Google to shut down Google One VPN on June 20
zdnet.com
zdnet.com
Tom Scott said it better than I could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVDQEoe6ZWY
A refresher: Google runs world's largest public DNS resolver, builds a browser used by 3b+, and an OS by 2b+. If they need to harvest data, they most certainly don't need a VPN (and may be that's why they killed it).
Edit: As someone else has stated it's good that they try things and try different products and I think it's good that they shutdown products that they are not good at running
Even on googles scale that is a decent side hustle.
That's what CoPilot Recall is all about -- we'll just take screenshots every 5 seconds.
IMHO understandable that they didn't want to deal with the Windows mess.
There's definitely free/OS ways to run a VPN, but it definitely a clunky process with limited locations available.
Of course, Apple only offers like a couple of subscriptions while Google has dozens of them, only some of which are united into that one subscription to rule them all.
Google purposely choosing to very specifically screw over its users like that should be enough for a lot of people (once they know) to avoid buying a Pixel. :)
https://www.androidauthority.com/google-keeps-phones-with-no...
I guess time will tell. :)
Most likely VPN will not applies on tethering.
And if you unlock your phone Google wont allow you to use VPN.
So it's not sounds like a good plan.
For example[1]:
> However, if he controls the responsible DHCP server, he can simply command end devices to send their data past the VPN. To do this, it sends the DHCP option 121 with a corresponding route –, for example, to redirect all DNS queries. The VPN's own encryption is omitted, but the VPN connection is maintained so that the user is unaware of the attack.
> Leviathan Security has reproduced the problem with Windows, Linux, iOS and MacOS – but the attack does not work with Android because Android ignores the DHCP option 121.
[1] https://www.heise.de/en/news/Tunnelvision-Attackers-can-bypa...
It was a disaster when travelling, it was very hard to get it to work with hotel wifi or if there was a captive portal. There are different country lists for "You have access to the VPN service" and "You have access to the VPN service when travelling".
The service does not work in China. The service simply does not work in the majority of cases where it might be needed.
Google has made no effort to improve this service in several years, for their paying customers, on their mobile OS.
* AI features introduced on special plan so f you if paid for yearly 2TB plan.
* Features like VPN being removed at will.
It's not like their VPN was all that useful due to absolutely unreliability, but if it was working properly I would certainly find some use for it.
This product will be deprecated and shutdown in the future if it doesn't consistently bring in $X billion within $Y quarters and within $Z operating cost. Kindly use at your own risk.https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/protections/ip...
i always glad companies, people are willing to try, test, risk, create, things because thats how progression and innovation works. the more the merrier, the crazier the better.
ill never criticize people/companies/ceos that are willing to try/create new things but it seems like people are the opposite and are very quick to do so. but i get it.
I'm glad companies create such useful tools. I'm just saying the prospect of continuation seems to be contingent on whether it's profitable (at least in the long run). Hopefully, Google doesn't take that approach with some of its products is all I'm saying.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but in my experience few are thinking just about their CV or promotions, and most product changes are driven (at least publicly, within the company) by a desire to improve offerings for users.
The key is: "publicly, within the company"
"We need to spend some time fixing technical debt for the last product feature we rushed to market, as it generates too many support tickets."
versus
"We delivered dark mode. Shiny!"
This was a product that was meant to drive some KPI metric of some large organization, and it was launched with the full intention to drive it for years. Then when it wasn't meeting some target, instead of steering the ship in the right direction, the directors or VPs who funded the effort likely got bored and moved on to the next KPI.
I'm sure a lot of folks at the bottom worked very hard on it and were proud of it and definitely deserved the praise on their performance reviews. However, once it lost its director or VP support, there would have been no way to keep it running.
If you have no insight on Google internals, you really have nothing to reply to my question (as other's responses to your comment show).
“We’re shutting down Gmail, here’s an export of your inbox. We promise to forward your email for 5 years.”
More like 18 months.
Messenger is native at Facebook. It's born on Facebook.com as a floating non-permanent window that only works when the other person is online. Wikipedia seems to confirm this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenger_(software)#History
I agree on the Portal, it's perfect to call my grandma. I dread the day it will stop working because the alternative is an iPad that is worse in nearly every way (as a tabletop VC device for grandma)
The only thing you can do as a company is to react and sometimes exploit market dynamics.
That’s what Meta did with Threads. You have to give em credit for that.
I worked on Portal and it came down to:
1. Cambridge Analytica. It is difficult to persuade people - and the media - you can be trusted to put a camera in their homes while you’re fighting a massive privacy scandal.
2. A leadership coup resulted in the project moving under Reality Labs, which never really wanted to be in the smart device business in the first place.
There were a bunch of other issues, but these two basically doomed the project from the start, which is a shame as it was well received by those who actually bought it.
So, at this point I think the site owner can go the extra mile and create a bot that keeps track of HN or reddit topics for related headlines and post the running count along with a summary of popular products that Google axed and may be some trivia too.
"Google Business Messages in Maps and Search shutting down" - https://9to5google.com/2024/05/28/google-business-messages-s...
That said, that's what they get for doing this kind of thing I guess.
[1] https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/networking/eliminatin...
On one hand, I appreciate that they try all sorts of things and seem to have almost no hesitation with launching some things which are quirky or of niche usefulness.
On the other hand, the only things that have ever survived are Docs, GCP, and tenuously, Voice. I don't mind them launching and shutting down a lot of products, but it's really stunning just how few things actually make it.
which echoes my experience in the music industry, and what I've seen of VCs in tech, and small businesses in my town.
very, very, few things are successful, and even fewer of those are successful at the kind of scale that Google needs to ensure that they don't become a sprawling mess of millions of employees. they need very high margin high value products at high scale, supported by the fewest possible engineers (even if that number is still thousands or tens of thousands of engineers)... and the truth is, for that business model, very few things are possible, and that the understanding of what those things are is going to be the result of trial and error.
I'm almost completely de-Googled now, so these announcements affect me less and less as time passes, but I do understand why they do this, and it does make business sense
What's odd about One is it seems such a small thing for them to do given all the things they already do. They already have a global network, so VPN makes sense. They already have a lot of cloud storage, and know how to run cloudy things. They already have the phones to put it on.
This is fair, I shouldn't have omitted them. They do level the ratio of launches to shutdowns a bit. They slipped my mind because I personally never use of think of them, but they're definitely there.
There can be legal distinctions with LLC's and whatnot, but for the most part these are all google products.
I think it's because of trust - I'm nervous about the fact it's linked to my Google account. Using a separate provider with a virtual credit card and an Apple email relay would be my choice.
163 services killed by Microsoft. But they still didn't manage to kill Internet Explorer.
I don't know why Google gets the hate for killing things.