[ozmbie]

How is it that Google create/rebrand/close so many music and chat services over the years. While Apple have a single message service (iMessage) and a single music service (Apple Music) that have been consistently branded with constant growth and show no signs of being shut down?

As a consumer I have no idea what’s going on with some areas of Google’s products. It’s a major turn off.

[kyrra]

(Googler, opinions are my own)

Agreed that it is annoying, but its interesting to look back at how we got here. Google Play Music (GPM) launched in 2011. To get music on here, I'm guessing that team had to sign contracts with the various publishers and record studios. The onboarding and licensing terms of those were likely entirely around this music streaming service.

Then you have Youtube. It's been a video hub for anything, and other those 9 years since GPM launched, it has become a place where lots of people listen to music (watching music videos or the like). You have companies like Vevo that publish music content there. I'd guess Youtube has different contracts with those companies that have evolved over time about how music can be played.

So over these past 9 years, 2 products that had little overlap, have started to overlap more and more. As youtube expanded, it started butting into GPM's world. That likely was odd for Google for contracts and licensing of that content. Youtube Music (YTM) likely allows them to do it all under one silo now. Plus, YTM lets you do background music or videos, which is not something you could ever really do with GPM.

[vl]

> but its interesting to look back at how we got here.

Oh, please, I worked at Google as well, and this is typical Google’s inability to have attention span and coherent leadership for anything longer than 6 months. One VP did one thing, then another one another, then it turned out that it’s stupid and inconsistent. As. with. any. other. non-core product! Basically Google’s top leadership doesn’t care enough to impose coherent strategy across different divisions, and thing like this happen all the time (Android/Chrome OS, Chat/GVC/Hangouts/Allo/Duo/RCS/Meet, Gmail/Inbox, Nest/Google Home, and so on).

[ewmiller]

Contracts seem like a very weird motivation for this. Why completely overhaul the user experience by getting rid of an entire application for consuming music and trying to shoehorn it into another, instead of just keeping two separate entities with separate licenses?

Even if the motivation makes some sense, the user experience is worse and I have very little faith that Google will maintain YTM long enough that I should invest in using it. The way Google does things means that in five years it will probably be on its way out in favor of the next rebrand that will get some product manager a promotion. Spotify, meanwhile, is still kicking after 10 or so years with no signs of slowing down or forcing users into a completely different app. i’ll stick with that, personally.

[im_down_w_otp]

>Plus, YTM lets you do background music or videos, which is not something you could ever really do with GPM

It doesn't. It forces you to watch videos (if you're steaming to your home stereo or other casting enabled device) and prioritizes the video versions of everything, even if the video isn't officially from the artist and us just some random person's resubmission.

The user experience is almost impossibly terrible. It seems like the kind of curated experience one would concoct if they were trying to prank someone with an intentionally frustratingly hostile UX.

[grey]

I have the opposite frustration here, where I queue up some music videos on my TV and inevitably after 1-2 songs, I'm staring at static album covers when I know there's an awesome music video that should be playing instead

[sdenton4]

(There's an option in the settings to turn videos off and just play album versions of songs.)

[im_down_w_otp]

It doesn't apply to when you're casting things to a Chromecast via Google Assistant on a Google Home device.

[viraptor]

I'm not sure why the licensing would impact the app in any way. They could swap the backend, keeping the better app. The background video is just one feature to add compared to trying to fix the YTM many problems.

[kyrra]

Point taken. Maybe this was just one of many factors? I could also see that Google had products that were overlapping (Youtube and GPM), and they decided to merge them, and this is the way they did it?

I definitely had friends that used Youtube as a poor-mans spotify and would just keep the videos playing in the background on their desktop.

[felipelemos]

spoiler Big rant below:

> I could also see that Google had products that were overlapping (Youtube and GPM), and they decided to merge them, and this is the way they did it?

If it's the way they did, it was one of the worst ways anyone could think of. It baffled me how so many smart minds can work at Google and take so many terrible decisions at the same time.

This was just one in several equally stupid decisions they did. They could have dominated the messaging market by now, but they threw out that chance several times.

Sometimes I think it might have been on purpose. Maybe they are afraid to dominate too many markets at the same time and avoid a anti trust lawsuit? Because otherwise it literally makes no sense. Either this or they need to feed their stupid hierarchical loop giving senseless promotions to whoever creates a new thing that nobody asked for by destroying another thing that people were starting to use and like.

[kemonocode]

Ah, so that's probably the reason behind the incredibly grating "Are you still watching?" modal interrupting the video.

[lern_too_spel]

GPM always allowed playing music in the background, even for free. YTM charging for it is a regression.

