by day... not that it was ever particularly healthy.

Honestly, it's questionable whether Stadia was ever alive to begin with. It's been neglected ever since inception.

Friend of a friend story: one of the POs left days after launch, because they knew it would never replace consoles/desktops. It's really struggled to find footing since.

Personal theory: Stadia is a precursor to Rendering as a Service for AR/VR. It will be a long time before we can render a high-quality content for stereoscopic vision with a mobile device. But if you can solve the streaming problem, you can just offload it to the cloud. Issue is that any tracking lag that causes motionsickness now will just be magnified.

It's tempting to think there was some grand plan for Stadia, but more likely it was just another failed copycat like Google Plus. Game streaming tech was around before Stadia, and Nvidia is doing it much better now. I don't see how Google could ever compete directly with that unless they get into the GPU business themselves.

It has not been cancelled, but it is not being supported. It might as well be dead. My understanding is they are pivoting to white label services, but I am not sure if that is more than conjecture.

Maybe Google should just start building cemeteries. They're really good at that.

https://killedbygoogle.com/

Also failing to provide reasonable customer support for their successful projects worsens my trust in future projects.

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