43 ms·

Google Hardware makes cuts to laptop and tablet development, cancels products

205 points by cattlefarmer 8y ago

jasonvorhe 8y ago
Not very surprising.
- CaptainJustin 8y ago
  I wonder if Google would benefit from spinning up new products and services in another brand or company. Later, they could migrate only what they plan on supporting in the long run. The cost of deprecating products every couple months has to be expensive - if only we could measure it. Is anyone aware of a good response to this concern? I understand that Google would rather deprecate something that not support it well but that does not mitigate the apparent risk of adopting / deploying Google products.
  - freehunter 8y ago
    That's what I figured they would do with Motorola, especially with the move to Alphabet. On the other hand, if it's under another brand name people may not associate it with "first party". When the Nexus line came out, one of the big selling features was "Android straight from Google themselves". If it was from Motorola, it'd be "Android straight from Google themselves because Google owns Motorola so hopefully their internal corporate structure means the two divisions have a close working relationship otherwise what's the point".
    - howard941 8y ago
      Does Alphabet still own any visible bits of Motorola? My phone claims to be Motorola, by Lenovo, complete with broken Bluetooth LE support....
      - freehunter 8y ago
        Alphabet sold Motorola to Lenovo a few years ago after doing really nothing productive with them.
        jessaustin 8y ago
        The Motorola phones of a few years ago were much more reliable than the two I've been stupid enough to buy since then.
burtonator 8y ago
Google can't seem to do anything right anymore. They're last place in cloud. They don't have a good search API product to compete with Algolia/Elasticsearch. They can't release new products. Can't build new hardware. The only things they have going for them are Youtube, Google (the search engine), Android, Chrome,... Basically everything they did 10 years ago. Even Android + Youtube were acquisitions. Another good example of too big to fail.
- ohaideredevs 8y ago
  GCP is the cleanest cloud platform by far. But it's also the one I know only in theory, whereas I have worked with Azure and AWS enough to seem them fail miserably, so maybe I have a case of rose-tinted glasses.
  - zihotki 8y ago
    I have experience with all three of them, indeed Azure fails miserably, AWS is a bit better but I didn't spend much time there. GCP is the most solid one and I had the least troubles there.
    - bilal4hmed 8y ago
      I use Azure at work and GCP for personal projects. GCP is by far the cleanest, easiest to work with
  - module0000 8y ago
    I haven't experienced this failure with AWS. I've had good experiences with both GCP and AWS, and a handful of terrible experiences with Azure. I don't know your particular use-case, but I end up being clean-up for AWS disasters, and each one's root cause was poor planning and/or execution. Likely the result of an over-ambitious employee or contractor trying to implement by the seat of their pants.
  - hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
    I've worked with GCP, and especially Firebase is a fantastic platform.
spaceflunky 8y ago
Building hardware is difficult. Like really difficult. More difficult that anyone expects it to be.
- dylan604 8y ago
  Sums up most of Kickstarter or any crowd funded hardware product that fails to launch. People get super excited about the prototype they built, but then come to realize that mass producing is way more difficult than anticipated. The money raised in crowd funding gets burned through faster than anticipated with the various iterations with each of their vendors. As guess could be said of any startup though. Not just hardware.
- therockhead 8y ago
  This is so true. Apple/Samsung make it look easy, with great reliable hardware every year. At work we had multiple google Pixel C tablets for dev reasons, and they were plagued with issues.
- cc439 8y ago
  Everyone assumes that designing a product for mass production must be easy since "industry" is a part of the "old economy" and thusly must have been so figured out that anyone can do it. The reality is that the past century of modern manufacturing development hasn't resulted in amazing amounts of simplicity just the same as how the "tech" world has only become more complex. The difference is one has a century of exponential complexity growth behind it while.the other has ~30 years of complexity growth in its modern era.
on_and_off 8y ago
It seems that the company is entirely unable to have a vision about anything. Too big to dare might also be a good way to describe them. They are not going to dare making e.g. one great messaging product (or even 2 .. there are after all some niches like office communication). Instead they do 7 and see which one works. Apparently launching a new product is also the only sure way to get a promotion at Google, not improving an existing one.
- s3r3nity 8y ago
