7 ms·

Google's ADHD with products strikes again. It's really hard to get excited over new Google offerings because they just go away when Google gets bored of them, t

Google's ADHD with products strikes again. It's really hard to get excited over new Google offerings because they just go away when Google gets bored of them, time and time again.

riku_iki 8y ago
It's likely not google get bored, but users didn't adapt product on large enough scale.
- Rebelgecko 8y ago
  I wonder what scale would have been enough. According to the play store it has over 10 million installs
  - Big_crimpin 8y ago
    Could that just mean 1 million people installed it 10 times?
    - Rebelgecko 8y ago
      Maybe but I still think there's more than that. There's 400,000 reviews, so even if they're counting people that install it multiple times it's probably not a 10:1 ratio. Also I think "10 million+" on the play store means 10,000,000 - 50,000,000, and that doesn't count iOS and web users.
      - riku_iki 8y ago
        Another important question is what is a retention rate.
    - sixstringtheory 8y ago
      Possibly, but even then... 1 million users is a lot. I don’t think I’d ever sleep if one of my apps had 1M MAUs.
  - kartickv 8y ago
    That's 1% of Gmail's 1 billion installs, again according to Play, to compare apples with apples. That's as clear a sign as you can expect that users don't want Inbox, notwithstanding a noisy minority like us.
- sethammons 8y ago
  It is a cycle. Google drops a product due to low uptick, so users don't take on further products. There are three products that I can think of that have lasted: search, email, ads (which is search, really). [edit] oh, and maps!
  - jedberg 8y ago
    Voice. I've been using Voice for probably 10 years now. Most of the functionality has been subsumed by Hangouts, but it's still there and they even updated it within the last year.
    - IvyMike 8y ago
      Shhhh! I'm convinced Voice only stays because it's under the radar of upper management. Don't remind them it exists!
      - Puer 8y ago
        It would be very unfortunate for me to lose my default phone number...
        frankydp 8y ago
        Interesting. I wonder if any regulations around phone numbers is actually what it protecting Voice from getting nuked from CEO orbit.
  - saghm 8y ago
    Chrome?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - kenhwang 8y ago
    It could very well be the other way around too: product is getting too popular and doesn't have ads, but directly competes with our product that does have ads. Reader/iGoogle didn't have ads, but stopped you from visiting places that did have ads. Inbox didn't have ads, but was directly pulling users away from gmail which does.
- ProAm 8y ago
  > users didn't adapt product on large enough scale Because users know it wont be a product that gets any updates and will be shutdown in 2 years.
  - tiglionabbit 8y ago
    Not to mention that it launched with a lot of missing features that existed in Gmail.
    - detuur 8y ago
      None of which I missed. I'm a poweruser in most of my computer interactions, but e-mail isn't one of them. I actually really liked Inbox's restricted feature set.
- temp 8y ago
  I liked Inbox but didn't want to use it because I expected it to get discontinued.
- awiesenhofer 8y ago
  If 10 million users doesn't warrant keeping a product around even if unsupported, I don't know what is...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- 394549 8y ago
  > It's likely not google get bored, but users didn't adapt product on large enough scale. What exactly is a "large enough scale"? The mentality that a project is a failure unless it achieves exponential growth and massive world-eating scale needs to die in a fire. Even small things have value, and one of the few good things about massive corporations is they have the resources to do a lot small things well. When you have 85,000 employees, focus is overrated.
  - riku_iki 8y ago
    > When you have 85,000 employees, focus is overrated. probably less than half of them are engineers, and about 20% of them are capable to build complex systems. And now Google has quite long list of technologically complex products: search, ads, youtube, android. I think density of complex projects per capita may be much higher at Google than in other companies.
  - rifung 8y ago
    > Even small things have value, and one of the few good things about massive corporations is they have the resources to do a lot small things well. When you have 85,000 employees, focus is overrated. I like to think I understand the sentiment, but I think the reality is a bit more nuanced than that. Inbox and GMail in all likeliness are in the same product area (PA) and thus at some point in the chain they report to the same person. That being the case, if Inbox takes even 1/2 the time of this manager that GMail takes, then it's really not worth it because GMail easily has more than 10x the users. My guess is that they will try to take all the things people liked about Inbox and bring them to GMail over time. They probably want to shut down Inbox before that happens so they can use more engineering resources to make that transition more quickly and also so that the tech stack is simpler by not having to support two different products.
- pluma 8y ago
  The reason I didn't adopt Inbox (for Android) initially was that it only worked for GMail whereas the regular GMail client also worked with 3rd party mail accounts. I was also extremely hesitant because of Google's history of canning experimental apps and Inbox simply isn't integral enough to be safe from the routine culling (unlike e.g. Chrome or Maps). I was an early adopter for Wave (which ended up going nowhere because nobody I knew wanted to give it a try and I didn't have enough invites to hand them out without knowing people would use them). I tried to get on Orkut but never got an invite (until it had already basically become the "Facebook of South America"). I strongly believed in Google+ as a potential Facebook killer and used it early on. I was also an avid user of Reader in the Web 2.0 days. At this point, I no longer trust new Google products. Google seems to really want me to use Duo, for example, but nobody I know is eager to use it and I won't talk my friends into using it if it's not clear that it's here to stay. I'm not committing to any Google product if I don't have reason to believe they won't pull the rug whenever they please.
  - rifung 8y ago
    > Google seems to really want me to use Duo, for example, but nobody I know is eager to use it and I won't talk my friends into using it if it's not clear that it's here to stay. Not to dismiss the rest of your point which is totally valid and a well deserved criticism, but you can use Duo to call people with Android phones even if they don't have Duo, so you don't actually need to convince them to use it.
lostmyoldone 8y ago
Ironical in this particular case, as inbox was the first mail client that helped my ADHD-PI brain keep a reasonably clean inbox, while still actually responding to people.

