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Comment by cj | Hacker News Reader

> Today we’re making Duet AI for Google Workspace generally available

The "generally available" bit doesn't sound accurate. To activate it, you need to submit a "Request a trial" form.

For every other Google Workspace feature in GA, billing, subscriptions, and feature settings is available self-serve in Google Workspace Admin.

This is the first "generally available" feature I've seen that's still hidden behind a "request access" form after being called "generally available".

I'm pretty surprised that Google is breaking their own use of the "GA" terminology. General Availability has a pretty specific meaning to anyone who manages Google Workspace for a company, and the way they're rolling out Duet is not how they typically roll out new features.

Which leaves me wondering if this is more of a fluff piece. Has anyone actually gotten access to Duet yet?

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I really wonder if this is just a reaction to the Enterprise ChatGPT announcement. TBH, I was excited when I saw this headline. But to your point, has anything actually changed? Duet has been invite-only for a while now, and another user in the comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37309367) said they requested access in April and still can't get in.

Is Google's product org just a total dumpster fire? How can you put out a blog post saying a previously invite-only product is GA, but then have the product still be invite only?

(original commenter) I submitted the Request Trial form from a Google Workspace admin account, and a couple hours later got another email to download a Duet Handbook (20 page PDF), which required submitting contact info again. The bottom of the handbook just had "Contact sales for access"... with a link to a sales contact form.

Edit: our org also submitted the google form multiple months ago requesting beta access. My (un)educated guess is a lot of what's in this blog post isn't production ready and they're handpicking accounts to onboard for specific features.

I would be pretty amazed if they launched everything in that blog post in the near future.

> Which leaves me wondering if this is more of a fluff piece

I feel like everything is becoming a fluff piece these days. Hypebeasts for everything seems to be the trend.

We also created a machine that knows how to create fluff pieces automatically

> This is the first "generally available" feature I've seen that's still hidden behind a "request access" form after being called "generally available".

That seems maybe excessively nitpicky? You need to "request access" to ChatGPT too... Were you denied or ignored when you tried?

I called it out because Google Workspaces follows a very formal process for rolling out features, including a roll out schedule, etc... which are normally sent to Google Workspace Admins. "General availability" has a specific meaning to Workspace admins in terms of adopting new functionality, and Duet isn't following the typical release/roll out process.

Maybe we'll be surprised and they'll email the traditional feature roll out email to Workspace admins later this week

I'll say lots of things at Google Workspaces are behind a whole complex process.

At my last company I was our Workspace admin. It took 9 months and cycling through three different sales teams to get someone to sell me archive licenses (so we didn't have to pay full rate for former employees or delete everything) even though we were already paying for Vault.

Never underestimate when a sales team gets in between users and business.

I agree it's odd. They've been showing it off at most of the sessions at the current NEXT conference, and we've requested but not yet gotten access to it.

When you have billions of users, nothing is simple

When the CFO runs the company and the CEO is a figurehead with zero vision or ability to corral a group of infighting SVPs, nothing is simple.

Meta launched Threads in like a week, Microsoft dropped new Bing out of nowhere. Both companies support billions of users.

What even is Threads? My phone says it's made by Threads Group Inc and has only 1 million users.

Metas Twitter clone.

Somebody is preparing their promo packet and needed to hit an OKR. Launching product on time is harder than just changing the meaning of “General Availability”.

Google is a wholly political organization now, everything can be explained by internal power plays. Don’t look for another source of logic.

As a Xoogler that once worked in Cloud, I was going to reply with the same comments.

Changing the definitions of "GA" and "Beta" etc in the context of GCP is a pretty big deal, and I am guessing some product manager, and others, are playing this game to to be able to claim that they launched this to "GA" for Promo/OKRs/etc.

Now let's see if they have anything to say about their deprecation policy...

Same, I was at the level I was directly working with Directors and indirectly with VPs.

I literally had projects blocked because I didn’t provide a promo vision for the Directors to make VP if they funded me. This is business critical shit, my direct supervisor literally told me this. They were angry I didn’t devote any time to showing the promo opportunities. No complaint with any part of my justification beyond that.

Business case was open and shut, low technical requirements, minimal overhead and low cost. All they wanted to know was how to make VP, that’s it.

So yeah, I quit.

(Also to the down-voters who likely work at Google, if you’re not in the room when decisions are made you don’t know how the company works.)

I can't speak about Google at all, but this line: if you’re not in the room when decisions are made you don’t know how the company works

Is great and true, thank you.

Leadership is remarkably good at explaining what are wholly self-serving decisions in corpspeak, which everyone gets a laugh about on memegen, but then they still buy the most outlandish justifications hook-line-and-sinker.

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