  I am not an Apple fan-person by any means, but Steve Jobs had a Product philosophy that stuck with me many years after he described it: You can't start with a cool technology and build a product / user experience around it; you have to start with a vision of a coherent user experience, and build the technology around _that_. I think that's my biggest frustration with Google: they have interesting and really cool tech that is just way too fragmented. The structure of controlled chaos via launching many products as experiments and culling down to the "best" ones makes it difficult to provide consistent, cohesive experiences.
  - eikenberry 8y ago
    I think Google is bad at taking this advice because their original big success was a cool technology that they built a product / user experience around (their search tech).
    - trhway 8y ago
      > their original big success was a cool technology that they built a product / user experience around (their search tech). i think it is other way around - they significantly improved existing pain point of bad web search user experience by applying and implementing what in its core is citation analysis that had long been used in academia. The other successes also seem to start with a task or need at hand not with a cool tech - while Android may have started as a vision, its purchase was a result of the need for mobile OS, Youtube guy wanted a place to publish videos, Chrome originating from Webkit is definitely not a cool tech, more like Google didn't have enough strength/balls to go with Mozilla while having pressing need for a browser to control, Maps and GMail were significant improvement upon existing user experience, while in contrast Google Wave for example was cool tech for completely new, from scratch user experience.
itbeho 8y ago
Well damn... I have my dev environment running very nicely in a Pixelbook via Crostini and love it.
- gkfasdfasdf 8y ago
  Same here...crostini is awesome and I absolutely love the portability and keyboard/trackpad of the pixelbook.
- carlosdp 8y ago
  Yea I would very much like Pixelbook development to continue, I'm loving it as a main dev device.
ringaroll 8y ago
Sounds like a good reason not to buy new hardware from Google. They discontinue products too fast.
- pgeorgi 8y ago
  > They discontinue products too fast. Fashionable trope, but apparently this is more about unreleased products not being released? Every company has these, software, hardware or otherwise.
  - xvector 8y ago
    I'm sorry, but I definitely don't see this behavior from Apple or Microsoft.
    - DanCarvajal 8y ago
      What are you talking about? Microsoft courier never launched, Microsoft band was cancelled, Microsoft Kin phones were killed, Windows Phones were killed, plus their entertainment division has lots of cancellations. Microsoft cancels things all the time. Apple's got its own cancellations, maybe less noticeable stuff like their routers and cinema displays. But the photography world still mourns Aperture.
kevin_b_er 8y ago
I'll take this as the sign that entirety of Chromebook is at high risk of being canceled.
- akhilcacharya 8y ago
  Isn't it still wildly successful in the edu market? This would be shocking if they went this route. With that said, the Pixel Slate was an unmitigated failure so hopefully the only impact this has is on the Chromebook Pixel line.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    US education market, hardly noticeable anywhere else. Question is if one country is enough to keep it going, even one of the US's size.
    - electriclove 8y ago
      What are other countries using that would be as cheap to deliver/manage?
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        No idea, the point is that it didn't take off anywhere else. Here in Germany I only saw them a couple of times in a few consumer toolchains, as regular visitor it was interesting to watch their price being reduced across weeks until they could finally get rid of them, and never again on display.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > I'll take this as the sign that entirety of Chromebook is at high risk of being canceled. Google backing off on first-party work means that third parties that have always been the backbone of the Chromebook effort have less concern that Google's going to snatch the valuable segment of the market away from them, so I would say that its at least as likely to be a positive sign for Chromebook as a continuing effort as a negative one.
drdeadringer 8y ago
I may be soon in the market for a new Android tablet. Does anybody have suggestions?
- c256 8y ago
  Wait. As near as I can tell from the outside, there aren’t any good Android tablet options, and the problems are baked into the OS at a fairly deep level — deep enough that OEMs can’t really address them, and Google hasn’t shown any recent signs of being to do so either. (For example, read any review of the Pixel Slate). If you already have a software/app/etc niche you like, I hear the new Samsung tablets are decent (not ‘good’) and not too expensive.
- Marsymars 8y ago
