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I think you've mischaracterised things a bit in your post - not sure if this is just because you're repeating what you read elsewhere? Anyhow, regarding the bul

I think you've mischaracterised things a bit in your post - not sure if this is just because you're repeating what you read elsewhere? Anyhow, regarding the bullet points: 1. Google Wave was released an experimental consumer product, designed to combine the best of IM and email. According to the announcement, it was finally sunset due to lack of interest from the public. Personally, I was super excited about Wave - I even pestered an ex-Googler at the time to get me in on the preview. (I was in uni at the time). However, I had a lot of trouble getting other people to use it. Did you personally use Wave yourself? Were you able to convert anybody else to using it? Firstly - this is hardly apples to oranges. You're comparing a experimental consumer-oriented preview product, to an enterprise offering with SLAs. It would be like if we released a Star Wars game showcasing awesome new WebGL features - then decided to sunset it 12 months later. Secondly - the project was open-sourced and then moved to under the Apache banner - an effort that in itself took significant engineering effort. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave I'm not really sure what more you want? In the case of Reader - this is somewhat personal, as I was a big lover of Google Reader as well. From memory, it was deprecated with around 12 months of notice, there were provisions for migrating/exporting all your data etc. It wasn't open-sourced like Wave, but there were reasons behind that (I can't comment). However, it was hardly the worst handled deprecation - and to be honest, the writing was on the wall for RSS for a long time before that. 2. You didn't provide any specifics, so I'm not sure what event you're referring to. AFAIK, the only major price change was when Google AppEngine left beta/preview, and became an actual commercial product, and Google added SLAs, and other things etc: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-appengine/Hluog1_a3n4/uFMhaBWhVi8J https://groups.google.com/d/msg/google-appengine/Hluog1_a3n4... The changes were announced at I/O that year (May), I believe, and the actual changes took effect in September. Is that what you're referring to? Because even taken aside my Google hat, that seems like a fairly reasonable thing to do. 3. All of Google's enterprise offerings have support. I know, because I actually work in such a support team. For GSuite, support comes free as part of the product - you can contact us via email/chat or over the phone. For GCP, there are commercial support packages available (https://cloud.google.com/support/ https://cloud.google.com/support/) (similar to the AWS model). > They've done it again and again. I'd say its the default way Google operates. This is a pretty bold claim - can you cite any examples of this? If this is something that personally affected you - please feel free to reach out to me. I can't promise I can fix everything, but I can definitely try to find out more for you, or see what I can do internally. Disclaimer: I work for Google, but views expressed above are my own.

a13xb 9y ago
> This is a pretty bold claim - can you cite any examples of this? I don't know if you have read the original thread, but there are a few examples of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14356409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14356409 Also this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38959321/firebase-database-bandwidth-usage-growing-rapidly-even-when-when-the-database-is https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38959321/firebase-databa...
- mynameisvlad 9y ago
  The parent comment posted in that thread, so I assume he has read it. While I read parts of the comment thread earlier when if first came up, I searched some key phrases and couldn't really find specifics other than the SO link you already mentioned. There was a lot of discontent and general ramblings about Google support being terrible, but I saw more people praising the paid support options and support in general for paid products than giving concrete examples of being burned.
ikeboy 9y ago
I uploaded a small chrome extension a few months ago. Shortly after my developer account was closed for "violations of terms". I had just opened the account, and paid a nominal $5 fee for it. I tried appealing a few times and was still not told what I did wrong or any way to get back on. I got the impression that it was being handled automatically and that nobody could be bothered to write anything.
lobster_johnson 9y ago
It's my understanding that Google has ramped up enterprise cloud support by outsourcing it. We ran into evidence of this recently. It's not helpful when the heavily accented, scripted Indian support guy at the other end is less technically informed than yourself, and there's no magic phrase to get bumped up to the next support level. We're on Google Cloud Platform because of Kubernetes, and I'm dreading the day where we will need urgent support for something. My only consolation is that the Kubernetes community is very active, with lots of googlers on Github, Slack, Google Groups, and so on. We're trying to avoid using services outside of GKE in order to keep our vendor lock-in minimal (Kubernetes potentially allows us to switch vendors), and to stay within the realm of Kubernetes. You have to face it -- Google's reputation has been severely damaged over the years, not just things like Reader, but also AppEngine, Google Apps support, arbitrary account shutdowns, and so on. Even innocuous, well-intentioned deprecations are hurting your rep these days, and you should consider avoiding this just to let your karma recharge; people will eventually forget and forgive, but if a new breaking change happens every month, they won't. (Contrast the situation to AWS, which has hardly deprecated anything since they started up, and manages to keep unpopular products running years after they became effectively obsolete.)

a13xb 9y ago

> This is a pretty bold claim - can you cite any examples of this? I don't know if you have read the original thread, but there are a few examples of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14356409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14356409 Also this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38959321/firebase-database-bandwidth-usage-growing-rapidly-even-when-when-the-database-is https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38959321/firebase-databa...

mynameisvlad 9y ago
The parent comment posted in that thread, so I assume he has read it. While I read parts of the comment thread earlier when if first came up, I searched some key phrases and couldn't really find specifics other than the SO link you already mentioned. There was a lot of discontent and general ramblings about Google support being terrible, but I saw more people praising the paid support options and support in general for paid products than giving concrete examples of being burned.

ikeboy 9y ago

I uploaded a small chrome extension a few months ago. Shortly after my developer account was closed for "violations of terms". I had just opened the account, and paid a nominal $5 fee for it. I tried appealing a few times and was still not told what I did wrong or any way to get back on. I got the impression that it was being handled automatically and that nobody could be bothered to write anything.

lobster_johnson 9y ago

It's my understanding that Google has ramped up enterprise cloud support by outsourcing it. We ran into evidence of this recently. It's not helpful when the heavily accented, scripted Indian support guy at the other end is less technically informed than yourself, and there's no magic phrase to get bumped up to the next support level. We're on Google Cloud Platform because of Kubernetes, and I'm dreading the day where we will need urgent support for something. My only consolation is that the Kubernetes community is very active, with lots of googlers on Github, Slack, Google Groups, and so on. We're trying to avoid using services outside of GKE in order to keep our vendor lock-in minimal (Kubernetes potentially allows us to switch vendors), and to stay within the realm of Kubernetes. You have to face it -- Google's reputation has been severely damaged over the years, not just things like Reader, but also AppEngine, Google Apps support, arbitrary account shutdowns, and so on. Even innocuous, well-intentioned deprecations are hurting your rep these days, and you should consider avoiding this just to let your karma recharge; people will eventually forget and forgive, but if a new breaking change happens every month, they won't. (Contrast the situation to AWS, which has hardly deprecated anything since they started up, and manages to keep unpopular products running years after they became effectively obsolete.)