Making fun of their killed products is a favorite HN past time, but what would you have them do? Just sit back and not try to make new things? Or keep zombie projects alive, but unmaintained just because a few of us find it really helpful?
Those are the projects I find the saddest. The ones that would have been a good product for a smaller company (or was a smaller company that was acquired), but that isn’t profitable enough at “Google scale” to keep throwing money at.
I get it. Google kills a lot of products that early adopters like. Google Reader was painful to lose at the time. But how many RSS feeds do you now follow?
Let’s just evaluate this new project on its own merits. Do you find it helpful or not — without thinking too much about Googles track record. If this way of using AI is helpful (and I’m very hopeful), then either Google will keep it, or this is the POC a small startup will use to keep something like this around. If it fails, then at least we’ll all have learned something.
I dunno....maybe SUPPORT THE DAMNED PRODUCT?
As much crap as microsoft gets, they know how to support a product.
Spin it off? Open-source it? so many other options.....
Do something to return the investment that the users have made in the product (after all, a product alone has no value without its actual users).
Anything but simply killing it off.
They can gate the creation of new product and require more robust market and user research to ensure they're not releasing something that doesn't have a chance of hitting whatever their targets are, or would require more budget than willing to invest.
They don't just kill products, they often leave them painfully unfinished and unsupported. Support forums are complete ghost towns.
Did you know the "new" Apps Script editor doesn't have a version history or way to revert? Too bad, the old one was sunset. Google would tell you to pound sand, but there's no one there to listen.
One example in an absolute ocean of examples.
They make so much money on ads they just don't care.
I've been a happy Feedly[1] user for many years since that dark day, and appear to be currently pulling nearly 70 feeds.
[1]: https://feedly.com