This was an ambitious product. It was lead by Caesar Sengupta, who left back in March. Without the project's primary driver, it got killed off (at least before it launched).
This seems like another incredible example of a bad product management strategy of "whatever some employee wants to do". Why would a major product direction be shelved because one guy switched jobs?
If it was a good product, Google should restaff the project. If it was not a good product, Google should seriously rethink the autonomy it gives staff to decide to launch new products.
Seems like a pretty good strategy to me. It's cool that one employee can drive such a large change. Google should get better at retaining talent though to mitigate this type of risk.
Caeser was a VP at Google. In the story from when he left[0], his replacement has 3,700 people under him. So it's a single person with a huge amount of influence. Bill Ready came in and decided to do something different.
> This seems like another incredible example of a bad product management strategy of "whatever some employee wants to do".
It would be bad if they used this strategy for every employee, but for certain employees, notably, those who are likely to go found their own startups, it can be a great idea. Google gets the potential to finance a "startup" for a fraction of the hypothetical acquisition costs, and the downside is paying the salary of a few dead weights if the produce never takes off.
I understand that concept, but there are better ways to do that. Nobody is shocked when an Area 120 app (or a Microsoft Garage app) gets shelved, because those are "brands" specifically for Google and Microsoft to experiment with startupy apps.
But when Google decides to put their main brand behind something, announce it to the world, start collecting signups, only to shut it down, that ends up continuing to burn the company's reputation. In this case, it also represented a significant partnership with a major bank, which may have burned some bridges along the way.
And bear in mind, in this case, it sounds like this VP had 3,700 employees under him... hardly a trivial cost of all the wasted effort.
The Google Pay thing is a bit odd, because the new one is only actually available in 3 of the 40 countries that Google Pay supports - most places are still using the old one.
I wonder how the lead of an ambitious project like this one gets wind of an upcoming project cancellation? Is it changing business needs, or political winds shifting?
Google has never heard of single points of failure? Strange. Is this how all of your products are run, in that if the "head" of the project leaves/gets ill/dies the whole thing just vaporizes?
You jumped from a story about one emerging business line concept to "all of your products", which is a pretty big leap.
It is actually very common for new business ideas to live or die based on the support from one senior executive - I saw this from the inside at Fujitsu, Oracle, Sun and Google, and at many partner companies from the outside.
In a new business line at an established large company, there is almost always another business line executive's toes you are going to step on.
For example, making computer hardware at Oracle steps on the toes of Oracle people selling to computer hardware makers. Shifting to open source steps on toes of internal developers and existing suppliers.
It takes a executive support to maintain these kinds of programs until the expected gain can be evaluated fairly against than the risks.
If a key executive leaves there is quite often blow back on their pet projects. From the perspective "outside the room" it is frequently unclear whether the exec was just moving on, fighting to the end, or saw the writing on the wall and left while the leaving was good.
As someone who generally likes Google, I'm glad this is not happening. No currently large tech company should also be a bank; that level of extreme consolidation can only end in a negative for users.
Google would have been a frontend, like any other neobank. Plex accounts would have been offered by Citi, BBVA (RIP), and other chartered financial institutions. No consolidation necessary, or worth it; retail banking is so heavily regulated that it's more of a loss-leader for other products that actually make money.
I feel like this would have been a culture clash waiting to happen and I feel like it would drive Google to eventually create some sort of bank subsidiary if this had actually worked out.
That said, I can't imagine the customer service experience with Google fronting a bank would be very good and random failures on free services are enough of a pain, now put actual money in it and watch people really flip out.
With their track record of discontinuing products I wouldn’t dream of signing up, even if it were offered and amazing. Who knows when the rug would be pulled out from under my fiscal feet?
That or having an algorithm incorrectly decide you are a bad actor and immediately freezing your account with no real recourse other than appealing the decision via webform only to have it denied 7/10ths of a second after you submit it.
Healthcare, banking/finance, cars, telecom – it seems like every time a big tech "disruptor" enters a highly regulated industry they get a healthy dose of reality.
Not arguing that regulation is corrupt and broken in a lot of ways, but it's also not hard to see that the usual "move fast and break things" development and shipping process in tech should not be used in areas where people's livelihoods (or lives) are on the line.
Oh your google account was disabled for covid misinformation (or some other reason), so you cannot access your money anymore. I wold trust amazon to do this more than google.