  I gave up and got an iPad. I have a Fire HD 10 tablet that I use for international travel without personal data, but Fire OS is pretty unpleasant and I was hoping to replace it with a new Pixel laptop from Google. Not sure what I'll being doing about that now. (Also, I expect the number of people cross-shopping Fire tablets and Pixelbooks is vanishingly small.)
- surds 8y ago
  Have a Nexus and iPad at home. Would recommend the iPad over other Android tablets anytime.
- post_break 8y ago
  There's really only one game in town that isn't iPad and that's the samsung.
- readittwice 8y ago
  Google just recently abandoned Android and pushed ChromeOS for tablets. Now this, there is just no continuity with Google. Unless you absolutely need Android for some reason, I would recommend the iPad.
  - cbhl 8y ago
    Agree on the iPad recommendation. That said, 2-in-1 x86_64 Chrome OS devices are bearable. Unlike Android; all the drivers are upstream. I really like my Samsung Chromebook Pro, but would recommend looking for something that's on a later Linux kernel (at least 4.4) because not all the new features get backported. (See http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-fo... for a list of all the options.)
akhilcacharya 8y ago
The way I see it the only good pieces of Google Hardware are the Chromecasts (which are absolutely amazing devices, might be near perfection in terms of simplicity and price) and the Google Home (though that's still 2nd in the smart speaker market). Everything else is either niche (Google WiFi, which I forgot existed even as a techie) or a hanger on (Nest).
- rtkwe 8y ago
  The Pixel/Nexus phones have been my only phone for the last several years. I'd put them on the good list too just for giving a good phone without having to use Samsung's OS and avoid their attempt to force Bixby on the world.
  - Marsymars 8y ago
    I do wish they'd give their Nexus/Pixel devices some longer support periods though. The Lumia 950 was released at the same time as the Nexus 5X, and despite Windows 10 Mobile being dead, is receiving security updates for a full year longer than the Nexus.
  - akhilcacharya 8y ago
    I loved my Nexus 5... but the pixels have been incredibly disappointing in all respects save for the camera.
    - mohaine 8y ago
      The price is high but they are really nice. I bought Pixel 1 on launch day and still have no desire to upgrade. (To be fair I have replaced the device a few times due to cracked glass but still a Pixel 1). This could just be a slowdown in hardware needs thought. Good enough is sometimes good enough.
      - turbinerneiter 8y ago
        My Pixel 1 died for no reason 4 months after the warranty ended. Google Support basically said: "lol sucks". Repairing means dealing with a shitty third party service, and even the most trivial repair costs more than the device is worth. For me the high price was totally not worth it. I have a Pixel 3 which I bought 4 months after release for 30% less than the release price. I was considering an iPhone, but the cheapest one they sell in Germany is 850€, which is a bad joke. I got my Librem 5 devkit tough, and maybe, hopefully something will come out of that.
ChuckMcM 8y ago
The move comes after the group received pressure to turn Google Hardware into "a real business" from higher-ups at Google/Alphabet -- the squeeze continues unabated :-) Its too bad, since the Pixelbook is pretty nice and with actual investment it could have been something much more than it is, but alas it would not have the margins search advertising does. Back in the 90's I met the head of Xerox's PARC after he had given a talk on innovation. One of the challenges he saw was that gardening innovation was like gardening crops, which was to say it was very hard to know when sprouts had one leaf out of the ground which were weeds and which were crops. Ideas were the same way, you need to nurture them to at least adolescence before you can reasonably decide if they are going to go on to be great or not so great. From the outside, Google appears to be at that stage where they have not learned how to nurture an idea to see if it will be great or not before killing it.
- jpm_sd 8y ago
  As an Xoogler, I can tell you that promising products that "will never be a billion-dollar business" get killed all the time. $100M in projected revenue? Yawn. Kill it.
  - ChuckMcM 8y ago
    That was true when I was there as well. Organically Google needs to figure out how to create 100M businesses within itself that pay for the organizations that enable them, and staff them for long term success. Doing so would incrementally add a small bit of margin for each one. I expect though they are caught up in scarcity thinking, which leads to bad choices overall.
  - dv_dt 8y ago
    The odd part is that this doesn't select for billion-dollar businesses, it selects for billion-dollar businesses that can be developed with revenue growth that doesn't pass through $100m for more than x-years. Essentially billion dollar rev with discontinuous growth through lower revenue - this seems unnecessarily constrained for any business that plans to be around for the long haul.