Google's ADHD with products strikes again. It's really hard to get excited over new Google offerings because they just go away when Google gets bored of them, time and time again.

riku_iki 8y ago

It's likely not google get bored, but users didn't adapt product on large enough scale.

Rebelgecko 8y ago
I wonder what scale would have been enough. According to the play store it has over 10 million installs
- Big_crimpin 8y ago
  Could that just mean 1 million people installed it 10 times?
  - Rebelgecko 8y ago
    Maybe but I still think there's more than that. There's 400,000 reviews, so even if they're counting people that install it multiple times it's probably not a 10:1 ratio. Also I think "10 million+" on the play store means 10,000,000 - 50,000,000, and that doesn't count iOS and web users.
    - riku_iki 8y ago
      Another important question is what is a retention rate.
  - sixstringtheory 8y ago
    Possibly, but even then... 1 million users is a lot. I don’t think I’d ever sleep if one of my apps had 1M MAUs.
- kartickv 8y ago
  That's 1% of Gmail's 1 billion installs, again according to Play, to compare apples with apples. That's as clear a sign as you can expect that users don't want Inbox, notwithstanding a noisy minority like us.
sethammons 8y ago
It is a cycle. Google drops a product due to low uptick, so users don't take on further products. There are three products that I can think of that have lasted: search, email, ads (which is search, really). [edit] oh, and maps!
- jedberg 8y ago
  Voice. I've been using Voice for probably 10 years now. Most of the functionality has been subsumed by Hangouts, but it's still there and they even updated it within the last year.
  - IvyMike 8y ago
    Shhhh! I'm convinced Voice only stays because it's under the radar of upper management. Don't remind them it exists!
    - Puer 8y ago
      It would be very unfortunate for me to lose my default phone number...
      - frankydp 8y ago
        Interesting. I wonder if any regulations around phone numbers is actually what it protecting Voice from getting nuked from CEO orbit.
- saghm 8y ago
  Chrome?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- kenhwang 8y ago
  It could very well be the other way around too: product is getting too popular and doesn't have ads, but directly competes with our product that does have ads. Reader/iGoogle didn't have ads, but stopped you from visiting places that did have ads. Inbox didn't have ads, but was directly pulling users away from gmail which does.
ProAm 8y ago
> users didn't adapt product on large enough scale Because users know it wont be a product that gets any updates and will be shutdown in 2 years.
- tiglionabbit 8y ago
  Not to mention that it launched with a lot of missing features that existed in Gmail.
  - detuur 8y ago
    None of which I missed. I'm a poweruser in most of my computer interactions, but e-mail isn't one of them. I actually really liked Inbox's restricted feature set.
temp 8y ago
I liked Inbox but didn't want to use it because I expected it to get discontinued.
awiesenhofer 8y ago
If 10 million users doesn't warrant keeping a product around even if unsupported, I don't know what is...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
394549 8y ago
> It's likely not google get bored, but users didn't adapt product on large enough scale. What exactly is a "large enough scale"? The mentality that a project is a failure unless it achieves exponential growth and massive world-eating scale needs to die in a fire. Even small things have value, and one of the few good things about massive corporations is they have the resources to do a lot small things well. When you have 85,000 employees, focus is overrated.
- riku_iki 8y ago
  > When you have 85,000 employees, focus is overrated. probably less than half of them are engineers, and about 20% of them are capable to build complex systems. And now Google has quite long list of technologically complex products: search, ads, youtube, android. I think density of complex projects per capita may be much higher at Google than in other companies.
- rifung 8y ago
  > Even small things have value, and one of the few good things about massive corporations is they have the resources to do a lot small things well. When you have 85,000 employees, focus is overrated. I like to think I understand the sentiment, but I think the reality is a bit more nuanced than that. Inbox and GMail in all likeliness are in the same product area (PA) and thus at some point in the chain they report to the same person. That being the case, if Inbox takes even 1/2 the time of this manager that GMail takes, then it's really not worth it because GMail easily has more than 10x the users. My guess is that they will try to take all the things people liked about Inbox and bring them to GMail over time. They probably want to shut down Inbox before that happens so they can use more engineering resources to make that transition more quickly and also so that the tech stack is simpler by not having to support two different products.
pluma 8y ago
The reason I didn't adopt Inbox (for Android) initially was that it only worked for GMail whereas the regular GMail client also worked with 3rd party mail accounts. I was also extremely hesitant because of Google's history of canning experimental apps and Inbox simply isn't integral enough to be safe from the routine culling (unlike e.g. Chrome or Maps). I was an early adopter for Wave (which ended up going nowhere because nobody I knew wanted to give it a try and I didn't have enough invites to hand them out without knowing people would use them). I tried to get on Orkut but never got an invite (until it had already basically become the "Facebook of South America"). I strongly believed in Google+ as a potential Facebook killer and used it early on. I was also an avid user of Reader in the Web 2.0 days. At this point, I no longer trust new Google products. Google seems to really want me to use Duo, for example, but nobody I know is eager to use it and I won't talk my friends into using it if it's not clear that it's here to stay. I'm not committing to any Google product if I don't have reason to believe they won't pull the rug whenever they please.
- rifung 8y ago
  > Google seems to really want me to use Duo, for example, but nobody I know is eager to use it and I won't talk my friends into using it if it's not clear that it's here to stay. Not to dismiss the rest of your point which is totally valid and a well deserved criticism, but you can use Duo to call people with Android phones even if they don't have Duo, so you don't actually need to convince them to use it.

lostmyoldone 8y ago

Ironical in this particular case, as inbox was the first mail client that helped my ADHD-PI brain keep a reasonably clean inbox, while still actually responding to people.