| The way the Google Play Music vs YouTube Music crap played out is the worst (best?) example of "shipping the org chart" I can imagine. I worked at Google at the time, and it was just ridiculous to watch. What kind of dysfunctional company deathmarches its users like this between two competing brands and products right in its own company, and is so committed to doing it wholesale that it's willing to mass-lose customers as well as features? The kind that puts its internal politics and product manager's careers and ideas ahead of customers' needs. For at least a year after the transition you couldn't chromecast from YouTube Music on the web. The internal buganizer ticket on the matter was a shitshow. No accountability for the fact that we were killing something that worked and replacing with something that didn't even work with our own products. Likewise, YTM on Android Auto was a similarly terrible backwards step in user interface and capabilities. It's been some years so I forget what irked me, but there was a laundry list of them. At one point there were I think 3 Google product places where you could play podcasts; YTM, GPM, and Google Podcasts. None talking with each other about subscriptions, etc. That and the whole idea of meshing a video recommendation system with a music recommendation system was just busted. My kids watched Minecraft or whatever videos on YouTube on the family (Android) TV So I started getting recommendations in YTM for video game music and what not. The entire orientation of YouTube is around various random clips and the like. A music service like Spotify or (RIP) GPM is about albums and singles and EPs. YouTube's whole recommendation model wasn't built for it, IMHO. GPM had a good recommendations engine. YTM pushed top 40 crap on me. I tried to tune it, but it failed. I'd ask my Google display assistant device (I worked on them and had a couple around the house) to play some music, and it would spool up and start playing a video on YouTube instead. Because clearly that's what I'd want. Harmonizing product lines and concentrating efforts and changing brands around etc is entirely reasonable. But you don't do it in a way that drops features and pisses off customers. You do it carefully and with respect. The way this played out was ... YouTube organization "won", Google Play team "lost." I gave up, cancelled my sub, and bought Spotify. |