remir 8y ago
In the grand scheme of things, I think it is a good thing that Google, or any other big tech company, isn't dominating every product category. Think about it: Google is dominating search and online advertising, they have the most popular web browser in the world, the most used mobile OS in the world, they have Youtube, Maps, Gmail, Chromebooks. Now imagine if they also ruled messaging, social media, had the most used laptops and tablet in the world, were dominating on cloud, etc... I cannot see that as being a good thing for consumer.
- lainga 8y ago
  Or for Google: it would just build an antitrust case against themselves.
abrowne 8y ago
Any impact on Fuchsia, I wonder? Or a much more short-term change?
jpm_sd 8y ago
I'm looking forward to the upcoming announcement of a Google game console in 2019 [0], and the subsequent announcement that it has been discontinued in 2022. [0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/03/all-signs-point-to-a-google-game-console-announcement-at-gdc/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/03/all-signs-point-to-a...
- Balvarez 8y ago
  Agreed. There's no way I'd buy a Google gaming console for this reason.
  - xvector 8y ago
    This is the issue with most Google products/services, period. Literally nothing outside of Google's core services is trustworthy. Even their mail isn't entirely trustworthy! I've come to rely on Inbox and it's being killed for an inferior product.
- stevenwoo 8y ago
  There was some hiring mini surge around 2006 or so where Google seemed to hire a lot of my game development coworkers and they already cancelled whatever they were working on within three years.
  - akchin 8y ago
    Ha - I think you might be thinking about 2009-2011 or so. That was the Google+ effort (under VicG) and thinking that games (like it did with Facebook) would be a key driver of growth. I think this was also around the time of the bad $180M+ acquisition of Slide to get Max Levchin. Lots of folks used this "social games" and the Google+ track to launch stuff and get promoted quickly and then after it shuts down, find another place within the org where they can now hang out with the nice salary that comes with the promotions they got. :-)
- optymizer 8y ago
  I used to believe in Google's ability to deliver quality devices: I bought the G2 when it first came out with its hardware keyboard, I've only owned Nexus and Pixel phones, and I've got Chromecasts in the house. I'm also the owner of a Google Nexus Player - remember that device? I liked the idea of an Android TV / console for Android games. I bought 4 gamepads they were selling for it. It was buggy. It was rarely updated. They stopped updates after about a year. Then it died unexpectedly - it didn't even last 2 years. Now I'm left with 4 bluetooth gamepads and a dead Nexus Player in a box in the basement. It saddens me to say this, but I would never buy a device from Google again unless it's the second+ iteration in a successful line of products, and even then I would have to factor the chance that they'll discontinue it at any time.
robocat 8y ago
Please build me a Linux laptop for software engineering, Google. For engineers only. No software support beyond ensuring the BIOS and the drivers work and are updated. I hate Dell, but I got a Dell XPS 15 because it was the only laptop I knew would: boot Linux reliably; last two Ubuntu LTS upgrades (4 years); have a high spec (i9 etc); and was reasonably priced (Apple tax was 50% higher for worse hardware). Is it impossible to make a laptop better than Dell or Apple? Google: how much goodwill would you receive through developer love? Why do I have to pay for Windows when the OS division seems to be actively working against making my work easier? Google, you have the skills and size to make a secure laptop. Google, maybe it is because most of your engineers internally just need a good terminal, instead of a fast laptop?
- jpm_sd 8y ago
  I have used a few different system76 laptops with Ubuntu LTS pre-installed (you can opt-out of Pop!OS, whatever that is!). They've been just fine for my purposes. https://system76.com/laptops https://system76.com/laptops
  - robocat 8y ago
    I am in New Zealand (we are far away from everything!) and I wanted something that at least had the potential to be supported locally.
- cletus 8y ago
  I'm not sure I understand what your issue with the Dell is. I mean I have a Dell XPS 15. It's... fine, I guess. As for the so-called "Apple tax", I just don't buy into this. I mean I miss the glory days of the 2011-2012 Macbook Airs. These were so cheaply priced they destroyed the competition because no one could produce a similar spec laptop at that price point. But then the numbers men decided dropping the average ASP for Macbooks was "bad" so they had to invent new features nobody needed or wanted to drive up the cost (Touchbar being the poster child) but for the hardware you get, it's actually pretty good. Or it was. > Is it impossible to make a laptop better than Dell or Apple? It's clearly not trivial. > Google: how much goodwill would you receive through developer love? Based on the bubble that is HN the answer is clearly "absolutely none". Just look at Chrome adding DDG as a search engine option. Where in that thread do you see people saying "this is great"? No, the top comments are littered with theories about how this is just an effort to avoid antitrust or other such ulterior motives. I guarantee you that if Google produced the laptop that you and 22 other people would buy you'd hear nothing but complaints about it.
