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Hacker News: LOL! Google has so many messaging apps, their product strategy sucks! Google: They're right, we need to focus our messaging strategy. Let's consol

• drstewart 8y ago
  Everyone except Google knew Allo was a bad idea before it even launched though.
  • moonsun 8y ago
    Personally, I'd be on board with Allo if it was incognito mode by default with no option for the currently default mode.
    • iainmerrick 8y ago
      That wouldn’t be a Google product.
• thaumasiotes 8y ago
  Yep, you can see this exact process more seriously sidethread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18613860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18613860 . >> I complain about Google having too many competing/overlapping products, so I can't really complain when they close/merge them. But I tend to agree that "Hacker News" is right to complain in both cases. Messaging is one of those areas where the existence of products you (the consumer) don't use can hurt you, so criticism #1 stuck. The only fix played right into criticism #2. Does that mean #2 isn't a real problem? No, in general it's even worse than problem #1. The real lesson to be drawn here is that, if you get into a "bad" situation, you may not have a "good" way out. This message traditionally got hammered home by tragedies, but tragedies are massively unpopular with modern audiences.
• baroffoos 8y ago
  Google starts and ends products so fast I can't even tell you what the current google messaging system is.
  • AlexandrB 8y ago
    Exactly right. When I read that Google was shutting down Hangouts, I started thinking that the startup I work at would have to move to Slack. Then I slowly realized/remembered that Chat is not Hangouts. I can't keep these things straight anymore. I had completely forgotten about Allo until I read this headline.
• atombender 8y ago
  It's ironic, but I also don't see a huge contradiction. Launching terrible services is bad. Shutting down services that people have genuinely come to rely on is also bad. But shutting down services that were meritless to begin with -- not a problem, but at the same a good opportunity to criticize Google for their aimless, lukewarm product strategy. Or complete lack of product strategy. Hard to tell. The real fix is to have a cohesive vision and try to only create products that have merit, high quality and serious commitment behind it. A failure now and then is one thing -- every large company has a little graveyard of failed products -- but to keep making the same mistake repeatedly is something else entirely.
• brownbat 8y ago
  These both signal that Google often wastes its resources through poor planning. If you have developers working on competing products, you're wasting developer time. If you inevitably shut down products, you're wasting developer time. They are the same phenomenon. The coherent recommendation isn't for more or fewer products, it's for some kind of product strategy.
• EpicEng 8y ago
  It's the same problem. Google dips their toes into too many ponds, doesn't commit, and then EOL's a product people care about (not sure that's the case here.) It's that cycle people don't like, so of course there are complaints on both ends.