It's sad that they're abandoning this, but I can't say I blame them. I don't know a single person who used this, or even knew of its existence unless I told them about it.
The idea was cool, I think small group collaboration and being able to share stuff in a "stream" for just us was a really interesting way to approach the problem, however the UI and user flow just didn't "click" in a way that's hard to describe.
To be fair, I and a lot of other early adopters would be more willing to use this if the last 10 new Google products we tried didn't get shut down. I think the most recent new Google product we use that hasn't been killed is Android.
So, sure, makes sense to shut it down, no one uses it. But there are some good reasons for that.
I appreciate lots of Google services, open source contributions etc. - but this is really getting out of hand.
I wonder, how much can a service like this cost Google? Are the savings worth the negative publicity that comes out of so lightly launch and then shut down services? I feel like they're starting to really damage their brand among those in the know, which are the ones who give advice to everybody else...
Brands are not about logic but about image. What is Google's image with their services? That they shut them down. What are they doing here? They're shutting down a service. This does not help.
I think the original comment was getting at the fact Google often starts, massively trumpets services, and then abandons them in the night. I never recall them saying a single time in the several if not dozens of services they've started / ditched in the last several years where they've explicitly said "yeah, this might go away at a moments' notice."
It tends to chip away at your confidence if you're looking at investing in their services.
The top comment on this story right now is someone saying they don't want to use new Google products anymore because they too frequently get shut down. I think Reader really lost them a lot of trust and they continue to reinforce that reputation.
That being said, I cannot help but wonder how what Google is doing is different than any startup working on a product. The differences might be that Google never tries to substantially change, improve or even market a product once it has been released. They throw it at the wall and that's it. If it sticks they keep it and it might get some love, but if it doesn't the entire thing gets axed.
Another difference is that sometimes products seem to get cancelled for larger strategic reasons that the consumer doesn't care about. G+ seems to have lead to some of those.
All this can cause the user to feel like they might care more about a service than Google does. I think that's really the crux of the matter here. People don't want to commit in Google services anymore because Googled themselves doesn't seem all that committed. Startups are usually super committed to their product.
Edit: what makes this worse is that many services they've shut down could have easily supported a small to medium sized startup, especially a self funded one. It might not make sense at Google scale to run something like that, but it seriously damages consumer trust.
> I cannot help but wonder how what Google is doing is different than any startup working on a product
From a marketing point of view, the big difference is that a startup isn't labeling their product with a very well known brand. The downside for the startup is that they need to build their brand recognition and image from scratch. The downside for the big brand is that they have a lot to lose if they tarnish their own reputation.
Also, the big brand is expected to have the resources to keep the product alive (even if only on life support), so killing it feels unnecessary and callous. Everyone understands startups don't have that luxury.
Even when a product is successful at first, a very typically Google thing to do at this point is to not make substantial improvements to it for years until suddenly deciding to deprecate and replace it with something entirely different that has no migration strategy, might not have kept all the good parts of the old service, and even uses a new random brand name :/.
This damages their brand because it creates an expectation that you can't build anything important on their services. Who wants to spend time and effort in learning and building on a service, if you can't trust it will be there in a year?
I think their absolute dominance in email, browsing and internet search insulates them from a lot of this stuff.
I can't say I'd be confident in their newest project-of-the-week going forward though (if not in those realms), if I needed it to go beyond the next 5 years.
I didn't use Google Spaces beyond "let me look at this--okay not interested", but it seemed similar to Facebook Workplace (or even just Facebook groups, really), which seems fairly functional.
Are there specific features of Spaces you're looking for?
Google has acquired a reputation for shutting down services, which means that people are reluctant to start using new Google services, which means that they have low traction, which means that Google shuts them down…
EDIT: They (say they) aren't shutting this down to low traction, but it will only reinforce the existing perception.
Agreed. It seems they'll hype up and push a service then shut it down at the drop of a pin at this point. It's not great for their brand if you're a company that wants a reliable, long term solution.
It's worse for google because their brand is attached to it. Shutting down a branded internal "startup" can cause negative sentiment to be attached to the overall brand (as evidenced in comments here). Whereas with a startup there isn't really a lingering negative impact on a parent brand because there is no parent brand.
Startups that die do affect the overall perception of startups, but at the point of going out of business, the business no longer cares about its brand perception.
The Google way seems to be to try new stuff without much hesitation and then kill things which don't work out for them. I don't think they know exactly where they are going - which makes perfectly sense since future is hard to predict.
Which is quite stupid PR wise. They're relying on a few major household names to be able to do guinea pig product testing, otherwise their brand would evaporate.
