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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

So some speculation (since we on the outside can never be sure, and when I worked at Google it was always interesting to see the difference between what was reported vs the reality inside the company.)

I've always felt that consumer products were going to be really hard for Google to pull off. It reminded me of Intel trying to make an LED wristwatch in the early 80's. Too much consumer 'hands on', too much industrial design. Neither of which Google are strengths.

I expect glass is dead, all the money they might have invested in making it real they spent on Magic Leap, and now its up to the Leap guys to be the 'visual interface to Google.' The small android experience will fold into the IoT part of Google (Nest) and that will be that.

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One of the most stinging criticisms I've heard of Google is that they just don't get products. They can, in some cases, do services, but the idea that something ever reaches a finished state in which everything is complete doesn't seem to be part of their DNA.

It's as if they are an eventually consistent system that is constantly moving towards a state of consistency that they never completely reach.

It's as if they are an eventually consistent system that is constantly moving towards a state of consistency that they never completely reach.

They have some products which were nearly perfect. For instance, the Chromecast is more or less finished. It's not intended to be a game console or something to have apps in on a television. It's an extremely cheap device that allows you to stream a tab or from apps. That vision is well-executed, because it is cheap and works well for streaming. Of course, some people will have gripes about the Chromecast, but the fact that a device that looked incredibly boring at the start is now a pretty big success indicates that for many people it's exactly the product that they want.

More ecosystem would be nice although, with an Android tablet, I gather that doesn't matter any much as you can cast the screen in any case. In fact, I'm seriously tempted to pick up an inexpensive Android tablet just for that purpose.

But I agree that Chromecast gets things just right. I want the ability to "throw" an image or video from my PC, tablet, or phone to my big dumb screen on the wall--whatever proprietary smarts the TV manufacturer is trying to make me interact with--and that's exactly what Chromecast does.

Chromecast is pretty shitty. It often lags und quality is not great. The first time I saw it in action, it was pretty embarrassing for a Google manager who tried to demo something with it. I replaced mine with an Amazon Fire TV.

The chromecast thing is great. It's an ugly little widget that comes in an overly-fancy box and does what it's supposed to.

However, it's terribly advertised, and it still annoyingly says "beta" all over stuff. I feel like I bought it out of some kind of anonymised side-door at the back of the warehouse.

Due to the fact that the chromecast requires an always-on internet connection it's far from finished and entirely useless in many cases.

I think you've confused "finished" with "what Mithaldu wants".

"Mithaldu and everyone in his cicles of friends, relatives and work acquaintances."

Maybe it's different where you are, but where i live the chromecast is literally useless due to the restriction and nobody has one.

I have to agree with this. Tried taking the Chromecast with me on holiday. At a base level, the Chromecast requires constant connection to an external Wi-Fi router. So even if you want to stream content that you have LOCALLY on your device, you can't, not without a lot of messing around.

Why the Chromecast has the ability to run it's own Wi-Fi network to only connect to another is a design decision I don't understand. The other parts of it are great, but it's a shame that for such a small and portable device, it's such a pain in the ass to use away from home.

While there's other stuff you can do with a Chromecast, and it would make sense to make it usable locally for screen mirroring, the main selling point is internet streaming, which isn't limited by the requirement for an internet connection.

I can certainly see how for some people it's not useful, but its of people do have reliable internet access where they'd want to use it and aren't limited by that requirement.

Ya, it's so useless it's one of the best selling gadgets on Amazon! Not saying you're lying, but to rule something out as "useless" just because it doesn't work for you (and the closure of your acquaintances) just makes you look stupid!

A lot of people live in places where a telescope is literally useless (for astronomical purposes, anyway). Does that make it a worthless product?

False analogy. First, the parent didn't state that it was, in ask scenarios, a useless product. S/he said out was useless where s/he lives due to a design decision. Secondly, we can't control the atmosphere, but Google can certainly control the design of the Chromecast.

> They can, in some cases, do services, but the idea that something ever reaches a finished state in which everything is complete doesn't seem to be part of their DNA.

I know what you mean, but I'd actually say the opposite:

Google has a history of dumping a bunch of resources into a first release. Which may be quite good (Google Books), barely a proof of concept (Wave), somewhere in between (Hangouts), or bizarro what (Plus). And then withdrawing all resources, never iterating on it again, never delivering any major improvements.

In fact, this, it seems, is what Glass-purchasers felt for the past year and a half -- So, this is a good first draft, but when's it gonna get better? Answer: Never.

Presumably the projects which start looking like they will make money for Google receive further investment.

In my experience, Books, Hangouts and Plus have all had some significant improvements made to them since they've been launched?

You know, it used to be part of every interview where I was asked very seriously how much experience I had with the entire software development lifecycle. I didn't get it at the time, but there's really different skills involved in the different phases of any kind of project: the idea, prototyping, mid-stream development, wrapping up, shipping and then all the work to do to let people know that thing you just made is now available.

If people think SDLC is hard, what about traditional hardware product lifecycles?

I think it's interesting that Google, being built around continuously moving, never-really-finished, web products, has tried to move into really-has-be-finished-to-ship hardware...and I think it's been hard for Google to do, it's just not in their blood.

Occasionally something comes out, the Chromecast, or early 1st round versions of something. But then they seem to get lost in the weeds, not to mention weird cancellations of products right before they're ready to ship.

It kind of reminds me of what I've been reading about what went on inside of Atari during the boom days.

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