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Comment by ecshafer | Hacker News Reader

They also announced Google Streamer, which is just Google Chromecast but more expensive I guess, and also with the Nest technology for smart home stuff, which they also killed iirc.

I have to say, I don't really see this product strategy as being good, or working. Google's product is just a mess, they are nearing Microsoft levels of incoherence. When you compare Google with Apple, it's such a night and day experience.

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Apple makes fancy five-course dinners for the wealthy. Google throws half-cooked ramen at the wall for the masses. It's not terrible, but you have to finish eating it before it falls off. Your favorite flavor won't be there next time, and they might be serving burritos instead, but at least your loyalty card still works.

$99 (the new hotness) is a LOT of burritos, vs a $30 chromecast (the old busted).

I feel like I am the product.

I agree with your second paragraph for a lot of reasons and product lines of theirs. But -- I decided a while ago to bite the bullet and go whole hog on using Google everything for my personal life (for better or worse).

The decision was either to avoid them entirely or resign and buy into the ecosystem. I have a Pixel, my home uses Nest, I use their cloud storage personally, their AI, etc.

FWIW it is a better experience than using only a few of their products in isolation. At what cost, we will find out. But I imagine Google Streamer will be useful for people like me, the user group Google is presumably trying to expand.

The problem is that Google makes it hard to go all-in on their products even when you want to.

I was an early user for Google Apps for Your Domain, which was a free version of what is now Google Workspace that you could use with custom domains. I signed up for Google Play Music with that account.

Then they introduced Google Family, with app sharing and a family plan for Google Play Music, but you couldn't use Google Workspace accounts as part of a family plan. So I went back to using a regular Gmail account, manually moving my playlists for Google Play Music, and repurchasing the handful of apps I wanted to be able to share with my kids.

Google bought Fitbit, and we got some Fitbit Ace watches for our kids. Then Google decided that Fitbit accounts needed to be converted to Google accounts, but the kids can't use their watches with their Android tablets anymore, because the Fitbit app won't let you log in to use your Ace (the kid watch) with a child account from a Google family. The watch designed for kids doesn't work with the account management designed for kids. My wife's Fitbit died and she was ready to buy the newer version of it, except that one doesn't work with the Fitbit app store because (presumably) they want people to buy the more expensive Pixel watches and use that completely separate app library.

Somewhere in there I had to switch my playlists from Google Play Music to YouTube Music. They also decided to start charging for the free Google Workspace plans, eventually relenting only if you solemnly promised it was only for personal use.

I'm the kind of person who should be a loyal Google customer, but I've been burned enough that my immediate response to a new Google product is to wonder what I would do if it suddenly disappeared.

Yup - G's aggressive at transitioning out enjoyable functionality to whatever their new hotness, their next direction, is that they want to push.

I feel much more like The Product is the Consumer with G, vs Apple.

To me Apple product- / business-approach seems torn between capturing the audience with delight vs high prices to achieve profit.

> But I imagine Google Streamer will be useful for people like me, the user group Google is presumably trying to expand.

Until, in a few years, there is another such blogpost, and it goes to the Google office in the sky.

Really, Google seems like possibly the worst ecosystem to go all in on, in that bits of it keep unexpectedly vanishing.

Yeah, I'd emphasize this is for personal stuff only (doubt I'd build a startup on top of Flutter tomorrow).

It may be the product of how boring my personal digital requirements are but I haven't been burned yet by their many abandonments. I really only use pretty core services (Gmail/ Drive/Calendar, ChromeOS/Android/Pixel Watch, Google TV) that I don't anticipate going anywhere soon.

The biggest downside so far is overcoming the ethical dilemma of such a resignation. I'd prefer to use what's best in every case independently, but the value I put on convenience grows every year.

FWIW I was all in on Google years ago. But as features and products kept vanishing or degrading and being replaced with ad driven crap, it eventually drove me to swear off all Google products. The only one I still use is Workspace.

While I'm not all-in on the ecosystem, I'm pretty far. It's still terrible.

I still can't "cast" YouTube audio to my Google Home Mini unless I use the Home Mini in Bluetooth mode (I have more reliable Bluetooth speakers for that) even as a YouTube Premium user.

My Nest devices are stuck in limbo between the Google Home and Nest apps; it's been like this for years.

Integrating new Google devices into Google Home tends to fail without helpful troubleshooting a few times before they succeed.

I refuse to upgrade my Nest Thermostat 1, even though it doesn't support needed features like the temperature sensors. I've also had to turn off all the learning because it decides I'm not home, and doesn't infer that I am home from my Google Wifi hubs.

> I still can't "cast" YouTube audio to my Google Home Mini unless I use the Home Mini in Bluetooth mode (I have more reliable Bluetooth speakers for that) even as a YouTube Premium user

YouTube Music casts toy Google Home Mini. Are you trying to watch YouTube on your phone but have the audio come out the speakers?

Yes, I prefer YouTube and use it for background audio when I'm not listening to podcasts. YouTube Music is a product trying to kludge way too much into a single app to be good at any one thing. It's an okay music player, decent podcast tool, and back YouTube secondary/audio only augmentation.

> At what cost, we will find out.

We already know. Your privacy.

I wouldn't do that with a company that could at any moment being forced split into pieces for being a monopoly.

How do you reason about the privacy drawbacks on going full Google?

I mean, it is quite a leap to ungoogle totally, but having a Nest listening 24/7? And everything else?

Aren't you worried Google will just lock you out someday?

> The decision was either to avoid them entirely or resign and buy into the ecosystem.

An easy choice that you somehow managed to get wrong?

Criticality without reasoning ...

It has Android TV, direct competitor to Apple TV.

Ah, yes, Microsoft - the second largest company in the world - with a brand itself worth more than all but a handful of companies - is incoherent.

And Google, too.

Microsoft's products are so incoherent they have certifications for navigating their offerings and pay. I don't think their consumer facing stuff is poorly thoguht out, but their business facing stuff is full of weird and changing names, discontinued and merged products.

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