Including their audience in the process would bring back the feeling of early google making one's life easier.
Wonder if it's better to think of Google as an "intelligence" company rather than software / search / advertising? They often seem to start projects to learn about the market and other companies, rather than for any direct business purpose.
that's your opinion, if they shut them down it means they are not totally useful, that there are better alternatives, and they provide migration guides I guess
A way around that would be to start products outside the Google brand, and only "adopt" them when they have gained significant traction, and long-term internal support.
Keep has been going at full steam for 3 years now. It's one of their prime apps to show off drawing capabilities of the new generation of convertible Chromebooks. Don't worry, Keep is there to stay.
Are you assuming that Chromebooks have a long term future? I sure wouldn't assume that. I also wouldn't count on Keep being around for the long term. I use it quite a bit, but only for ephemeral stuff.
No matter what you use though, you should have backups of anything important.
But it's my primary pc with Ubuntu on it. And even though i hate some of it quirks, I still get 8 hours of battery life out of it even after a year of consistent use.
Keep is on (all?) Android devices too. I use it on my phone to jot down things without needing to reach for something bulky like Evernote. It's pretty limited but for writing a book recommendation, shopping list, or a catchy lyric it works perfectly.
Is it because they do not have API, no backup for G Suite users, and no new development happened for a while? I.e., bugs in their Chrome extensions are serious (the last update is from Aug 16 2016 and nothing after that date).
They Keep iPhone app gets updated quite frequently. I suspect that the shut down of Chrome browser external apps for all platforms except Chrome OS in 2018 [1] is probably (part of) the cause for infrequent updates.
No opportunity to see ads when Alexa browses the internet for you, the new adwords soon to be the market for purchasing targeted Alexa NN reenforcement points!
Alphabet might fold in on itself and become Google again, which I suppose is what you mean, but Alphabet is 100% owner of Google, so any reorganization like that would be accurately ascribed to Alphabet.
I think more likely is some point where Google search has no organic results, but rather, a mix of "KG", widgets, and ads. You can already see the progression...there's many searches that include nothing but Google content until you scroll way below the fold.
Edit: One interesting query is "cancer cure". On my reasonably large monitor, nothing organic showing unless I scroll down. Anything travel related is similar, like "vegas hotels".
Edit2: If you disagree that the importance of the plain organic results is fading, please explain why they keep moving down. Google does understand what "below the fold" means in terms of what's important and what's not. In fact, the algorithm penalizes sites that place the important content below the fold, beneath things that are self-serving.
OMG, that's very funny. I use neither Google Search nor GMail. But I do use the 8.8.8.8 DNS server. When I need to check if my internet connection is down, I ping 8.8.8.8. Very useful.
I'm at the point that I don't even try new Google products because I don't trust that they will stay around. I got burned too many times: Wave, Knol, Google Health, Buzz, Notebook, Answers, and most importantly Google Reader.
There is just no way I'm investing time in any new Google product. They are untrustworthy.
For instance, why on earth would I want to use Allo when still Hangouts exists? We know one or both will get cancelled within a year or two. I'm not going to sick my neck out and try to get my friends and family to use one of those platforms only for them to go away.
Came here to say just this. At this point the only thing I really use from them is Search and Gmail. I just dont trust that anything else will stick around.
"All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"
Then maybe it should be: "Don't rely on Google products unless they're utterly dominant and necessities." Maps, email, search, are all needed in modern life. RSS readers lost out to Twitter & Facebook years ago.
Same here, only new thing I touched in 4 years has been GCP, and only then to discover I couldn't use it due to a ridiculous and completely undocumented embargo they implement for users in some countries. Same old Google crap ignoring or failing to understand the customer
"Let's use Hangouts" "Sorry what's that?" "Google's screen sharing" "Just use Skype" "Ok"
Don't forget after investing the entire company into Plus and failing to gain traction, they pulled the rug out from underneath the whole thing. I'm told similar internal focus is now applied to GCP, doesn't mean I wouldn't expect the compny to just one day say "bah, fuck it, we couldn't dominate that, turns out people require something from us beyond engineering, so I'm not playing because I haven't a clue how to do that" again
Maybe they can offer Google Cloud entirely running on ads, where they inject them at the load balancer. That way they won't have to deal with customer support.
Just curious, but could Google's culture have evolved so that it tends to treat all their users as products by default, even if they're actually not in a particular case? "You are the product, not a customer" applies to most of what they do, and that has to have had an effect.