[IanCal]

> Plus, YTM lets you do background music or videos, which is not something you could ever really do with GPM.

I'm sorry, what? Are you saying that Google play music would only play music if in the foreground? That's flat out wrong.

[perryizgr8]

> YTM lets you do background music or videos, which is not something you could ever really do with GPM

The entire point of a music player is to play music in the background.

[josteink]

> YTM lets you do background music or videos, which is not something you could ever really do with GPM.

What are you talking about? You could always do this with GPM.

It was YTM which added the requirement for a paid account to keep allowing this very same thing.

You have things completely backwards.

[xiphias2]

I just read that YTM has only 256 bit AAC just like YouTube. Going down in audio quality is a step in the wrong direction. There's just no point in installing 5G in so many countries when the encoding bit rates are going down for services.

[ValentineC]

Bitrate isn't everything in audio — MP3 (which Google Play Music uses) is a much older format compared to AAC.

I like Hydrogen Audio for theory and comparisons: https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Hydrogenaudio_Li...

[harshitaneja]

Non audiophiles don't require more than 256kbps which is about the highest you can do for AAC anyway. Sure 320kbps can on some occasions be better on consumer hardware but I am not sure most will notice a difference. So maybe 320kbps but I am really skeptical of people who need more. Obviously there is a lot more to digital audio than bitrate.

[cageface]

The reality is most people struggle to distinguish 128kbit AAC from the original, especially in typical listening conditions.

[andybak]

Pretty sure I remember Hydrogen Audio did a bunch of ABX tests that showed nobody (including so-called "golder ears") could distinguish 160kbps (or maybe it was 192) VBR MP3 from uncompressed - assuming a good encoder was used.

[toyg]

I’m absolutely not an audiophile and I don’t know what Spotify does, but their audio quality has gone down the drain of late. I suspect streaming services are all trying hard to reduce costs by converging towards quality levels similar to what we had with FM radio and early MP3s, i.e. pretty shit overall but good enough to feel that pop/dance “phat bass”.

[xeromal]

What do you mean by background? Like play in the background?

[ewmiller]

I assume so. Spotify has a feature somewhat like this, but I keep it turned off because I find it annoying and distracting. It’s a bit silly to try to justify a huge move like this based on such a trivial feature, in my opinion.

[xeromal]

I'm not sure I follow really. Any music player I've used plays in the background. I throw in some headphones and it plays without the screen being on. I'm not really sure how else it can go in the background but I know I'm missing something. lol

[kyrra]

See: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6308116?hl=en

> Play videos on your mobile device while using other apps or when your screen is off. Background play is available on YouTube, YouTube Music, and YouTube Kids mobile apps (if these apps are available in your location).

They only allowed background play on Youtube with a subscription.

[netsharc]

Hah, just like Porsche having an idea of more horsepower for a monthly fee (or pay per fun afternoon's drive) or Musk's self-driving subscription idea, now it's "Pay if you want to be able to browse Instagram while listening to music"/pay if you want to be able to turn your screen off.

Friend of mine who isn't me still downloads MP3s on torrents and has no cloud subscriptions. I'm sure he's smug about this.

[jkaplowitz]

I believe it's a subscription feature for YouTube Music as well. The link you provided indicates that this requires a YouTube Premium subscription, though a bit more digging on that page and https://support.google.com/youtubemusic/answer/6313552?hl=en suggests that the minimum required subscription is actually YouTube Music Premium (this is included as part of YouTube Premium).

[Teever]

I've often wondered about what percent of battery drain on smartphones is directly attributable to this business model choice and therefore exactly how many smartphones have ended up in landfills before they needed to because Google ultimately prioritizes a few dollars over the environment.

[makecheck]

Apple has had iTunes, and for a time a music “social network” Ping. The original messaging tool was called iChat before it was iMessage. Apple has also had multiple Internet services that were more or less the same (iTools, .Mac, iCloud). Even Contacts used to be called Address Book, and Wallet used to be called Passbook.

Google still does worse but renaming things is pretty common.

[graeme]

That’s not quite right. Messages on iPhone was always messages. Mac’s version was called ichat and was separate. Apple then cancelled it and merged it into messages. Messages itself never had a name change and was always larger than ichat.

Likewise, the itunes music store still exists! It is a place where you can buy and download music. It’s not the same service as Apple Music, which is a streaming music service.

[filoleg]

>Likewise, the itunes music store still exists! It is a place where you can buy and download music. It’s not the same service as Apple Music, which is a streaming music service.