ralmidani 8y ago
I used a Samsung Chromebook 2 (Exynos processor, 4GB RAM, 13 in. screen) as my primary laptop for a couple years. It was fast and quiet, but getting GNU/Linux running via Crouton meant jumping through hoops every time it powered off and back on. I now use a Macbook, and really wonder why any developer would buy a Pixelbook vs. a Macbook. If you want to run GNU/Linux, you can install a VM, and otherwise you still have a functional OS. Edit: I see the value proposition in $200-300 Chromebooks. I'm specifically puzzled by the Pixelbook, which starts at $999 (not much less expensive than a new Macbook Air).
- mav3rick 8y ago
  Chrome OS comes with Linux VMs now. You can do most dev work with it
  - ralmidani 8y ago
    Do you have to enable developer mode, and if so, does it stay enabled between boots?
    - netinstructions 8y ago
      No, as I understand it, that was the "old way" of doing it. The "new way" (which I think is called Project Crostini) is much smoother. I got a Pixelbook a couple months ago and it was as simple as going into the Chrome OS settings, clicking the button to enable Linux support, and then it sets you up with a terminal to Linux. I've had no issue accessing the Linux environment / apps between boots.
    - mav3rick 8y ago
      No. You don't. It's fully secure and the host OS is aware of it as a feature. You can see your Linux files in the Files app etc..
    - mav3rick 8y ago
      And yes it does stay enabled.
- 8y ago
izzydata 8y ago
Who do I have to kill to get a Nexus 7 (2020) model?
- ggm 8y ago
  Would that be without the bad eeprom hardware AND a headphone jack?
jmull 8y ago
"Dozens" of employees may indicate a fairly small course correction rather than a change in direction.
imroot 8y ago
The biggest issue that I have with google is product sustainability -- if something doesn't seem to have "Hockey stick" levels of growth and use, google kills it. Do I want to spend $500 on yet another google branded brick?
- threatofrain 8y ago
  Does Google kill hardware often? What's the previous Google brick you can remember?
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Does Google kill hardware often? Its killed several hardware projects (Nexus Q comes to mind immediately, though that only got into anyone's hands as a prerelease version at I/O 2012), but I don't know that any of those have involved bricking devices already sold (though cutting off software support and associated services may have reduced the potential lifespan for some, but that happens for old models from most makers even if the project isn't killed; Nexus Q, for instance, had support dropped in Google Play Music and Google Movies & TV in May and June of 2013.)
    - Rebelgecko 8y ago
      If we look at Alphabet and not just Google, there's the Revolv hub that was bricked. However they assured us that it's not the end... just the beginning of a new wonderful chapter in the journey of home automation, and sorry that the hardware we sold you doesn't work any more http://revolv.com/ http://revolv.com/
      - mkozlows 8y ago
        That's a product that was made by a failed company that Google acquihired people from. And Google supported it well past when that company would have if they had died on their own.
        8y ago
hiven 8y ago
It’s not really worth investing in google hardware in my opinion- you get invested and they just can it. They have no staying power.
bepvte 8y ago
I really loved the design of the pixelbook, but I just didnt see who would be interested in it. When I buy a 1,000$ machine i dont go for that kind of OS and it just didnt stand out very much. I wish the best to those who worked on these.
vkaku 8y ago
Well, Google wanted to promote ChromeOS, and now it's killing it and slaughter all the engineers involved in the project. Doesn't that sound hypocritical to say the least? Why axe those engineers? Why not get them to fix Android, Fuchsia or whatever needs fixing?
- naner 8y ago
  I don't think they're killing Chrome OS, Chromebooks seem to be as popular as ever with schools. Schools that can afford to buy Pixels probably would go for iPads instead, though. I doubt there is much of a market for high end Chrome OS hardware.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    US schools, hardly used anywhere else around the world.
mruts 8y ago
What's wrong with Google nowadays? They seem completely unable or unwilling to invest in anything besides search for longer than 3-4 years. Completely untrustworthy at this point. I would never buy another Google product ever again.