I'm the same way, no reason to trust that any of their new products will stick around. I only use their most common products: Calendar, Mail, Maps, and Search. I don't want to have to invest in migrating platforms every year or two.
I started using Google Inbox for a while, but never got seriously invested in it other than a novelty (despite really liking the interface). I just know it's only a matter of time before it gets killed off and I'll be back to Gmail anyway.
This is closer to the truth then you know. There is an internal ongoing effort to merge the few useful features that only exist in Inbox, like snooze, into the GMail codebase.
If your inside of the Google network go/bye-inbox has all the information.
Disclaimer: I work for Google and joined Team Sabotage a year ago to cause as much damage to the company as possible.
The only new google service I've signed up for in the last few years was Project Fi, and that's simply because it wouldn't be a nightmare to move my number back to another carrier if Google just decided they got bored with it.
I use (and like) Project Fi as well. Porting a number and/or taking the unlocked phone to an AT&T or T-Mobile store was also why I went with it. Do I honestly expect Project Fi to be around in 2 years? No.
Unless they come up with a comparable "unlimited" plan, this year's (re-)launch of these by the major U.S. carriers is probably one of the final nails in the coffin.
Non-technical low-cost people probably aren't going to find Fi, and "power users" are going to go for unlimited, especially as data use climbs.
And... I doubt Google will keep Fi around to support a bunch of low-cost, "minimal" users. Where's the money ("new Google") and what's to learn ("old Google")?
Sigh. And just as the T-Mobile network (and Fi comes also with Sprint) was starting to look broad enough to warrant moving away from Verizon.
Well, as others have said, who believed it was going to last? For my own Google use -- which for me doesn't currently include advertising/marketing -- I've basically drawn the line at the "traditional" Google office apps. As far as I know, they still dogfood those, internally. Anything newer? Not worth any long-term investment / lock-in.
If I return to doing some web sites (a few people want me to, currently), I'll look into whatever are the current best practices for indexing high and being appropriately exposed on Maps and the like.
Oh, and, by the way, Site Search, just the other day? Really? You're already indexing it, Google? What does killing off this mildly customized search entry point save you?
Google Reader getting shut down was a good thing. After I moved to other RSS readers, I realized just how terrible Google Reader was. It wouldn't give you alerts if a feed started to 404 among other bugs and quirks.
Why use Skype or Google Hangouts when there is https://appear.in ? No login, no central server, no app to install, just screen sharing, audio and video...
If user usage is any factor in these product shutdowns, I wonder if Google has created a negative feedback loop on such a variable. Users won't try it knowing or highly suspecting the product will be cancelled in 2 years, and in 2 years Google cancels the product because there are no users.
It's laughably common that Googlers don't know about a product that they themselves would be interested in using until they see external news about the product being cancelled.
It's pretty demoralizing. We are the biggest evangelists for the products because we are proud of our co-workers and Google. But it gets harder and harder to evangelize to our friends and family when things are so quickly withdrawn.
Hopefully the Spaces team got their promotions out of the launch.
My advice to people making these kinds of decisions at any company of any size: when sunsetting a project (not just putting it into maintenance mode) consider the real cost to internal morale and to brand equity.
I feel a good middle ground for Google would be to make a rule when they close a product, where possible, they hand it off.
They can announce they are closing and look for people to take over product, the best team vs not some 'for sale' situation. While it would add some additional work it would keep peoples faith in trying google products and we' likely see some cool success stories of the back of their startup efforts.
I still hold a massive grudge about Google Reader. That single retreat caused me to reduce my Google services usage, a habit that I continue to this day.
Maybe once a year, I check Google Takeout services to see what I've used, then go on a deleting spree. I hope at some point outlook.com matures to a point where I can abandon Gmail.
I have never heard of spaces before. But it's a decent concept. Had I known about this earlier I would have given it a try.
I am guesssing this does not belong in a separate app by itself for google. It does not have the kind of high volume addictive app idea that google cares about. This is only used when you plan something and after that you don't ever touch it until the next time. So I see why they are killing it, but why did they launch it at all?
Google is involved in plenty of projects that don't directly make money. They could leave it up for ad targeting if not just as a good will gesture to their community.
I assume those projects are either returning some value for Google or they'll be shut down as well.
>They could leave it up for ad targeting if not just as a good will gesture to their community.
There's no point to that if the Spaces community isn't large enough for the gesture to be relevant or the ads to be worth anything.
I'm reading the tea leaves here, but according to the OP, they intend to "use what we’ve learned to improve other Google products and services." Likely, Spaces was never meant to be anything but a platform for testing experimental UX concepts without interfering with their more popular properties.
