[ma2rten]

Every time Google is shutting down a product there are the same kind of reactions like “I will not trust google running anything more than a year”, “killedbygoogle.com”.

I’m wondering, have you ever heard about this product? I for one have no clue what this is. How many more products does google have that you never heard about and that are not shut down?

[NoOneNew]

Yes, but what about the people who did? Here's the thing, Google is a big company. When a big company offers a service or product you expect a long shelf life so you can justify the time/money investment to use it. If you stumble across an open source or just some other random project by a single dev, you have an instinctive expectation that the project could die at any time. Thus, you invest your effort accordingly unless you're a hobbyist that enjoys the exploration (which is not most people).

Google has the focus of a 12 year adhd kid who just ate a whole birthday cake, unless when it comes to data collection. Google doesn't produce quality products anymore. They found their niche and pretend to do other things to try continuing that "do no evil" lie of a mission statement they used to have.

Here's the lesson, you can't trust google with anything. You base your personal or business infrastructure on Google you can expect one of two things:complete privacy invasion or they're going to destroy whatever you're using because they never took it seriously in the first place.

[mabbo]

> Google has the focus of a 12 year adhd kid who just ate a whole birthday cake, unless when it comes to data collection.

A decade ago I was an intern at Google. One of my mentors said something that has stuck with me: "Google found a hose that money pours out of and it's name is online advertising. All we do now is desperately try to find another hose."

Google's strategy for a long time was: Hire every clever person you can; give them some creative freedom; see if any of them come up with a trillion dollar idea.

Only now they've 'grown up'. 20% time is dead. There is no second hose. They've mostly given up on the idea of a clever person finding a new money-hose. They just focus on the one they have now.

[Hamuko]

>20% time is dead. There is no second hose. They've mostly given up on the idea of a clever person finding a new money-hose. They just focus on the one they have now.

Isn't that how they've always operated? Gmail was launched in 2004 and that sure wasn't a money-hose. But it did serve as yet another platform to support their money-hose since they could scan your emails and serve you ads.

It's really only a recent change to actually monetise Gmail beyond ads. They sell it as part of G Suite and as part of Google One. Not sure if Google One brings in the dough but surely G Suite makes enough to justify its existence.

[guyzero]

Google's revenue is more diversified today than it's ever been. This is a facile take.

[NoOneNew]

Being "well diversified" is subjective. But in freelance/contracting, the rule of thumb is to never have a customer account for more than 25% of your yearly income. You diversify your client base so when one walks away, it's never too big of a hit.

Ads make up 80% of their revenue. That's not diversified. That's an ad company that dabbles in other things. If Shell or BP's revenue was 80% oil and 20% solar, wouldn't you still call them oil companies that dabble in solar?

[libria]

Here's one breakdown of it showing 88% of revenue from ads [2017]: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-5-tech-giants-make-bi...

I'd like to see one for operating income, though, because I know AWS has a higher operating income than Amazon's Retail arm, even though Retail has a much higher revenue.

[guyzero]

To quote the OP, "There is no second hose."

My statement is that yes, there is a second hose.

I've never said they're not primarily an ad company.

[RussianCow]

If it constitutes significantly less than 20% of their revenue, it's not a "hose that pours money out". So no, Google has not yet found a second hose, even if they've found other revenue streams.

[hated]

Says the commenter with zero evidence to support their claims.

[mikestew]

There's no posted evidence for the idea that Google only makes money on advertising, either. Can we have a discussion where we assume that everyone isn't an idiot who needs a link for every statement? Or do you seriously think advertising is the only way Google makes money? If so, sibling comment posted some nice links that one would do well to read.

[NoOneNew]

They're publicly traded. Their revenue sources are open for the public to read. The other guy saying they're diversified linked to their quarterly to show 80% ad revenue. That's pretty much "they're an ad company".

[guyzero]

Come on, anyone can read GOOG financial statements.

https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/20201030_alphabet_10Q.pd...

Q3 2019, ads were 84% of revenue Q3 2020, ads were 81% of revenue

It's not a massive change, but it's changing and ads are at the lowest percentage of overall revenue they've ever been.

[kodah]

> It's not a massive change, but it's changing and ads are at the lowest percentage of overall revenue they've ever been.

"More diversified than it's ever been" can be factually true here, but for the purposes of this discussion was highly inaccurate.

[bg24]

Agree. Cloud, health, self-driving cars, devices.. all these have the potentials to become the next big thing.

Growing from $1B to $10B is really difficult, unless you have virtually no competition.

[nextos]

> There is no second hose. They've mostly given up on the idea of a clever person finding a new money-hose.

