[sshine]

This gets downvoted for being negative, but it was my immediate reaction when I saw "Mozilla": They're axing projects that don't align for strategic reasons that probably make sense, but is simultaneously very Googly.

Association with Mozilla is a cause for concern when considering the longevity of a project.

[90s_dev]

Sure, Mozilla does this. So does Google. And Apple. And Microsoft. Everyone does. Pruning is a healthy and expected part of running a business. So what? All software is temporary, given a long enough timeline, even gmail. It's a user's fault for expecting otherwise.

[sshine]

> Mozilla does this. So does Google. And Apple. And Microsoft.

Those are all companies you need to be wary with, because a strategic choice on their behalf may upend your life with a few days warning, or none at all.

And the sad part is that Mozilla joined their ranks, not qualifying as a truly “public service company”.

> All software is temporary, given a long enough timeline

Sure, we must all perish one day. But what you describe is how commercial SaaSS gets pruned because it’s good for business, and I have two objections with that:

  1. That doesn’t make it good for users.
  2. It’s a different timeline for software than for services.

My Linux toolchain doesn’t suddenly deprecate some core tool. Only commercial software services die like this; FOSS bit rots at the worst. And when some authority makes a brainfart, people fork.

I was contacted today by the customer of an old employer post bankruptcy. They want to know how to deal with self-hosting the service their hardware depends on; this never got delivered. All software is temporary, I told him, meanwhile his very expensive hardware wouldn’t initialize properly on boot.

[Wowfunhappy]

Some companies kill projects much more frequently than others.

[90s_dev]

https://killedbygoogle.com/ vs https://killedbymozilla.com/

Yet Mozilla has the stigma here?

[Wowfunhappy]

Mozilla launches fewer projects in general, so the denominator is smaller.

But yes, Google is the worst at this, and they've built up a reputation which has really hurt them! For example, basically no one believed that Stadia would stick around long-term, which (I would argue) became a self-fulfilling prophesy.

[myko]

Spot on with Stadia! I use GeForce NOW, now, but it's nowhere near as stable or fast as Stadia. Very sad.

If Google had launched it and told everyone from the start that if they canceled it you'd get your money for games/hardware back I think people would've tried it.

[TheNewsIsHere]

There’s “move fast and break things” at Facebook.

And then there’s “launch whatever an SVP dreams up” followed by “kill that old SVP’s thing” at Google.

Perhaps slightly exaggerated. Google product reveals and sunsets have frequently followed executive movements in/around/out of the company. Two big examples that had widespread impact are in the later Google Wallet/Pay changes and some of the later insanity around multiple self-canabalizing IM/chat/conferencing services.

There seems to be no long term vision or strategy at Google, and Pichai is notoriously averse to making decisions of consequence. It’s not surprising that Google is rudderless.

[Anthony-G]

I suspect that this could be due to “immediacy effect” or “availability heuristic”. Mozilla’s announcement that they are shutting down Pocket and Fakespot was only three weeks ago and was big news. On the other hand, Google shut down so many services that it’s not a rare or memorable issue – unless you were personally impacted by the shutdown.