Merchant banks already do exactly this. There is no shortage of banks working with the adult industry, just higher transaction fees and other stipulations.
This goes beyond risk control. Insurance has had this figured out for a long time. You can model the risk of porn chargebacks and charge fees accordingly that cover the increased risk of chargeback. Bank behavior towards adult entertainment is a reflection of prevailing attitude of society in which we live, which is frequently quite opposed to sex work. It's not a question of banks demanding much higher feels for legal adult services, they don't want them.
Banks heavily regulate _themselves_ now in a lot of aspects.
I believe since the PATRIOT act was passed, the onus of fraud prevention was put on the financial companies, not the government.
This has caused a big rift in the "freedom to exchange currency with whoever whenever" crowd since the banks now have the authority (and are actively using it!) to push private companies into following their bidding.
A large part of Pornhub moving from an "anybody uploads" to "premium content only" was because the credit card processors didn't want to risk doing financial transactions with a company that could _POTENTIALLY_ be (meaning: unproven) hosting CSAM materials on their website... [1]
This was part of the reason OnlyFans was going to forbid adult content on their platform, because of issues with banks and payment processors. They were able to find one with more acceptable terms (although with higher transaction fees on the part of onlyfans) and were able to go back to providing paid adult content. (again, we'll never know the true reason why, but it's been the modus operandi of payment processors to axe anybody who they don't want on their platform.) [2]
Fun fact, credit card payment processors add individuals to their list of "people they don't want to do business with" - which is then shared with other payment processors [3] - a large one that's used by the majority of payment processors is the MATCH list ran by Mastercard.
Iirc onlyfans was actually because Christian special interests and feminists pressured financial institutions to drop them. I'll try to find the article that discussed it
It seems the feminist angle was more of a general anti-porn thing observed by a lawyer in the field. NCOSE, an evangelical group, apparently took credit for onlyfans's porn ban saying "The announcement made by OnlyFans that it will prohibit creators from posting material with sexually explicit conduct on its website comes after much advocacy from NCOSE, survivors and allies." They, along with Exodus Cry (another evangelical group) also lobbied Master Card to change their policies on porn
I was actually excited about this. I was under the impression at least with Plex, I would have more advanced banking opportunities. SFCU's app sucks by itself.
With Plex not happening, it would be nice if they could at least revert their awful new Pay app. Not being able to send money online and the new fees make GPay essentially useless.
They ought to do medical insurance, they might get it right, and maybe we'd get some kind of standard electronic medical representation out of it. You could get physical illness alerts along with your windows defender pop ups. Imagine the good (yeah yeah and bad) they could do with that. "Your surgery is eight dollars but we keep the 4GiB of images we make."
My understanding is that it is practically impossible to launch a health insurance company today, even with Google's budget, because the laws are so complex and impossible to digest that there is no way to sign up customers at a worthwhile rate.
I thought most big companies self-insured. So, does that make them insurance companies?
Hmm, I guess you still have "insurance" at big companies, and they negotiate rates... so maybe the large insurance companies are still involved in a significant way.
Just today we have (another) situation - user added a card that works for apple pay to google pay, but google pay not only didn't add it but suspended the account entirely. They rely on google pay for google fi, so are now likely to lose their phone number.
If Amazon did this it would be a different story, but google just takes craps on the users on their way to the bank - I can't imagine them having enough customer service focus to manage a bank type offering!
I can't imagine anyone who in a sane mind will trust Google a single cent nowadays given their disastrous reputation both in term of product support and a customer experience.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 102 ms ] threadMirror: https://archive.is/DfNpk
Googler, opinions are my own.
This was an ambitious product. It was lead by Caesar Sengupta, who left back in March. Without the project's primary driver, it got killed off (at least before it launched).
If it was a good product, Google should restaff the project. If it was not a good product, Google should seriously rethink the autonomy it gives staff to decide to launch new products.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28251591
It would be bad if they used this strategy for every employee, but for certain employees, notably, those who are likely to go found their own startups, it can be a great idea. Google gets the potential to finance a "startup" for a fraction of the hypothetical acquisition costs, and the downside is paying the salary of a few dead weights if the produce never takes off.