I think they are quite shortsighted. The idea of running Google as a conglomerate, turning it into Alphabet, was good. But somehow, they have not been able to get rid of those layers of middle management that kill innovation. I've heard that Calico and other ventures are really political, and lot's of people that moved there hoping to do great work are quite frustrated.

Which is a shame, because they do have know how and technology to achieve great things. Just out of the protein folding results of this week you could spin off dozens of highly successful startups.

[diogenesjunior]

>When a big company offers a service or product you expect a long shelf life so you can justify the time/money investment to use it.

I bought a Chromebook in 2014. It still works, but support was discontinued earlier this year. That sounds okay to me. I wonder if Poly was popular? I've never heard about it 'til today.

[d0gbread]

Alternatively, it's time to adjust expectations and understand that if a product or service doesn't hit the growth curve Google expects, they sunset it.

A lot of businesses would be more successful if they learned how to do this across their own products and features. Instead engineers drown in KTLO, adding to cognitive load not only for employees but customers too.

[toastercat]

> If you stumble across an open source or just some other random project by a single dev, you have an instinctive expectation that the project could die at any time.

Ironically at this point, I'd place more trust on an open-source project because at the very least, if the maintainer abandons it, I could fork it and potentially self-host.

[duhi88]

They could continue to host these services for basically free...I guess the security vulnerabilities would grow over time, making them liable.

[onion2k]

I've not only heard of it, I use it frequently. It's by far the easiest way to access permissively licensed (Creative Commons attribution mostly) content for making things in WebGL. Given the fact that Poly is essentially a very basic CRUD app with simple files attached there's can't really be a good reason to shut it down - it's simple, mature, and can't take much more than a few hours of maintenance a month for a single developer.

Either Google has a real problem finding developers capable of maintaining things, or their decisions to keep things running are based purely on cash with no regard for either users or their own reputation as a company that can keep services running.

[SystemOut]

They have a real problem finding developers that will want to work on it. You don't get promoted at Google for maintaining a product that isn't growing.

[amyjess]

This is an HR problem. Two HR problems really, as exemplified by both your sentences.

> They have a real problem finding developers that will want to work on it.

At most companies, you don't get to choose projects you want to work on. You get assigned a project whether you like it or not. Almost every other company functions like this, Google's insistence on being different is shooting them in the foot.

> You don't get promoted at Google for maintaining a product that isn't growing.

Maybe Google should be selecting for people who aren't interested in chasing promotions. There are plenty of 'workman' developers in the world who are okay with spending the rest of their careers maintaining legacy systems. This probably ties into good ol' Silicon Valley age discrimination: they spend so much time chasing young hotshots with chips on their shoulders, while most of the workman developers are in their 50s.

[SystemOut]

You're looking at it from the wrong angle. It's not that an engineer says no but rather, other projects that are growing and have more resources/weight behind them come calling and looking for engineers that want to transfer into their project. A stalled/non-growing project can't block a transfer like that.

If Google really wanted to solve this problem they could by making the promotion criteria different. Their actions say they don't really see it as a problem, though.

[onion2k]

I'm sure that's what Google developers tell themselves to feel better about being unable to keep something running for more than a couple of years, but the fact is Google could easily recruit developers to maintain things. They pay well, they make things people have heard of, and not everyone is insanely ambitious that they actively refuse to work on things that won't further their career.

[throwdour]

It's strange that getting promoted is such a universal goal. Many or most people who start on the promotion ladder get stuck in the miserable middle. There's surprisingly little reflection on whether or not the extra money is worth the extra hassle, or at what point one should avoid further promotion.

[spoonjim]

With user generated content apps it isn't the software that is the main maintenance job, it's keeping out abusive content.

[fomine3]

I've read a guess: As known, Google uses monorepo and own libraries, so they need to maintain all applications to keep up to date to work with libraries. That's why Google kills minor but worth services.

[BoorishBears]

I know Google Poly since I'm in game dev (but as a hobby these days, so all the art has to come from my non-3d-artist self or places like Google Poly)

The fact that they won't just freeze uploads and leave it up is just stupid.

People always bring up "What about maintenance costs in terms of dev time!", but at the core this is literally static assets. No fancy API, no crazy isomorphic app or something needing fat servers.

Just 3D modeling files.

Literally they could generate a static page for each asset that uses the preview image instead of the 3d viewer, stick it in their cloud storage solution, and have it exist, untouched, in perpetuity.

The cost wouldn't even register on a microscopic scale for a place like Google

[virtue3]

Complete second hand / third hand heresay but:

The reason google kills everything is because they do everything via monorepo. So if they don't have enough devs to literally -keep a service up to date with the currently evolving stack- they have to kill the project. This is why things get killed so easily.

