Google Is Shutting Down Google Helpouts, Its Expert Video Chat Service | Hacker News Reader

Google Is Shutting Down Google Helpouts, Its Expert Video Chat Service

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148 pointskshatrea88 comments

Too bad; I've enjoyed running my free CS/programming Helpout [1].

Besides the decline in user growth that Google mentions, here are the major problems I saw while using it:

* hosting a free Helpout meant dealing with constant no-shows [2]. I started charging $1/hour and then refunding it to folks who showed up.

* attendees of free Helpouts were rarely prepared

* the scheduling system was very limited (especially compared to Google Calendar)

That said, when everything worked, it was an amazing experience.

[1] https://helpouts.google.com/103350848301234480355/ls/a344f06...

[2] https://simon.codes/2013/11/07/google-helpouts-first-impress...

How are you gonna do it now? I have a friend who I help but I really don't have time.

Also, why did you do it for free? I've found when I help somebody for 10 mins or so it usually gets me in the mood of programming my own stuff.

> How are you gonna do it now?

I'm not sure.

Ideally I'd have a site where I can put my email and encourage folks to write me. This has worked better than video chat for me, since:

1) folks rubber duck [1] themselves while writing, so they ask better questions.

2) it's asynchronous, so we don't have to find a matching slot in our schedules (and don't commit to an amount of time beforehand)

I've redirected all my Helpouts schedule requests to email recently and it's worked well.

> Also, why did you do it for free?

I just never considered charging. I don't think I could do so and feel good about it with the amount of free help I've received (irc, SO, hacker school, college...).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

* hosting a free Helpout meant dealing with constant no-shows [2]. I started charging $1/hour and then refunding it to folks who showed up.

You've solved the MOOC attendance problem, with this.

It's a pretty classic strategy, relatives of mine have utilized it with tenants that had problems paying rent on time.

"Your rent is now $800 instead of $600, but if you pay it by the 3rd then we'll refund you $200."

One word: illegal. Sounds like a smart way to incentivize, but those relatives of yours are seriously risking the worst type of landlord-tenant conflict. If the tenant can provide some form of proof of this extortion... it will not have been worth the attempt.

you could try codementor.io they offer a similar service but more suited to cs. Even offer introductory free minutes

As prophesied in the top comment (by user24) right here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6248771

This makes me think of the launch of Google Domains[1]. One of the top comments was "What happens when Google sunsets this product?" which is a great question we should all be asking before investing resources (money or time) into a new Google product. Maybe even more so the ones that are labeled as beta. We should also be skeptical of their customer service, because as many of the comments show[2] users are wary of this too.

I made the choice to use Google Domains last week for a pet project because: 1) Google has been good at letting users get their data out of their system, and they give a long notice of impending sunsets and opportunities to migrate away. 2) Google specifically called out email, phone, and chat support for this new product.

So far I've been very happy and they addressed a few of my particular needs. But I do worry about lock-in or wasted time.

Maybe one of the questions I'd ask upset Helpout users is how much time was spent "wasted" or if any of it was useful. Perhaps Google was trying to help out everyone (make them more skeptical of Google products, learn from their mistakes, etc.) by sunsetting Helpouts! ;)

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7934146 [2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7933870

> This makes me think of the launch of Google Domains[1]. One of the top comments was "What happens when Google sunsets this product?" which is a great question we should all be asking before investing resources (money or time) into a new Google product.

Nothing really special about "Google" here.

Any product from any company runs the risk of (1) the company failing, taking the product with it, or (2) the company canceling the product. The more a company is committed to mitigating (2) by maintaining products that aren't profitable, the greater risk (1) is.

Actually there is something special about Google for that service. It's not their core business.

Unlike other registrars who would typically be happy with being profitable & having typical growth, Google may be unsatisfied with such a result and consider shutting it down. Namecheap will keep their business open even if they have a soft quarter.

Further, a service for domain registration will struggle because it's targeted at an audience with heightened awareness of Google's tendency to put their products & services onto the chopping block. They've created a chicken & egg problem for themselves; they will shutdown their products because they don't get enough traction, and they don't get enough traction because everyone expects them to shutdown.