205 points by cattlefarmer 8y ago

jasonvorhe 8y ago

Not very surprising.

CaptainJustin 8y ago
I wonder if Google would benefit from spinning up new products and services in another brand or company. Later, they could migrate only what they plan on supporting in the long run. The cost of deprecating products every couple months has to be expensive - if only we could measure it. Is anyone aware of a good response to this concern? I understand that Google would rather deprecate something that not support it well but that does not mitigate the apparent risk of adopting / deploying Google products.
- freehunter 8y ago
  That's what I figured they would do with Motorola, especially with the move to Alphabet. On the other hand, if it's under another brand name people may not associate it with "first party". When the Nexus line came out, one of the big selling features was "Android straight from Google themselves". If it was from Motorola, it'd be "Android straight from Google themselves because Google owns Motorola so hopefully their internal corporate structure means the two divisions have a close working relationship otherwise what's the point".
  - howard941 8y ago
    Does Alphabet still own any visible bits of Motorola? My phone claims to be Motorola, by Lenovo, complete with broken Bluetooth LE support....
    - freehunter 8y ago
      Alphabet sold Motorola to Lenovo a few years ago after doing really nothing productive with them.
      - jessaustin 8y ago
        The Motorola phones of a few years ago were much more reliable than the two I've been stupid enough to buy since then.

burtonator 8y ago

Google can't seem to do anything right anymore. They're last place in cloud. They don't have a good search API product to compete with Algolia/Elasticsearch. They can't release new products. Can't build new hardware. The only things they have going for them are Youtube, Google (the search engine), Android, Chrome,... Basically everything they did 10 years ago. Even Android + Youtube were acquisitions. Another good example of too big to fail.

ohaideredevs 8y ago
GCP is the cleanest cloud platform by far. But it's also the one I know only in theory, whereas I have worked with Azure and AWS enough to seem them fail miserably, so maybe I have a case of rose-tinted glasses.
- zihotki 8y ago
  I have experience with all three of them, indeed Azure fails miserably, AWS is a bit better but I didn't spend much time there. GCP is the most solid one and I had the least troubles there.
  - bilal4hmed 8y ago
    I use Azure at work and GCP for personal projects. GCP is by far the cleanest, easiest to work with
- module0000 8y ago
  I haven't experienced this failure with AWS. I've had good experiences with both GCP and AWS, and a handful of terrible experiences with Azure. I don't know your particular use-case, but I end up being clean-up for AWS disasters, and each one's root cause was poor planning and/or execution. Likely the result of an over-ambitious employee or contractor trying to implement by the seat of their pants.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  I've worked with GCP, and especially Firebase is a fantastic platform.

spaceflunky 8y ago

Building hardware is difficult. Like really difficult. More difficult that anyone expects it to be.

dylan604 8y ago
Sums up most of Kickstarter or any crowd funded hardware product that fails to launch. People get super excited about the prototype they built, but then come to realize that mass producing is way more difficult than anticipated. The money raised in crowd funding gets burned through faster than anticipated with the various iterations with each of their vendors. As guess could be said of any startup though. Not just hardware.
therockhead 8y ago
This is so true. Apple/Samsung make it look easy, with great reliable hardware every year. At work we had multiple google Pixel C tablets for dev reasons, and they were plagued with issues.
cc439 8y ago
Everyone assumes that designing a product for mass production must be easy since "industry" is a part of the "old economy" and thusly must have been so figured out that anyone can do it. The reality is that the past century of modern manufacturing development hasn't resulted in amazing amounts of simplicity just the same as how the "tech" world has only become more complex. The difference is one has a century of exponential complexity growth behind it while.the other has ~30 years of complexity growth in its modern era.

on_and_off 8y ago

It seems that the company is entirely unable to have a vision about anything. Too big to dare might also be a good way to describe them. They are not going to dare making e.g. one great messaging product (or even 2 .. there are after all some niches like office communication). Instead they do 7 and see which one works. Apparently launching a new product is also the only sure way to get a promotion at Google, not improving an existing one.