Makes sense to me from a "why canyt you just leave it on" standpoint. But it still makes me very leeery of trusting any project of theirs long term (besides search/gmail).

[SystemOut]

This. Spent almost 3 years at Google and my view is that it is an intended side benefit of how they do development.

If something that relies on say, one of their log services, and that log service is getting end-of-lifed then all the dependent services that aren't really critical will also get shutdown. It's a forcing mechanism to keep the amount of cruft down. If that service that relies on the old service is that important they'll put the resources on the project long enough to port it to the new service.

[aeternum]

This makes sense for engineers but is detrimental from a user point of view. Google effectively taking what would be a few days of engineering time to update some API calls and instead amplifying it and passing it on to users.

When considering whether to learn/migrate to a Google service, everyone should consider this ratio at which Google values your time vs. that of their engineers.

[BoorishBears]

That's the distinction I made above, this isn't like a traditional "app" where the core of it's functionality is dynamic

It doesn't need to stay up to date with an evolving stack

Static files in Google's equivalent of an S3 bucket with public downloads enabled, that's it.

By design these types of blob storage services "just work" as a consumer indefinitely (otherwise there wouldn't be much of a point to them)

-

I get the whole "who does it get billed to, who's going to take a day to write this script that makes the preview page" deal, but like, this is literally the one time where just a little bit of initiative can win some brownie points with minimal investment, can't they do it?

[neom]

Google, apparently, lists all it's products here: https://about.google/intl/en_us/products/#all-products - I'd never heard of Google Duo.

[perryizgr8]

Duo is pretty big. It's pre-installed on every single android phone, and on Samsung phones it is the default video calling app too.

Also, you cannot remove it. You can uninstall the icon, but the underlying code is so deeply integrated into the OS that people can still call you and you will get a Duo video call even after uninstalling it.

Quite a menace.

[pqb]

That's interesting. I have a Fairphone 3 with a stock Android 10 and it does not come with the Duo pre-installed. The icon for video chats in Contacts app is greyed-out. After installing the Google Duo, it becomes active.

Is it possible to remove/deactivate it via adb or other tools?

[perryizgr8]

> Is it possible to remove/deactivate it via adb or other tools?

I haven't tried, I don't mess with my phone too much because I don't want to trip the Knox fuse.

I'm surprised an Android 10 phone does not have Duo pre-installed. Does it have the standard Play store and associated google apps?

Duo has 1 billion+ installs in play store, which basically means they pre-installed it on every phone.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

[pqb]

Yes, it is a standard Play Store / Google Services on Fairphone. However, it comes with a very small amount of applications pre-installed. I was really surprised when I turned it on for the first time.

[pqb]

That's actually (at least recently) quite "popular" product I would say, because they included it in most Android smartphones to offer video calls. I am tempted to say Google Duo is spread on millions of devices, however it is kind of an app, which is rarely used at all by most of users. Also, there are thousands of competitors, where even Google Meet does feels better than Duo.

[ma2rten]

Seems like an incomplete list because Google Poly is not on there. I double checked archive.org to make sure it wasn't removed today.

[Junk_Collector]

It's definitely a funny one. I hadn't heard of it but it appears to be an Instagram alike for 3D models and VR. If Google was trying to establish themselves as a first mover platform in the VR space, it's odd that they would can such a product before VR itself has finished taking off. It signals that they actually have no interests in VR going forward but it's Google so you never know, they will probably have 4 of these services at some point in the future and you'll never know when or where one starts and stops. For an advertising company, Google is remarkably bad at advertising their own products.

[DHPersonal]

Google has already shown that they're willing to try: they've made Tango (AR, discontinued), Google Glass (AR, enterprise-only), ARCore (AR, active), Cardboard (VR, discontinued), and Daydream (VR, discontinued).

[throwaway34241]

I’ve never been able to understand their VR approach. They actually brought ~$500 mobile VR daydream headsets to market (with their HW partners) with cameras doing inside-out positional tracking but no tracked controllers. Everyone I talked to in the VR scene at the time (at conferences etc) that had tried some HW knew 3D input was critical for UX and the near term future and this was a dead end. But Google puts a ton of effort into launching an obviously not-yet-viable product, then after doing the most technically difficult part doesn’t follow through on the last step and lets FB eat their lunch.

I could understand putting in less effort, or more effort, but failing the way they did was mind boggling and just seems like lack of a strategy on the management level.