That's actually an interesting point that I've never considered before, even though I was aware of it.

iTunes has always been kept separate from Apple Music, with no evident plans to merge those in sight, while Google Play Music was used for both streaming and purchasing music. I don't think it ultimately affected the demise of GPM, but it is still an interesting topic to ponder.

[jkaplowitz]

iTunes, other than the iTunes Store, is indeed gone now and merged into Apple Music:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210200

But as that article briefly mentions, the iTunes Store continues to exist and can be reached from the Apple Music app. I suspect this will change in a future macOS release, though I don't work for Apple and have no inside info.

[philistine]

What Apple did in your examples was definitely rename. What Google does in the examples mentioned above is definitely shuttering.

[jrnichols]

> Google still does worse but renaming things is pretty common.

Feels like Google has renamed a few things to be too close to Apple's.

Google Wallet became Google Pay. Picasa became Google Photos. also they have Google Drive. Google Messages...

[ehsankia]

Picasa is quite different from Photos, and Wallet wasn't quite the same as Pay. Android Pay and Google Wallet merged together to become Google Pay.

[wetpaws]

Apple being bad does not automatically make Google good

[temp667]

I am a personal gsuite user, and migrated multiple companies to gsuite over 10 years now (?). That means I tried to force everyone on to hangouts / chat / meet / duo / allo / etc etc. It's not just a turn off in a personal space. It's at the point I have given up on trying to get folks to standardize on google's products.

Google just did a slack competitor, but to click the screen share button (very common in slack to want to talk and screen share to collab) you are forced over in to meet land, which forces you out of your chat and defaults to video (not wanted). It's just such a total mess its totally incredible.

[snielson]

Ha, I remember my days trying to get friends and family to use Google services only to have them shutdown. No more. I tell them to stay far, far away from anything Google.

[ssambros]

> How is it that Google create/rebrand/close so many music and chat services over the years.

It's not a rebrand. It's a rewrite. People need them promos.

In many cases, however, rewrites are actually warranted. As underlying infra gets replaced it becomes very expensive to run and maintain legacy services.

[ehsankia]

Rewrites are warranted, but rebranded every time you rewrite is not. Being able to replace core components while keeping the same brand and feature set is what takes real effort. Throwing everything out and making a completely different app with is imo a bit lazy and bad for the user.

If you truly must change things, gradual piece by piece changes is far prefered than complete 100% replacements like GPM -> YTM.

If they had slowly migrated GPM behind the scene to use Youtube over the years, and then after 2-3 years, just changed the name, I'm sure users would've been far less alienated.

[runawaybottle]

I don’t think Google set up a predictable product iteration unveiling structure. One day I expect to see the PlayStation 6 for example, and one day I expect to see an update to the MacBook, and so on.

One day, do I expect to see an unveiling of a new Gmail UI? None of it is predictable because it feels like they do some serious a/b tests and just silently roll stuff out. They lack a structured presentation timeline. Currently users have no predictable expectations.

When that’s the case, just rename stuff, rebrand stuff, get rid of stuff, who the fuck cares. We didn’t promise the user updates, or even iterations, we simply promised them a one time product.

That’s the only thing that I can think of behind all of this. The simpler answer could just be their product team is not the best of the best for a company that works pretty hard at getting the best.

[ehsankia]

Your two examples at the top are both hardware, those work very differently. Websites used to do massive updates, but many have learned that it just leads to a lot of angry users. Slowly updating one component at a time works much better in my experience, and it's far less change for the user to adapt to at once.

[runawaybottle]

Then I should have used video games as an example. Take a look at our DLC are handled now days.

[01100011]

> As a consumer I have no idea what’s going on with some areas of Google’s products.

You are their product. They sell advertisers access to you. Everything else is a sideshow and they will eventually get bored with it and let it rot. Google has had a lot of good ideas over the years. They let devs create amazing things with the constant flow of ad dollars. But then those cool things don't make as much money as selling ads, and the devs want to move on to create a new thing, so the 300lb idiot baby that is Google wanders off and squats on something else.

I also have to wonder if Google is stuck in the doldrums of being a mid-life startup. Their initial team of rockstars have probably all retired to roll around in their millions. A whole new crop of money and status seeking folks have taken their place. Wall Street is expecting growth every quarter. There is constant pressure to refocus on revenue producers and grow the stock. They seem far detached from their initial roots under Sergey and Larry.

[sg47]

I have a Pixel phone and pay for Google Play Music since I have a large collection that I have uploaded. It's been extremely disappointing. I have tried switching to Youtube Music but the interface sucks. I'm tempted to switch over to the iPhone since I'm already unhappy with Google in other areas (showing news articles repeatedly for health issues that I searched for one time, not allowing me to turn off gmail for a Google account on Pixel, etc). Google has become extremely user-hostile of late.

