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I really wanna like it, but I'm honestly really scared to invest both professionally and emotionally in new Google products. I feel like I've learned that fire

I really wanna like it, but I'm honestly really scared to invest both professionally and emotionally in new Google products. I feel like I've learned that fire is hot and that I shouldn't count on any new Google product lest I find myself in a fit of despair as I look for alternatives in a few years. Am I just being overly cynical?

threeseed 9y ago
No of course not. This just isn't related to Google's core business which is advertising. And as history has shown us anything that isn't core business is always first in line to be cut. This could be different but of course you should still be a little cautious. Compare this however to Microsoft where business productivity has been an integral part the company since the very beginning. And so the Surface Hub looks like a more likely product to still be around a decade from now.
beefsack 9y ago
It seems like Google has created a chicken and egg problem for themselves. I won't be willing to take on Google products until they've been around for a few years and become entrenched, but with people becoming more and more reluctant to invest into their products it's less likely to happen.
avaer 9y ago
No, you're not. If people don't wisen up to it and hit Google in the numbers, we'll all keep paying the product killing uncertainty tax. If I needed one of these, this would definitely factor into my evaluation.
bedros 9y ago
I agree, google is the new microsoft, they try everything they can to lock customers in.
pavement 9y ago
The problem is not that Google is unreliable. The problem is that the servers are not yours, and thus the services that depend on the servers are not really yours. Therefore, if you write software to match, or foster methodologies that depend on a particular product, you risk writing software or patterning activities around a system that can trivially disappear. You have no way of estimating the popularity of adoption (is this android?), or how essential this thing may be to internal Google teams (is this wave?), since it remains something of a trade secret, who is using what, and how much, therefore you can never know when or why Google might declare that its offering is antiquated or unprofitable to Google, or whether it will be deprecated, forcing a migration elsewhere.
frogfuzion 9y ago
I was duped and bought an overpriced GoogleTV LCD. It seemed great at first until it was pretty much completely unsupported after a year and all the apps stopped working. Never again.

threeseed 9y ago

No of course not. This just isn't related to Google's core business which is advertising. And as history has shown us anything that isn't core business is always first in line to be cut. This could be different but of course you should still be a little cautious. Compare this however to Microsoft where business productivity has been an integral part the company since the very beginning. And so the Surface Hub looks like a more likely product to still be around a decade from now.

beefsack 9y ago

It seems like Google has created a chicken and egg problem for themselves. I won't be willing to take on Google products until they've been around for a few years and become entrenched, but with people becoming more and more reluctant to invest into their products it's less likely to happen.

avaer 9y ago

No, you're not. If people don't wisen up to it and hit Google in the numbers, we'll all keep paying the product killing uncertainty tax. If I needed one of these, this would definitely factor into my evaluation.

bedros 9y ago

I agree, google is the new microsoft, they try everything they can to lock customers in.

pavement 9y ago

The problem is not that Google is unreliable. The problem is that the servers are not yours, and thus the services that depend on the servers are not really yours. Therefore, if you write software to match, or foster methodologies that depend on a particular product, you risk writing software or patterning activities around a system that can trivially disappear. You have no way of estimating the popularity of adoption (is this android?), or how essential this thing may be to internal Google teams (is this wave?), since it remains something of a trade secret, who is using what, and how much, therefore you can never know when or why Google might declare that its offering is antiquated or unprofitable to Google, or whether it will be deprecated, forcing a migration elsewhere.

frogfuzion 9y ago

I was duped and bought an overpriced GoogleTV LCD. It seemed great at first until it was pretty much completely unsupported after a year and all the apps stopped working. Never again.