[datagram]

Given what I know about Google culture, which has also been brought up in other threads here, this isn't that surprising. I think because of the extent to which their promotion process relies on demonstrating technical achievement, it's hard for them to get enough people to work on things if they aren't technically challenging.

[blevin]

These resemble portfolio hedging bets on potential future paths of technology playforms that could affect their ad biz. Google seems to buy a spread of small bets with several-year expiry and high convexity (i.e. big payout if equilibrium shifts in that direction). I suspect a number of these come out of discussions anticipating what could be next after mobile.

[hundchenkatze]

Yep, I hadn't heard of this one. Several of their shutdowns have effectively been product announcements and shutdowns rolled into one for me. They announce a shutdown, I don't know what it is so I check it out. I get excited for a brief moment until I remember it's getting shutdown.

[sp332]

For a company with such a massive advertising network, they kinda suck at marketing their own products and services. E.g. https://twitter.com/JesseLehrich/status/1253824612179292160

[amelius]

The right thing to do by Google would be to make the product available as a stand-alone application, so users can still use it even if it doesn't run on Google's infrastructure.

More work, yes. But certainly much better than what they are doing now.

[cj]

> make the product available as a stand-alone application [...] even if it doesn't run on Google's infrastructure

How would they do that? Who would pay the server costs?

Edit: Out of curiosity, is there anyone reading this comment that would be willing to pay for the infrastructure costs to keep Poly alive?

[bognition]

Not to mention that its been built on top of the Google internal development stack and getting it working outside of that environment would require a substantial re-write.

[olau]

So you're saying they're getting bitten by vendor lock-in?

[dewey]

How is it vendor lock-in if the internal code base that was never built in a way to work in the outside world can't just be taken and dropped on Github?

[rakoo]

We are being bitten by vendor lock-in, once again

[monsieurbanana]

No? We're getting bitten by vendor lock in.

[amelius]

> How would they do that? Who would pay the server costs?

The user would run the server, or another company, or a group of enthousiasts. It doesn't need to be expensive, especially if the user doesn't require many other users on the system.

[hn_throwaway_99]

That doesn't really make sense. poly.google.com looks to be essentially a repository/library of 3D renderings people want to share. There is no "standalone app" here, it's just a sharing site.

[izacus]

> The right thing to do by Google would be to make the product available as a stand-alone application, so users can still use it even if it doesn't run on Google's infrastructure.

Did any of your companies ever do that? How did it go?

[amelius]

Did any of my companies ever pull a product while it was still being used? No.

[niyikiza]

Companies discontinue products all the time due to acquisitions, bankruptcy, restructuring or simply re-orienting investment and I've never seen them held to this standard of having to host it somewhere external. I'm not even really sure how that would work.

A commenter here shared an example of a similar product shut down by Microsoft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix_3D

Disclaimer: Googler, but in no way connect to the Poly team.

Edit: Added Remix 3D example.

[gtirloni]

Good luck justifying that to whoever is paying that bill.

[polka_haunts_us]

Honestly the fact that I haven't heard of it and those comments are probably related. My trust in google to maintain things is so underwater that I really don't feel like dedicating the attention to even learn their new product offerings. For me it's all in one ear and out the other.

[hinkley]

There's a phenomenon I've witnessed in dev teams that I always thought was a separate issue but I'm starting to question that conclusion.

Like with Covid, like with SLAs, it's not enough to think of ratios of success or failure. You have to also look at frequency and duration.

A flaky test might fail a build 1 time in 200, but as your team gets bigger, build frequency rises, your tests grow, and eventually you're getting failed builds frequently enough that people start to see them as a regular occurrence, and that negatively affects their opinions about the whole experience. I've seen people bash the system when failures happen weekly, I've seen others 'turn' after a couple of statistical clusters and then fall to confirmation bias long afterward.

Google has so many irons in the fire that I think we've reached that same threshold for a lot of people. Shutting down the worst 1% of your projects a year sounds like a completely reasonable business plan. Until you have 1000 projects, and now you're shutting one down every five weeks on average. People will talk.

And if there's no transparency in that process, how do I know that my favorite tool isn't next, or on the list for next year? Odds are low, but not zero.

[rm_-rf_slash]

Counterpoint: since Google has firmly established a reputation for killing their own products, people who would otherwise find value in certain Google products (beyond search ads gmail and android) avoid them and never hear about them to begin with.

I wonder if they are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy: google launches a product, people avoid it assuming it’ll get killed off, google says the user metrics don’t justify the investment, and they kill it.

[cj]

I think HN tends to overplay google's product discontinuations.

If you ask someone who doesn't read HN if they've ever been frustrated with Google shutting down a product, my guess is 95%+ of people wouldn't be able to remember a single product that was shut down that they used.