Eh, startups 'pivot' all the time. Fun fact: Mongo, formerly 10gen, was originally a cloud/web-hosting service. They pivoted to just publish their database, which is cool, but if you were one of the early customers it kind of leaves you high and dry.

Well, not all companies are get-big-quick-fast-and-sell-or-die Silicon Valley VC-funded "startups". Many registrars have been around for years and making decent money doing that and are likely to be around for time to come.

Iron Mountain was a mushroom farm for 20 years, until the mushroom market crashed and the owner needed another use for his abandoned iron mine. Tandy Leather took a brief detour through consumer electronics, purchasing Radio Shack and selling the Tandy computer, before eventually going back to leather.

It took a mushroom market crash to ruin Iron Mountain. Was there a crash in people seeking help with stuff between Google launching & shutting down Helpouts?

The point is that Google didn't need Helpouts, Google Wallet, Google Reader, Google Checkout, etc. They have a core business. If one of those products had been their core business, they likely would have kept going. Each of the products they shutdown is typically profitable to some degree, or could be made profitable. Google shuts them down because they've have too little traction for Google to stay interested, but if they were companies in their own right, they would likely continue.

You're right, so the informed customer is likely to avoid both Google (and other large companies where the product/service isn't the core business) as well as startups.

It's unfortunate for startups, but also a reality. For large businesses, they can mitigate this effect over time by sticking by anything that they launch and seeing it through. Microsoft did that to an extent beyond what anyone expected when it came to Zune, for example. Google has developed a reputation for doing exactly the opposite. In fact, with Google Wallet they're shutting down pretty much the most compelling payments service for digital goods that the web has seen. Why? They never promoted it properly, and as a result web developers generally don't even know it exists.

I guess what I wanted to call attention to that was relevant to Google was:

1) Did users lose anything by trying Helpouts that was special? Besides time, which comes with trying anything new. 2) Google tries really hard to warn users of services shutting down. Google Reader had a bunch of notice. Wave ended up being open sourced and handed off to a different project manager. 3) Google tries hard to avoid vendor lock-in. Take a look at https://www.google.com/settings/takeout or I can use the example of Google+ photo albums that put the download or export button front and center so I can upload them to Flickr if I want.

Now don't think I'm a huge Google advocate blind to their issues. In fact, what I was trying to call out was a healthy amount of skepticism to their product launches based on previous situations and comments around Google.

Google Reader didn't allow export of all the saved blogs they had archived that were no longer live. You had to write your own scraper to get the data out of Reader.

There were copyright issues with that. Don't blame Google for following the laws.

It's not just Google. The whole industry thinks it's just fine to trash user data. http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Category:Rescued_Site...

But Google domains makes a ton of sense while Helpouts make zero sense (for Google to offer).

Yup, my first reaction to Helpouts was that it was silly. Google Domains made a lot more sense to me.

If I had to guess, Helpouts was an attempt to get people to use Hangouts (the video, chat, and collaboration service) more, since it looks like a bunch of time and energy has gone into developing it. They push it for businesses[1] and for teams to video conference[2]. Helpouts was targeted for the other audience --individuals.

Also if I had to guess, Google may be nervous of other chat/video services taking market share, such as Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, etc., and sees Hangouts as Google's foundational approach and push forward.

[1] https://www.google.com/work/apps/business/products/hangouts/ [2] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/chrome...

This is only my perspective, but I had never heard of it before seeing this article. I'd like to consider myself pretty "in-the-know" when it comes to this sort of stuff, so how in the world is this supposed to work when there's been nearly no awareness? This search trend is pretty telling:

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Google%20Helpouts&dat...

My wife wears a Google Helpouts hoodie and I got a ton of freebies when they launched. It's not like Google wasn't trying ... but it always felt like a half-hearted, let's see if this sticks, kind of attempt ... especially on the software side of things. It didn't stick.

Aside from merchandise, what did they do to promote it? Not saying they did nothing, but I have a feeling that Google collectively (on average) underestimates the degree of promotion necessary to make a product or service successful. They're somewhat spoilt by their big hits.

