Hacker News Reader

Comment by matai_kolila | Hacker News Reader

It's a super fun thing to be the first person to comment about #1 on literally everything Google does, but it's silly and wrong to think that's a valid criticism.

For every product Google kills, it's launched dozens of wildly successful products you've been taking for granted for over a decade in some cases: Gmail, search, Drive, Photos, Chromecast, Chrome, Books, Flights, Scholar, AdSense, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Keep, Translate, Maps...

Google can and does support dozens of good products, and pretending otherwise is getting tiresome. If your best criticism is, "I dunno if Google will support this long term" that, to me, means you couldn't come up with anything better to say, which means it's a pretty damn cool product.

View on HN

> it's silly and wrong to think that's a valid criticism

Knocks it out of consideration for me. Deploying these things zaps energy. I trust a start-up with that investment more than Google. Sure, with an SLA, I’d have assurances. But for the “let’s throw a couple in some offices and home offices and see if it works” threshold, it seems like a time waste.

> For every product Google kills, it's launched dozens of wildly successful products you've been taking for granted for over a decade in some cases: Gmail, search, Drive, Photos, Chromecast, Chrome, Books, Flights, Scholar, AdSense, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Keep, Translate, Maps...

More like for every 10 products they kill they maybe let one live... Have you not seen killed by google ?

> Google can and does support dozens of good products, and pretending otherwise is getting tiresome. If your best criticism is, "I dunno if Google will support this long term" that, to me, means you couldn't come up with anything better to say, which means it's a pretty damn cool product.

It's pretty fucking important to know that if you're going to splurge a bunch of money to put it in your offices. You're just being ignorant at that point.

> It's pretty fucking important to know that if you're going to splurge a bunch of money to put it in your offices. You're just being ignorant at that point.

Companies don’t kill things that have support contracts and enterprise agreements.

Look at GSuite. What’s been killed?

Fuck even apple won’t kill the orphaned MacBook Pro with touchbar for support contract reasons.

Back when I used gsuite at work they broke the old chat program. A few years later they obfuscated the hell out of the "accept/comment on calendar invite" flow.

Also, they are in the process of discontining the free tier.

Most damningly for me, they screwed up and eventually killed grand central (voip, call forwarding, voicemail) post acquisition.

> Have you not seen killed by google ?

Yes, we've all seen it. Honestly can we just discuss the tech for once instead of making the same comment 30 times on every Google thread?

This sort of video streaming is reminiscent of the "tele-human" teleconferencing in Silicon Valley [1]. Hopefully it works better. It would be timed well as so many companies are looking at working from home right now. Though as with anything with "Project" in the name, I wouldn't expect any actual product for at least five years, and probably more.

Salesforce makes sense as a partner. They have multiple global offices and could stress test things beyond internal dogfooding.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YOEEpWAXgU

I’m not sure tech for tech’s sake is a good value proposition. If they were to kill this off in the year what impact did it have on the world?

Likely very little. But wouldn't that be true of any technology? That doesn't seem like a good metric for determining how much potential impact a technology actually has.

I do agree about technology for technology's sake, but even in cases where the application is wrong, technologies are often repurposed. Viagra was created to treat heart disease.

For the tech to succeed they need to sell to enterprises, scale manufacturing, and be making the right bet on the future of work

In my opinion google has the wrong instincts on all 3.

This is not really a tool for hybrid work (it’s too expensive to deploy in homes) it’s a tool for communicating between offices.

Google is betting on everyone being back in the office at some point.

Let's have a look the release dates of your list of surviving products, shall we?

Gmail: 2004; Search: 1998; Drive: 2012; Photos: 2015; Chromecast: 2013; Chrome: 2008; Books: 2004; Flights: 2011; Scholar: 2004; AdSense: 2003; Calendar: 2006; Docs: 2006; Sheets: 2006; Keep: 2013; Translate: 2006; Maps: 2005

What do those all have in common? The most recent one is 7 years ago, and the others are older still. What else happened 7 years ago? Sundar became CEO. Google has not released a single successful product since he started -- telling, isn't it?

> Have you not seen killed by google ?

How could one not see it, when it's spammed multiple times in any Google product announcement thread on HN? But the thing is, that site doesn't actually tell you much for two reasons.

First, the list is just crap. Here's an exercise: pick 10 random items from that list. Had you ever heard of that product, do you think it had any users? Is "killed by google"'s categorization of something having been discontinued actually legit? Was the thing they're claiming as a product even one in the first place?

Second, it doesn't actually tell us whether this level of discontinued things is actually uncommon. Do the same exercise with the same inclusion criteria on the peer companies like Amazon and Microsoft, and I bet the lists will be comparable.

thank you. it's the definition of a middlebrow dismissal

Reply on news.ycombinator.com