7 ms·

I've understood this to be the explanation for years now. I'm not sure if this is common knowledge, but it's what the Google Voice community has come up with to

I've understood this to be the explanation for years now. I'm not sure if this is common knowledge, but it's what the Google Voice community has come up with to explain why we constantly get shoved to new platforms that absolutely suck. I mean seriously, every time google voice moves to a new platform it loses several features. It's one of the reasons why I avoid Google whenever possible. I went with Office 365 Enterprise over the Google solution for my business, and I use Linux as my primary desktop. Do you know how badly you have to mess up for a Linux user to look at your offerings and say "Well, I trust Microsoft more"?

georgemcbay 9y ago
I remember when I would be excited/happy when Google would acquire some software/service that I use. Surely this means the project will be well supported for the foreseeable future... why else would Google pay XXX million...?! These days the same announcements just fill me with dread and I expect the the software/service to be shutdown or gimped to the point of worthlessness within a year.
013a 9y ago
Are there any examples of core G-Suite products Google has deprecated? I can't think of any. Reminder that "Core G-Suite" is an official designation, not something I just made up. Right now, their Core G-Suite products are: Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites, Calendars, Hangouts, Hangouts Chat, Hangouts Meet, Plus, Keep, Vault, and Jamboard.
- Declanomous 9y ago
  They don't have to discontinue a product to massively screw with my workflow. All they need to do is change how the product is accessed, or the settings and labs features that are available. I mean, point being I don't trust them not to mess up my workflow. Even if I trusted them to not screw with the core g-suite products, I trust Microsoft more than Google at this point. If you had told me that I would trust Microsoft more than Google 5 years ago I would have literally thought you were insane.
  - mirhagk 9y ago
    Microsoft has been amazing at legacy support. The fact that they had an OS be supported for 12 years is pretty amazing. In contrast Ubuntu's LTS are only 5 years
- prepend 9y ago
  I’m still wary when they switched from free to pay for small businesses. I think in general it’s not a good idea to use free services for businesses, but in my mind it means that Google makes pretty big changes and don’t care if it disrupts you. Microsoft doesn’t do this or rarely does. If anything they start high and drop. Starting free and climbing is not good. But I don’t think they’ve ever dropped products entirely. Although hangouts has been titled a bunch of different things.
  - mrep 9y ago
    > I think in general it’s not a good idea to use free services for businesses, but in my mind it means that Google makes pretty big changes and don’t care if it disrupts you. Microsoft doesn’t do this or rarely does. If anything they start high and drop. Starting free and climbing is not good. Wow, I could not have stated it better myself. AWS is also like Microsoft in that they start high and commit to only dropping price. They also seem to do a pretty good job at customer service which Google has a reputation for lacking (although that is Amazon's bread and butter).
  - pasbesoin 9y ago
    Actually, on this score I think they've been pretty reasonable -- generous, even. Free "beta" G Suite accounts (where you got x users, where x declined over time for new sign ups) have remained active and with the same number of users they got when they first signed up. As long as they are actively in use. Unlike many other companies' free/beta offers, Google has made no excessive push to free/beta users out of their accounts. Of course, they do keep trying to upsell you, e.g. in the administrator management console or whatever they're calling it. All the same, yeah, relying on a "free" account for a business is probably not a good idea. And, you get no tech support beyond reading their help pages.
- ballenf 9y ago
  When the introduced the $10 / user tier (up from $5), $5 gsuite lost at least one feature that I use: email content filtering. It was implemented in a pretty hard-to-find place, but was effective and had enough functionality to catch, e.g. social security numbers and credit card numbers. If a team was already using the feature they got to keep it for an extra year or so, but otherwise you had to upgrade at double the price to have the feature. That being said, it is now implemented in an easier to use way. Don't recall details, but I believe there were a few other minor functionality losses of that type. I had already moved to the higher tier for unlimited storage and data retention tools. There's a feeling of a stronger and stronger push to get per user revenue up and up with the new Enterprise level functionality coming at "contact us" pricing.
  - pasbesoin 9y ago
    Well, that sucks. And I've not been keeping up. $10 tier? The last "interaction" I had was convincing/reminding someone to make sure the G Suite account/service they were signing up for was indeed HIPAA compliant, and that they had the signed business agreement with Google to put same in force. Don't know what the pricing for that was/is. It was more a "don't let your partners and manager do this unless you are sure of it and have this in place", in the context of casual conversation. Anyone else got such an agreement? If the legalese doesn't preclude saying, how's it priced?
- lucideer 9y ago
  How old is the official designation? They've certainly deprecated major apps; whether they were outside of some arbitrary core designation or whether they predate it's definition, it's somewhat moot either way. There's also the fact that they needn't deprecate something to remove or degrade features from it, or alter the workflow significantly enough to make it into a product that's no longer worth using.

georgemcbay 9y ago

I remember when I would be excited/happy when Google would acquire some software/service that I use. Surely this means the project will be well supported for the foreseeable future... why else would Google pay XXX million...?! These days the same announcements just fill me with dread and I expect the the software/service to be shutdown or gimped to the point of worthlessness within a year.