Prophesied the death of a new Google product is becoming this generations equivalent of "First Post". :)

Google should focus!

Google should keep services running despite low growth or low interest!

Google should be all things to all people!

Just throw out the last one. Google should just not launch new stuff. Unless they're serious about it and they're going to keep it.

The problem is that a number of users that would make a dedicated startup quite happy, doesn't interest google - "low growth or low interest" is a rather high bar for google. Google Reader was huge, just not google huge.

EDIT: Why I think this, is because I'm annoyed that all the big companies want one of what all the other big companies have - music locker/streaming service, home automation platform, tv platform, freaking VR goggles. One does it, the rest have to get one too. Then it's forgotten in a couple of years. (Helpouts was part of the Hangouts push, and now that the push is over, it's forgotten.)

They could just start spinning off (into separate companies) or open sourcing the projects they decide to no longer pursue. That would alleviate a lot of the negative PR they get from doing this stuff, I think. Also is the right thing for customers who are invested in the product.

Technically, this is impossible because their build system and shared libraries [0]

Commercially, this is exactly the right thing to do! Then you can only blame customers for not buying shares of the spin-off!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899467

Surely an organization with as much resources and revenue as Google can have their cake and eat it too?

Someone says this about everything that Google launches. When Google does close something, they're right. It's like people who say that the stock market is going to crash.

Haha the funny feels. Too bad you can't reply to old comments; there are a few there worth replying to just to mock Google's commitment. One guy says "You cannot be sure they're going to shut this down soon", another says "Why would they kill helpouts. Helpouts is build upon hangouts and hangouts is here to stay.".

Cause Google. Cause Google.

Why start a company when no one's going to buy your product anyways?

Hilarious, this one didn't even last 18 months, it's almost like they're doing it on purpose.

Its so predictable because of how corporations work. People try to launch big visible projects, everyone high fives, a few people get promoted or a bonus, then everyone leaves to repeat the process. There is no value to support something long term at Random Bigcorp (TM).

> The Helpouts community includes some engaged and loyal contributors, but unfortunately, it hasn't grown at the pace we had expected.

(from helpouts.google.com)

Google feels more and more like a company that suffers from gigantomania (a nice service "hasn't grown at the pace we had expected" - so it should be no less than Google Search?) on the one hand, and inability to bring new products to the market on the other.

I have a theory that there is no such thing as bad idea. Any initial idea, be it seemingly good or bad in the beginning, requires refinement, development and a lot of solid work. If you look at any successful product or service today, the initial idea wouldn't have necessarily be qualified as good. It's a thousand of new derivative and auxiliary ideas that make the original one interesting and eventually also successful.

So according to this theory, if a company shuts down its own products one after another, and screws up others that used to work well - that company is clearly malfunctioning. In case of Google it doesn't seem to be bad engineering, in fact Google can be considered one of the top few companies in the world in terms of technical quality. It seems to be more on the product management side.

Google, you need to change, fast. I have a feeling your countdown timer may have started already.

> If you look at any successful product or service today, the initial idea wouldn't have necessarily be qualified as good.

Confirmation bias. You aren't looking at the 100s of un-successful products and services out there.

I am looking, and many of them seem like good ideas. Others are bad. So what?

> I am looking, and many of them seem like good ideas. Others are bad. So what?

Upthread you said:

> I have a theory that there is no such thing as bad idea.

You seem to have just rejected that theory.

Let me then rephrase my hypothesis (of course technically it can't be a theory): any sufficiently novel initial idea, whether good or bad in our perception at first glance, can be brought to success by amending and developing it.

So, according to your hypothesis, guaranteed success requires only two things: novelty and hard work.

Are you serious?

I am serious about one thing: there is no such thing as bad idea. Any of the Google's discontinued products weren't a failure. It's Google's product management who failed, not the products.

This happens a lot, before using any service by Google I tend to ask myself, twice, "if they shut this down, which they might very well do, what is my backup plan?" Honestly, it's hard to make a good case to rely on them for much outside of their core products.

