[cbisnett]

I wonder if Google has unintentionally created a self-reinforcing feedback loop where potential customers don’t trust the products will be supported for more than 24 months which leads to limited adoption which in turn leads to the products being canceled before 24 months. Pair that with other HN comments that have described a situation where it’s easier to get promoted from launching a product vs maintaining an existing product. I understand the startup-like culture where they are looking for huge successes but I think they abandon these products before they’ve had enough time or exposure.

[chillfox]

These days I learn of most "new" Google products from the shutdown notice posted here on Hacker News.

Also if there is a Google product that does something I need then I will almost always pick a worse alternative because I don't want to deal with the hassle of moving when Google eventually shuts down their thing.

[dkersten]

Yep, I’ve never heard of Google Hire before now!

[smt88]

After the Hangouts/Allo/Duo debacle, I've done exactly this. I'll never put time into a new Google product again. My projects don't use G Suites or Cloud, either.

I can't be the only one.

[manigandham]

G Suite and Google Cloud are very different. GSuite is the enterprise version of the consumer apps which have billions of users so it's not going anywhere. Google Cloud has potential to meet or exceed adtech revenue and has some very big commercial customers.

It's these smaller apps that suffer because $400/month isn't enough to make a difference at Google scale. They do have a mandate to keep innovating but it's a strange cycle where the company produces some great software and then abandons it due to lack of success, because it's already too successful.

[Jasper_]

> G Suite and Google Cloud are very different. GSuite is the enterprise version of the consumer apps which have billions of users so it's not going anywhere.

Hire was a G Suite app.

[manigandham]

It integrate into G-Suite but Hire is a separate application with its own subscription. I think it's clear that the G-Suite core services (email, calendar, productivity) are not going to be shutdown.

[zonidjan]

Until you realize that Hangouts is a core service which is being shutdown.

[vel0city]

Hangouts Meet (the core Google Suite version) isn't being shut down and is already pretty separate from the classic Google Hangouts in many ways.

[robinwassen]

Google Cloud as a package is different.

But since I started to use GCP 2012 a number of services has been left to die by abandonement.

Most of the times you get a clear migration path to a new service, but sometimes you dont such as when they kill the devserver for appengine standard in go 1.12 without giving a proper migration strategy. Everyone I know dread when they decide to deprecate go 1.11 support.

[js4ever]

Same here, for me the cracking point was a combination of horror stories about peoples autobanned from the whole google ecosystem (including a whole life of gmail, company infra on google cloud, everything!) and the constant discontinuation of products

[SanchoPanda]

Agreed. Not only might your investment into a platform be lost, but there is a tail risk somewhere out there that if you hack something together and they decide they don't like it, it might actually hurt you. I'm not convinced that this would be more likely using an obscure service, but my intuition is that would be - since any bad press for them is instantly not worth it.

[djsumdog]

I still use Hangouts for SMS, but the product is half assed at best. I wonder when Google will kill Hangouts for good.

[smt88]

They already announced that they're killing it. It was supposed to start sunsetting next month, with Voice/Fi users moved to Hangouts Chat.

I'm not holding my breath.

[djsumdog]

So, I don't use G Suite. I just have the free consumer Hangouts (without Gmail; deleted that a long time ago .. which after the G+ shutdown, means I can no longer search contact .. weird).

I'm super confused by their blog post:

https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/01/upcoming-hangou...

So for regular old consumer Hangouts (formerly part of G+) is that going away too? What happens to the phone number I have attached to it. .. I feel like I should port that way from Google sooner rather than later.

[dkersten]

I’ve stopped using all Google products except search, which I still use sometimes, maps and youtube.

[stefco_]

Likewise. Sticking to generic DigitalOcean/AWS/Azure services for cloud hosting.

[pbreit]

Doubt it. This never made much sense as a Google offering. Very strong players in this category offering more complete solutions. Not obvious what Google brings here.

[joedevon]

It was the best product we tried. We literally discussed internally will they drop support and thought they would keep it. The feedback loop grows.

[aaronharnly]

We didn’t sign up because we’d just launched another system, but I really really liked it in the demo. We’ve ended up building homegrown GSuite + Google Script + Zapier automation tooling to approximate some of the workflows, because GSuite is such a natural place to do so many of the recruiting and interviewing tasks. I’m genuinely surprised to see this go away.

[bigiain]

100% yes.