[markmark]

I've been on Android since the first Android phones and also pay for GPM. I'm moving to Apple. I'm sick of Google's approach to user services.

[danaris]

In previous stories on here about Google's tendency to start stuff, shut it down arbitrarily, and compete with itself pointlessly, I recall seeing comments purporting to be from longtime Googlers saying that the reason this happens is at least in part due to Google's incentive structure. They reward people for creating "new" things, whether they're the same as something they've already got or not, and allocate very few resources for existing products that aren't already the company's bread and butter—getting put on something like Hangouts or Voice was considered to be almost a punishment detail, based on some of the comments I read, and could torpedo your chance at any kind of promotion.

[nautilus12]

Google play music wasn't really started at Google it was mostly acquired from Songza

[noisem4ker]

The Songza acquisition happened in 2014. Google Play Music goes back to 2011.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songza#History

[nautilus12]

Yes but big bulk of google plays features were stolen from it and they did their big marketing PR push using their stuff

[kps]

> While Apple have a single message service (iMessage)

Only recently. Before iMessage, Apple had iChat. iMessage used to interoperate, but no longer does.

[et1337]

iTunes would like a word with you...

[wil421]

iTunes evolved into Apple Music because most people aren’t downloading MP3s or ripping their CDs anymore.

[graeme]

No it didn’t. Itunes music still exists as a separate service and you can still buy music there.

Apple Music’s streaming service is a separate offering that has grown larger than iTunes.

[ewmiller]

What the person you’re replying to means, is that Apple Music was added on top of iTunes as a new service rather than iTunes being scrapped completely. If Google were to do the same thing, then google play music would still be around and not be getting killed in favor of youtube music.

[graeme]

That’s a fair point. Though in this case aren’t google play music and youtube music substantially similar services?

Google’s reputation is that they will have 2-3 services with the same functionality. Whereas there are pretty legitimate business reasons you want want to make a streaming business distinct from a legacy content purchasing business.

[Twisell]

Also I just happened last week to rip in Apple Music some of my teenager years CD before packing and storing them.

This is still an option. Likewise the playlists I created on the go on my iPod Nano in a 2008ish trip reliably got migrated from versions to versions up until now.

[Godel_unicode]

And ping. And FaceTime.

[pwinnski]

FaceTime is still very much a thing[0].

So there's iTunes (2001-2019, but arguably renamed to Apple Music, so not actually dead), and Ping (2010-2012), the latter of which had approximately three users.

Like for like, Google Play Music (2011-2020) isn't quite as long-lasting, but more to the point, I'm not sure Apple has simultaneously maintained two competing services before ultimately canceling one.

Then the GP commenter mentioned "chat services," which makes the position unassailable. Google seems to have launched and folder a dozen or two chat services over time[1].

0 https://support.apple.com/guide/facetime/welcome/mac

1 no evidence cited

[ewmiller]

FaceTime is very much still a thing, I use it with my family all the time.

[LudwigNagasena]

Is it more convenient than WhatsApp?

[culturestate]

You can make and receive FaceTime calls from any recent Apple device to any recent Apple device (e.g. Mac to iPhone) which is nice, but FaceTime’s real advantage is call quality. It’s noticeably more clear and seems to handle poor/unstable connections much better.

I can FaceTime with people halfway around the world with more clarity than I can talk to someone on the same WiFi network using WhatsApp.

[PurpleFoxy]

It’s not a Facebook service which is an instant plus

[disgruntledphd2]

No, just one for rich people (as a green bubbler, this upsets me quite a lot).

[gumby]

It has a couple of really good use cases as it works on non-phones (macs and ipads). Little kids and some older people don’t have phones. I like the bigger screen for non-casual video calls.

Also, I was on a project with a colleague who had a poor internet connection and we found FT worked better than zoom. FT video quality seems to be the best of the services I’ve used but personally I don’t care about this part much.

I wouldn’t call these “killer features” but they are enough, with the integration into address book etc, to make it flourish.

[syspec]

FaceTime is basically a verb at this point, and only growing more usable with Mac to phone conversations and 32 ppl simultaneous support

[gambler]

Apple is a hardware/design company. Google is ad tech company. They have fundamentally different motivations.

[deadmutex]

This is a vast oversimplification, and doesn't really answer OP's question.

[LudwigNagasena]

I think the main difference is that Google welcomes intrapreneurship while Apple does a more top-down approach.