I did a focus group hangout with a Google staff member many months ago, and under the NDA I signed, and I can't discuss which product it was for. Most importantly, the staff member asked me what's stopping me from using their service over a competitor's service.

I replied, "I know they'll still be supporting/providing the service 1-2 years from now".

How scary is the "Google could easily enter that market" line now-a-days?

In general, nobody should be scared of such an eventuality. If large companies didn't have massive, major handicaps by their very nature, there would be no small companies.

I think in B2C markets, its definitely a fear. Witness how many people use Gmail because its free. But B2B products? I'd have no fear of Google coming into my market. I'd be more worried if it was Amazon, Apple, or Facebook to a lesser extent.

Be fair, I started using Gmail all those years ago because it was awesome. And although it's stagnated and they're about to fuck up the desktop UI by "Materializing" it, it's still pretty good.

Not like you had anything to lose from this closing down.

I offered help with electronics projects and had maybe a dozen sessions. I charged the default $1/minute and really enjoyed it, because I got to hear about all kinds of cool things people were working on, and I got the satisfaction of helping them, and it helped pay for my own projects. I'm kinda bummed they're shutting down.

Me too. I did free math tutoring for a while and it was a such a good feeling when I helped folks understand a previously difficult concept. Had a big problem with random cancelations, which made scheduling really difficult and made me less enthused to Helpout. Still, I'm sad to see it go.

This is the first time I've heard of Google Helpouts

same. never heard of them before

Anyone looking for a alternative should check out http://liveninja.com which is the largest and most refined player in the space.

I'm reluctant to use anything with the word "ninja" in it because it wreaks of immaturity.

The only thing I remember about Google Helpouts was reading liveninja's response to its introduction: http://www.willweinraub.com/dear-google-thanks-for-copying-m... Pretty interesting to back and read now.

Helpouts had tons of advisors for home/kitchen remodeling which I simply don't see at liveninja.

Which is unfortunate - I was thrilled when I found that on helpouts, but now that I'm actually starting a remodel project it's unfortunate that I can't get basic help for relative cheap costs.

Google really needs to do some tying of their services together - not in a Google+ kind of way where it's unwanted, but if, for example, they had helpouts to bolster Google product support and pushed some of that massive interest/traffic into the service, it might have found its mark sooner.

Try http://fountain.com. There are a lot of home / kitchen experts available.

I gave this a spin. The entire setup was pretty buggy for me with 500s frequently being thrown.

I do want something like this, though I would be hesitant to use something this buggy.I also don't really want to tell professionals to meet with me using a product with the word "ninja" in it.

For giving free help calls, I've really enjoyed using SoHelpful: http://sohelpful.me/

Lots of amazing startup advice on there, all for free.

I'm in no way surprised. I thought this was a questionable idea when it debuted and it never struck me as something that could actually grow into something popular.

Part of the issue, I think, is that Google as a company fundamentally does not understand content. (YouTube is the one exception here and even with YouTube, the way the whole YouTube partner program works, the way the ad side is run and other aspects make it clear that they still really don't get content -- they just happen to have a great platform and a few people trying to convince people who make more than them to think outside the algorithm).

It was an interesting idea but marred with poor execution and a dwindling Google+ audience.

Google and Googlers for that matter always want to work on the newest cool thing, maybe something that has been done before. If you're a developer at Google would you rather work on maintaining something like Google helpouts or Google voice? Or would you want to work on the next big thing? I know what I would want on my resume.

The downside is that Google seems to abandon things. I feel like they need to have a better exit strategy since some people really like the products they put out to pasture. I liked how they outsourced Google wave for example.

edits: "maybe something that hasn't been done before"

"How they open sourced Google wave"

The first clue I have to there being a problem is that this is the first time I've heard of Google Helpouts. I use a wide assortment of Google products, but never heard a thing about this one.