One solution for Google might be to brand the products without the "Google" name prefix, until Google is absolutely sure it will be around for a decade+.

[onion2k]

If you ask someone who doesn't read HN if they've ever been frustrated with Google shutting down a product, my guess is 95%+ of people wouldn't be able to remember a single product that was shut down that they used.

That is true, but it ignores the fact that at least 50% of Google's product offerings are aimed at the sort of people who read HN.

[samizdis]

You might well be right with your 95 per cent guess, but it has proved frustrating and even embarrassing for me over the years to have recruited friends, family, colleagues and associates to some Google products/services only for the rug to be pulled later from under those who jumped aboard on my recommendation.

This has happened with Picassa, with Google+ (which had great integrations with other G services, and features I liked - such as one that let you group people into, say separately addressable units such as friends, family, colleagues, associates etc) and also the original Google chat (still around, but functionally degraded and headed for the chop, I fear).

I've loved some of these because of their features/usability. To me Google+ having few users and not having content pushed in my face was a bonus. Text chatting happily while in a Gmail tab (usually open when I'm working) but with minimal distraction and not having to context-switch - suits me. And now a lovely library of free 3D assets is for the chop.

Once upon a time I earned a little kudos for having my finger on the pulse and spotting decent emerging tech/trends. I was laughed at by many when, in 1994, I switched from a senior role in print news to one in the nascent online space - but many people took an interest because of my recommendation or at my urging.

I am no seer, I am rarely an evangelist, but I hate it that many people I know have invested time/effort in Google stuff on my recommendation. I feel as though I have let them down.

[seankimdesign]

Maybe. But even in gaming circles, people often cite "Google may discontinue it" as one of the main reasons for avoiding Stadia, which is a Google gaming service. I believe their reputation goes well beyond the HN tech circle.

[MarkusWandel]

I think former users of Picasa and Reader (ouch!) might amount to more than 5%.

[spoonjim]

Google has 2 billion users or thereabouts. 5% of that is 100 million users. Why not maintain a product for those 5% if it's easy?

[fuzxi]

I think a lot of people remember the Reader shutdown, and the recent weird migration from Play Music to Youtube Music.

[jrumbut]

True enough, but this is among the largest gatherings of technology decision makers (at varying levels, presumably some very high level) out there and this comes up every thread about Google.

Hosting some files to serve as a counterpoint would not be totally unjustifiable from a marketing perspective.

[fakedang]

Allo, Duo, Music, Hangouts were all products people in my circles used regularly, even if I didn't.

[free2OSS]

Google Music and Google Photos disagree.

They ended Music, and bait and switch their photo policy.

Traumatic events for me. I've left both services, won't get another pixel, and attempted to switch to Firefox.

[CartyBoston]

in this they behave like a short-term gain focused stock market

[Jezzi]

Firebase is safe...right?

[JamesBarney]

It's about branding and trust. Before any product is a popular one that prints money it's a small one looking for early adopters.

When those first adopters are deciding whether or not use the new product, part of that equation is what happens if this doesn't catch on? Should I trust them to jump on board now, wait, or go with someone else?

For instance if someone was choosing betwen two similar and new products from Microsoft and Google one factor weighing in Microsoft's favor is they will care about support, and an exit plan even if the product doesn't take off.

[mamoswined]

I loved Google poly! It was a great place to find models for A-frame scenes. A-frame is VR basically built in HTML. I really liked it as a teaching tool especially for kids. Like learn HTML elements by finding a bear on Google poly and putting it in your scene.

It was a little frustrating in some places since a lot of it was oriented around their VR drawing tool (Tilt Brush) which my system didn't support.

[samizdis]

Yes, I know it and browse it frequently - a great resource, if you've an interest in or need for this type of 3D asset. (I used to run a 3D animation software company.)

[addicted]

The problem is that if Google holds this attitude, that means I as a user must absolutely stay away from anything that isn't promoted extremely heavily by Google.

And if I and everyone else thinks this way, as Google is conditioning them to, then no one will ever adopt Google's non heavily promoted products, which will make their failure a self fulfilling prophecy.

[chadlavi]

I learn about a lot of niche google products by seeing the announcement that they're being shut down.

[Abishek_Muthian]

Looking at the frequency of the art uploaded and the effort in it I bet the artists and those who used that platform would indeed care about it being killed by Google.

[tti]

I used the models for YouTube videos. It was convenient since most of them are free to use if you credit the author.

[fomine3]

I think this is getting hot product thanks to iPhone 12 Pro's LIDAR camera but Google kills.