013a 9y ago

Are there any examples of core G-Suite products Google has deprecated? I can't think of any. Reminder that "Core G-Suite" is an official designation, not something I just made up. Right now, their Core G-Suite products are: Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites, Calendars, Hangouts, Hangouts Chat, Hangouts Meet, Plus, Keep, Vault, and Jamboard.

Declanomous 9y ago
They don't have to discontinue a product to massively screw with my workflow. All they need to do is change how the product is accessed, or the settings and labs features that are available. I mean, point being I don't trust them not to mess up my workflow. Even if I trusted them to not screw with the core g-suite products, I trust Microsoft more than Google at this point. If you had told me that I would trust Microsoft more than Google 5 years ago I would have literally thought you were insane.
- mirhagk 9y ago
  Microsoft has been amazing at legacy support. The fact that they had an OS be supported for 12 years is pretty amazing. In contrast Ubuntu's LTS are only 5 years
prepend 9y ago
I’m still wary when they switched from free to pay for small businesses. I think in general it’s not a good idea to use free services for businesses, but in my mind it means that Google makes pretty big changes and don’t care if it disrupts you. Microsoft doesn’t do this or rarely does. If anything they start high and drop. Starting free and climbing is not good. But I don’t think they’ve ever dropped products entirely. Although hangouts has been titled a bunch of different things.
- mrep 9y ago
  > I think in general it’s not a good idea to use free services for businesses, but in my mind it means that Google makes pretty big changes and don’t care if it disrupts you. Microsoft doesn’t do this or rarely does. If anything they start high and drop. Starting free and climbing is not good. Wow, I could not have stated it better myself. AWS is also like Microsoft in that they start high and commit to only dropping price. They also seem to do a pretty good job at customer service which Google has a reputation for lacking (although that is Amazon's bread and butter).
- pasbesoin 9y ago
  Actually, on this score I think they've been pretty reasonable -- generous, even. Free "beta" G Suite accounts (where you got x users, where x declined over time for new sign ups) have remained active and with the same number of users they got when they first signed up. As long as they are actively in use. Unlike many other companies' free/beta offers, Google has made no excessive push to free/beta users out of their accounts. Of course, they do keep trying to upsell you, e.g. in the administrator management console or whatever they're calling it. All the same, yeah, relying on a "free" account for a business is probably not a good idea. And, you get no tech support beyond reading their help pages.
ballenf 9y ago
When the introduced the $10 / user tier (up from $5), $5 gsuite lost at least one feature that I use: email content filtering. It was implemented in a pretty hard-to-find place, but was effective and had enough functionality to catch, e.g. social security numbers and credit card numbers. If a team was already using the feature they got to keep it for an extra year or so, but otherwise you had to upgrade at double the price to have the feature. That being said, it is now implemented in an easier to use way. Don't recall details, but I believe there were a few other minor functionality losses of that type. I had already moved to the higher tier for unlimited storage and data retention tools. There's a feeling of a stronger and stronger push to get per user revenue up and up with the new Enterprise level functionality coming at "contact us" pricing.
- pasbesoin 9y ago
  Well, that sucks. And I've not been keeping up. $10 tier? The last "interaction" I had was convincing/reminding someone to make sure the G Suite account/service they were signing up for was indeed HIPAA compliant, and that they had the signed business agreement with Google to put same in force. Don't know what the pricing for that was/is. It was more a "don't let your partners and manager do this unless you are sure of it and have this in place", in the context of casual conversation. Anyone else got such an agreement? If the legalese doesn't preclude saying, how's it priced?
lucideer 9y ago
How old is the official designation? They've certainly deprecated major apps; whether they were outside of some arbitrary core designation or whether they predate it's definition, it's somewhat moot either way. There's also the fact that they needn't deprecate something to remove or degrade features from it, or alter the workflow significantly enough to make it into a product that's no longer worth using.