What if Google took the "enable" approach, instead of the "content owner" approach:

+ Enable existing expert communities (and developing ones) to add voice and video consultation via libraries and APIs that leverage WebRTC</p>

+ Enable choice of Google ID or other IDs

+ Enable choice of Google Payments or other

+ Enable record and streaming options via YouTube

I know the above doesn't have the same short-term business model upside as Google Helpouts did, but, then again, would Helpouts still be around today if it took the enable path?

Google's profit model isn't to enable, it's to collect & warehouse massive amounts of sensitive user data.

I tried this. Among other things, I do LSAT tutoring. I don't think I saw a single inquiry.

People have specific places they go to look for LSAT tutors, and google helpouts wasn't one of them.

LSAT is more specific than some other niches, but I imagine this same problem occurred in most areas.

The biggest problem is they needed to be the "Backend" here. If they just got a cut of the 30% LSAT/SAT sites and those sites simplified their stack it would be a win all around. Look at AirPair, Their core product was their network using hipchat and Hangouts to accomplish the goal. If sites could leverage this technology (read: google marketed it as such, a technology, not and end product) I'd suspect some of those sites would have leveraged it.

I put it on my site, but no one used it. It was on the sidebar of every page. People just clicked on the "tutoring" page instead.

I'm not sure it would have worked for LSAT/SAT at all. People seem to want to talk to a human before they book a lesson, since they're expensive.

In theory, people could find it very useful to consult an expert for five minutes. But in practice the sort of people who would want to do that don't even look for a tutor. The typical tutoring students wants hours. If the client is a parent, then they're looking to hand off the problem to an expert. (For almost all SAT tutoring, the client is a parent.)

Could you see this working outside of a technical niche?

I was surprised to find that this isn't among Gwern's 10 Google services most likely to be shut down[0], but I think it may just be too recent to have been included; I don't know that he's ever re-run the analysis.

[0] http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns#predictions

Hangouts was launched 4 November 2013, so it came after I finished it. I did ad it to my followup list for the 2018 update when I evaluate the predictions and update the data to take a second look at the model results, but the followup list is stashed as a comment in the page source so unsurprisingly you didn't see it.

Plot twist: No need for Helpouts when Hangouts become embedded within search results.

If you use Google products, you are gonna have a bad time.

Find alternatives and become free. You don't need to replace everything at the same time, you can do it one product at a time.

Google Helpouts was the greatest thing ever when it first launched, for me, from a hiring helpers point of view ... I got amazing help solving some coding problems for a reasonable price ... really saved me from a terrible jam I was in.

But over time it seemed like less and less "helpers" were available, so obviously it wasn't working for everyone else.

No need to be negative, but this was a failure from the beginning. I tried a number of times to "helpout" but was not accepted. I'm no industry expert, but I do have some things to freely offer and thought it was weird that I had to wait and wait and wait to become accepted and by the time that happened, I was no longer interested.

Codementor is alive and growing - we are an open marketplace for on-demand developer help and longterm mentorship. Anyone is welcome to apply as mentors. Once you are approved, you can set your rate however you'd like.

Check us out: https://www.codementor.io

Try ClassDo ( https://classdo.com ). There are teachers and students from 140 countries. It's also featured on the Wall Street Journal http://on.wsj.com/1yhzGCK

The service was a good idea, but it probably needs to be decentralized to avoid a central party bearing legal liabilities.

Run by Google, it was killed by all the regulation surrounding the sale of services. Can't give medical advice, can't get payments in Europe, etc.

Google Answers was great because it was text based and asynchronous; Google Helpouts was not so great because it was video based and (mainly) synchronous.

Why didn't they put more resources into Answers? And what were their expectations for Helpouts?

Can they atleast open source this technology? I can use it for my business.

Just wondering: why not spin off a separate company to continue the service? Because they don't want to lose the engineers working on this? I guess that seems more important to the company?

If you're looking for an alternative you should check out www.vexbook.com - the calibre of people is higher. It's over Skype or Facetime so it works with any smartphone.

Is this service anything at all like HackHands?

it should be moved over to youtube and market in a different way.

Google really need a product realigning on a few things.

I wonder what this means for startups like fluentify.com

#GoogleFAIL

I misread this as Google Hangouts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com