But when Google decides to put their main brand behind something, announce it to the world, start collecting signups, only to shut it down, that ends up continuing to burn the company's reputation. In this case, it also represented a significant partnership with a major bank, which may have burned some bridges along the way.
And bear in mind, in this case, it sounds like this VP had 3,700 employees under him... hardly a trivial cost of all the wasted effort.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/21/next-billion-users-head-ca...
https://www.arbo.works/
Google has never heard of single points of failure? Strange. Is this how all of your products are run, in that if the "head" of the project leaves/gets ill/dies the whole thing just vaporizes?
It is actually very common for new business ideas to live or die based on the support from one senior executive - I saw this from the inside at Fujitsu, Oracle, Sun and Google, and at many partner companies from the outside.
In a new business line at an established large company, there is almost always another business line executive's toes you are going to step on.
For example, making computer hardware at Oracle steps on the toes of Oracle people selling to computer hardware makers. Shifting to open source steps on toes of internal developers and existing suppliers.
It takes a executive support to maintain these kinds of programs until the expected gain can be evaluated fairly against than the risks.
If a key executive leaves there is quite often blow back on their pet projects. From the perspective "outside the room" it is frequently unclear whether the exec was just moving on, fighting to the end, or saw the writing on the wall and left while the leaving was good.
Retail banking is so currently heavily regulated.
etc. etc.
That said, I can't imagine the customer service experience with Google fronting a bank would be very good and random failures on free services are enough of a pain, now put actual money in it and watch people really flip out.
Though I'm sure we would quickly discover the exact boundaries of what's allowed by said regulation
Ideally a bank would capitalize on the underserved market and find a way to manage the risk.
This goes beyond risk control. Insurance has had this figured out for a long time. You can model the risk of porn chargebacks and charge fees accordingly that cover the increased risk of chargeback. Bank behavior towards adult entertainment is a reflection of prevailing attitude of society in which we live, which is frequently quite opposed to sex work. It's not a question of banks demanding much higher feels for legal adult services, they don't want them.
I think they can't do that.
I believe since the PATRIOT act was passed, the onus of fraud prevention was put on the financial companies, not the government.
This has caused a big rift in the "freedom to exchange currency with whoever whenever" crowd since the banks now have the authority (and are actively using it!) to push private companies into following their bidding.
A large part of Pornhub moving from an "anybody uploads" to "premium content only" was because the credit card processors didn't want to risk doing financial transactions with a company that could _POTENTIALLY_ be (meaning: unproven) hosting CSAM materials on their website... [1]
This was part of the reason OnlyFans was going to forbid adult content on their platform, because of issues with banks and payment processors. They were able to find one with more acceptable terms (although with higher transaction fees on the part of onlyfans) and were able to go back to providing paid adult content. (again, we'll never know the true reason why, but it's been the modus operandi of payment processors to axe anybody who they don't want on their platform.) [2]
Fun fact, credit card payment processors add individuals to their list of "people they don't want to do business with" - which is then shared with other payment processors [3] - a large one that's used by the majority of payment processors is the MATCH list ran by Mastercard.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/10/22168240/mastercard-endi...
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/27/22641095/onlyfans-sex-wor...
[3] https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/mastercard-match-list-a...
It seems the feminist angle was more of a general anti-porn thing observed by a lawyer in the field. NCOSE, an evangelical group, apparently took credit for onlyfans's porn ban saying "The announcement made by OnlyFans that it will prohibit creators from posting material with sexually explicit conduct on its website comes after much advocacy from NCOSE, survivors and allies." They, along with Exodus Cry (another evangelical group) also lobbied Master Card to change their policies on porn
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
Monzo being particularly notorious for this
With Plex not happening, it would be nice if they could at least revert their awful new Pay app. Not being able to send money online and the new fees make GPay essentially useless.
Hmm, I guess you still have "insurance" at big companies, and they negotiate rates... so maybe the large insurance companies are still involved in a significant way.
Just today we have (another) situation - user added a card that works for apple pay to google pay, but google pay not only didn't add it but suspended the account entirely. They rely on google pay for google fi, so are now likely to lose their phone number.
https://www.reddit.com/r/googlepay/comments/pmyog8/what_can_...
Customer support is no help (of course).
If Amazon did this it would be a different story, but google just takes craps on the users on their way to the bank - I can't imagine them having enough customer service focus to manage a bank type offering!