Google probably still wants to combine their services into a unified social media presence, except maybe for Youtube (which they maybe want to rebuild as a direct, primarily subscription based competitor to commercial streaming services like Netflix.) They don't want another PR fiasco like the Google+ integration so I guess this is plan B?
People who currently work at Google must see these posts here on HN every time they shut something down. The comments area always the same. Google must be aware this behavior is hurting them in a substantial way. Has anyone seen a public comment from someone at Google?
Do they really not get it or do they just not care? Or am I wrong, is this not hurting them at all?
I also think their approach is not the best, but do you believe anyone outside the tech echo chamber is making the same comments? I'm not sure how much the behavior could be actually hurting them.
Of course, sometimes the people in tech introduce products to non-tech people. That could be a problem...
So people outside of the "tech echo chamber" even use half of these services to begin with? I think the point here is that if Google wants to see normal people think to use any of these projects they are going to have to maintain them for a longer period of time under a brand strategy that doesn't involve constantly deprecating and replacing services while bothering to market and support the product line.
Every now and then there is a Google product I know about which would be perfect for some use case we have in our community (I am involved in a lot of political organizing here). I bring it up, and no one has heard of it; and the last time I did this, I went to go show people, and it had been discontinued anyway... I mean, what's the point?
It makes sense - they wanted Google Spaces to be a replacement for FB groups, but everyone already uses Facebook. Having to log onto a new app or website isn't cool anymore, and I don't think anything competing directly against what Facebook can do will succeed.
126 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 197 ms ] threadso basically project infanticide...
The idea was cool, I think small group collaboration and being able to share stuff in a "stream" for just us was a really interesting way to approach the problem, however the UI and user flow just didn't "click" in a way that's hard to describe.
So, sure, makes sense to shut it down, no one uses it. But there are some good reasons for that.
I wonder, how much can a service like this cost Google? Are the savings worth the negative publicity that comes out of so lightly launch and then shut down services? I feel like they're starting to really damage their brand among those in the know, which are the ones who give advice to everybody else...
It tends to chip away at your confidence if you're looking at investing in their services.
The issue is that it's an established pattern, so it may limit adoption on other new services they launch.
If that happens often enough, I may just start off with the competitor.
That being said, I cannot help but wonder how what Google is doing is different than any startup working on a product. The differences might be that Google never tries to substantially change, improve or even market a product once it has been released. They throw it at the wall and that's it. If it sticks they keep it and it might get some love, but if it doesn't the entire thing gets axed. Another difference is that sometimes products seem to get cancelled for larger strategic reasons that the consumer doesn't care about. G+ seems to have lead to some of those.
All this can cause the user to feel like they might care more about a service than Google does. I think that's really the crux of the matter here. People don't want to commit in Google services anymore because Googled themselves doesn't seem all that committed. Startups are usually super committed to their product.
Edit: what makes this worse is that many services they've shut down could have easily supported a small to medium sized startup, especially a self funded one. It might not make sense at Google scale to run something like that, but it seriously damages consumer trust.
From a marketing point of view, the big difference is that a startup isn't labeling their product with a very well known brand. The downside for the startup is that they need to build their brand recognition and image from scratch. The downside for the big brand is that they have a lot to lose if they tarnish their own reputation.
I can't say I'd be confident in their newest project-of-the-week going forward though (if not in those realms), if I needed it to go beyond the next 5 years.
They should just put this stuff in labs/beta and let customers have the right expectations. Their current method is just bone headed.
Are there specific features of Spaces you're looking for?
EDIT: They (say they) aren't shutting this down to low traction, but it will only reinforce the existing perception.
I'm looking forward to the Google car.
Including their audience in the process would bring back the feeling of early google making one's life easier.
You mean it's a keeper? Sorry, it had to be said.
No matter what you use though, you should have backups of anything important.
I just make spreadsheets at sheets.google.com, make it editable offline, edit on phone with Sheets app
tune in next time when I bore you with my org mode setup!
Yes - I'm very confident Keep will stay.
[1]:http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/19/12555052/google-shutting-d...
Alphabet Shutting Down Google
Unless search and ads somehow die off as a cash cow catastrophically, that's always going to be the tail that wags the dog.
Edit: One interesting query is "cancer cure". On my reasonably large monitor, nothing organic showing unless I scroll down. Anything travel related is similar, like "vegas hotels".
Edit2: If you disagree that the importance of the plain organic results is fading, please explain why they keep moving down. Google does understand what "below the fold" means in terms of what's important and what's not. In fact, the algorithm penalizes sites that place the important content below the fold, beneath things that are self-serving.