If it's not ad sales or search - I don't trust Google enough to base long term projects on it. _Maybe_ add gmail to that, perhaps. Possibly Suite (since at least they charge for it). For me at least, Google Cloud is still not quite emerged from "interesting, but not sure it'll be around long term yet" status. I'll use it as part of a multicloud architecture, or for prototypes/short-term projects. But I haven't yet been able to convince myself to recommend jumping both feet into a GoogleCloud-specific project architecture - in the same way I happily recommend/design/deploy AWS-specific projects all the time.

[adventured]

YouTube is of course obviously safe.

Google Cloud as a whole is also safe. It's the individual given products you have to worry about disappearing. It's already a very large business. Even in third place it's going to be at least a $15-$20 billion business over time. They're not shutting that down.

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-cloud-arr-earnings-8-...

[iamsb]

Given the speed with which youtube is demonetizing people or outright banning them, not sure how much longer it will sustain though.

[bigiain]

To be fair though, it's validly arguable that at least some of the people and content they're demonetising and banning are the very far end of the trashfire bellcurve, and that YouTube is nett better without them.

[C1sc0cat]

I was watching a YouTube channel that that reviews mics and audio gear last night and they had had videos de monetised because of reviews of "shotgun mics"

[dhimes]

Holy fuck! So their shutdown/demonetizing is being done by robots? They are automating the process of taking away peoples' way of earning a living? That is awful.

[bigiain]

Isn't this how google does _everything_??? (Or at least aims to...)

[dillondoyle]

This argument doesn't hold weight for me. Google demonetizes because advertisers don't want their ads on that content - and that is true no matter what platform.

[iamsb]

To some extent, yes. But see this comment -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20818621 There are plenty of examples like this. Google's problem is not that it is cracking down on bad actors. The problem is, it does not have a human interface. So once you are part of type-1 error set, you have very little way out. Once there is sufficient number of such people, who have critical mass for a competing service.

And honestly, I am really glad that google products are dying. I switched to DDG 6 months ago, Firefox 1.5 years ago and I dont miss either of the products. Hopefully big tech monopolies will start crumbling one way or the other.

[zonidjan]

I wouldn't be so sure about YouTube being safe.

[eindiran]

After having the Inbox rug swept out from underneath my feet, I don't have a lot of trust about Gmail either.

[creato]

Inbox was just a different skin/front end for gmail though, they aren't really comparable. I was annoyed about Inbox coming and going too, but that was a totally different thing than if gmail itself were to go away.

[thanatos_dem]

Yeah, killing inbox moved me away from google for mail entirely, and after that the dominos started falling. The only google product I use regularly at this point is YouTube, which I pay for to avoid ads.

[ravenstine]

IMO, YouTube is their only killer product at this point. Runner up might be Maps, which I occasionally use for Street View, but I've been able to get away with MapQuest most of the time for directions. Otherwise, I've completely replaced everything in the Google ecosystem and have been very happy. Sure, Google's got all the algorithms, but that's not something I want in the first place.

[nine_k]

This is quite strange behavior for a company with colossal cash coffers. They could keep up a project like that alive for years, just to keep loyal users content.

The fact that they are not doing things like that, repeatedly, is a bad sign for me. Well, at least they seem to keep search, maps, and gmail around for some time, because these obviously generate money for their main line of business, advertising.

[cjblomqvist]

And this is way Clayton Christensen's theory if disruption (innovator's dilemma etc) for so famous. The grit needed to resist this type of behavior is massive in big companies.

[dmix]

It takes most startups years to really perfect an idea. But that’s not really the problem here, they bought it as a proven idea and said it was successful and being used. it seems they just don’t see it as a business that boosts their bottom line enough when they could be using the same talent elsewhere in the firm. Opportunity costs etc.

Maybe they don’t like being #5 best product in the category or something.

The constant churn of companies getting acquired by Google continually justifies the anger on HN after a Google acquisition of their favourite products IMO, there’s a high probability they’ll shut it down even when Google claims they want to continue the business and even if it’s successful by a lot of other business’s standards.

$380 million they paid is no acquihire.

[jldugger]

> $380 million they paid is no acquihire.

So, they're just shovelling the money into a furnace? Or perhaps you just mean that Google buying the company a member of the board founded isn't arms-length enough to justify the term, and this falls into some form of theft or bribery?