There is just no way I'm investing time in any new Google product. They are untrustworthy.
For instance, why on earth would I want to use Allo when still Hangouts exists? We know one or both will get cancelled within a year or two. I'm not going to sick my neck out and try to get my friends and family to use one of those platforms only for them to go away.
But what else has Gooogle ever done for us?
"Let's use Hangouts" "Sorry what's that?" "Google's screen sharing" "Just use Skype" "Ok"
Don't forget after investing the entire company into Plus and failing to gain traction, they pulled the rug out from underneath the whole thing. I'm told similar internal focus is now applied to GCP, doesn't mean I wouldn't expect the compny to just one day say "bah, fuck it, we couldn't dominate that, turns out people require something from us beyond engineering, so I'm not playing because I haven't a clue how to do that" again
You are the product, not a customer.
https://www.google.com/amp/www.infoworld.com/article/2925839...
Ads are treated like any other machine learning problem. The belief is that ads should be (essentially) predicted search results.
"Fail fast" mantra is no excuse to not do proper product management for a company of that size. I think they just aren't very good at it.
If your inside of the Google network go/bye-inbox has all the information.
Disclaimer: I work for Google and joined Team Sabotage a year ago to cause as much damage to the company as possible.
Non-technical low-cost people probably aren't going to find Fi, and "power users" are going to go for unlimited, especially as data use climbs.
And... I doubt Google will keep Fi around to support a bunch of low-cost, "minimal" users. Where's the money ("new Google") and what's to learn ("old Google")?
Sigh. And just as the T-Mobile network (and Fi comes also with Sprint) was starting to look broad enough to warrant moving away from Verizon.
Well, as others have said, who believed it was going to last? For my own Google use -- which for me doesn't currently include advertising/marketing -- I've basically drawn the line at the "traditional" Google office apps. As far as I know, they still dogfood those, internally. Anything newer? Not worth any long-term investment / lock-in.
If I return to doing some web sites (a few people want me to, currently), I'll look into whatever are the current best practices for indexing high and being appropriately exposed on Maps and the like.
Oh, and, by the way, Site Search, just the other day? Really? You're already indexing it, Google? What does killing off this mildly customized search entry point save you?
It's pretty demoralizing. We are the biggest evangelists for the products because we are proud of our co-workers and Google. But it gets harder and harder to evangelize to our friends and family when things are so quickly withdrawn.
Hopefully the Spaces team got their promotions out of the launch.
My advice to people making these kinds of decisions at any company of any size: when sunsetting a project (not just putting it into maintenance mode) consider the real cost to internal morale and to brand equity.
They can announce they are closing and look for people to take over product, the best team vs not some 'for sale' situation. While it would add some additional work it would keep peoples faith in trying google products and we' likely see some cool success stories of the back of their startup efforts.
Maybe once a year, I check Google Takeout services to see what I've used, then go on a deleting spree. I hope at some point outlook.com matures to a point where I can abandon Gmail.
I am guesssing this does not belong in a separate app by itself for google. It does not have the kind of high volume addictive app idea that google cares about. This is only used when you plan something and after that you don't ever touch it until the next time. So I see why they are killing it, but why did they launch it at all?
Because Google is a business, and hosting a "read only" version of a service that no longer serves their interests would be a waste of money.
>They could leave it up for ad targeting if not just as a good will gesture to their community.
There's no point to that if the Spaces community isn't large enough for the gesture to be relevant or the ads to be worth anything.
I'm reading the tea leaves here, but according to the OP, they intend to "use what we’ve learned to improve other Google products and services." Likely, Spaces was never meant to be anything but a platform for testing experimental UX concepts without interfering with their more popular properties.
Google probably still wants to combine their services into a unified social media presence, except maybe for Youtube (which they maybe want to rebuild as a direct, primarily subscription based competitor to commercial streaming services like Netflix.) They don't want another PR fiasco like the Google+ integration so I guess this is plan B?
I'm probably wrong, though.
Do they really not get it or do they just not care? Or am I wrong, is this not hurting them at all?
Of course, sometimes the people in tech introduce products to non-tech people. That could be a problem...
Every now and then there is a Google product I know about which would be perfect for some use case we have in our community (I am involved in a lot of political organizing here). I bring it up, and no one has heard of it; and the last time I did this, I went to go show people, and it had been discontinued anyway... I mean, what's the point?
Definitely. I expect there are dozens of snarky posts on Memegen by now. Whether that has any effect on management decisions is another matter.
Or am I wrong, is this not hurting them at all?
From the last earnings report, apparently not.