s3r3nity 8y ago
I am not an Apple fan-person by any means, but Steve Jobs had a Product philosophy that stuck with me many years after he described it: You can't start with a cool technology and build a product / user experience around it; you have to start with a vision of a coherent user experience, and build the technology around _that_. I think that's my biggest frustration with Google: they have interesting and really cool tech that is just way too fragmented. The structure of controlled chaos via launching many products as experiments and culling down to the "best" ones makes it difficult to provide consistent, cohesive experiences.
- eikenberry 8y ago
  I think Google is bad at taking this advice because their original big success was a cool technology that they built a product / user experience around (their search tech).
  - trhway 8y ago
    > their original big success was a cool technology that they built a product / user experience around (their search tech). i think it is other way around - they significantly improved existing pain point of bad web search user experience by applying and implementing what in its core is citation analysis that had long been used in academia. The other successes also seem to start with a task or need at hand not with a cool tech - while Android may have started as a vision, its purchase was a result of the need for mobile OS, Youtube guy wanted a place to publish videos, Chrome originating from Webkit is definitely not a cool tech, more like Google didn't have enough strength/balls to go with Mozilla while having pressing need for a browser to control, Maps and GMail were significant improvement upon existing user experience, while in contrast Google Wave for example was cool tech for completely new, from scratch user experience.

itbeho 8y ago

Well damn... I have my dev environment running very nicely in a Pixelbook via Crostini and love it.

gkfasdfasdf 8y ago
Same here...crostini is awesome and I absolutely love the portability and keyboard/trackpad of the pixelbook.
carlosdp 8y ago
Yea I would very much like Pixelbook development to continue, I'm loving it as a main dev device.

ringaroll 8y ago

Sounds like a good reason not to buy new hardware from Google. They discontinue products too fast.

pgeorgi 8y ago
> They discontinue products too fast. Fashionable trope, but apparently this is more about unreleased products not being released? Every company has these, software, hardware or otherwise.
- xvector 8y ago
  I'm sorry, but I definitely don't see this behavior from Apple or Microsoft.
  - DanCarvajal 8y ago
    What are you talking about? Microsoft courier never launched, Microsoft band was cancelled, Microsoft Kin phones were killed, Windows Phones were killed, plus their entertainment division has lots of cancellations. Microsoft cancels things all the time. Apple's got its own cancellations, maybe less noticeable stuff like their routers and cinema displays. But the photography world still mourns Aperture.

kevin_b_er 8y ago

I'll take this as the sign that entirety of Chromebook is at high risk of being canceled.

akhilcacharya 8y ago
Isn't it still wildly successful in the edu market? This would be shocking if they went this route. With that said, the Pixel Slate was an unmitigated failure so hopefully the only impact this has is on the Chromebook Pixel line.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  US education market, hardly noticeable anywhere else. Question is if one country is enough to keep it going, even one of the US's size.
  - electriclove 8y ago
    What are other countries using that would be as cheap to deliver/manage?
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      No idea, the point is that it didn't take off anywhere else. Here in Germany I only saw them a couple of times in a few consumer toolchains, as regular visitor it was interesting to watch their price being reduced across weeks until they could finally get rid of them, and never again on display.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> I'll take this as the sign that entirety of Chromebook is at high risk of being canceled. Google backing off on first-party work means that third parties that have always been the backbone of the Chromebook effort have less concern that Google's going to snatch the valuable segment of the market away from them, so I would say that its at least as likely to be a positive sign for Chromebook as a continuing effort as a negative one.

drdeadringer 8y ago

I may be soon in the market for a new Android tablet. Does anybody have suggestions?

c256 8y ago
Wait. As near as I can tell from the outside, there aren’t any good Android tablet options, and the problems are baked into the OS at a fairly deep level — deep enough that OEMs can’t really address them, and Google hasn’t shown any recent signs of being to do so either. (For example, read any review of the Pixel Slate). If you already have a software/app/etc niche you like, I hear the new Samsung tablets are decent (not ‘good’) and not too expensive.
Marsymars 8y ago
I gave up and got an iPad. I have a Fire HD 10 tablet that I use for international travel without personal data, but Fire OS is pretty unpleasant and I was hoping to replace it with a new Pixel laptop from Google. Not sure what I'll being doing about that now. (Also, I expect the number of people cross-shopping Fire tablets and Pixelbooks is vanishingly small.)
surds 8y ago
Have a Nexus and iPad at home. Would recommend the iPad over other Android tablets anytime.
post_break 8y ago
There's really only one game in town that isn't iPad and that's the samsung.
readittwice 8y ago
Google just recently abandoned Android and pushed ChromeOS for tablets. Now this, there is just no continuity with Google. Unless you absolutely need Android for some reason, I would recommend the iPad.
- cbhl 8y ago
  Agree on the iPad recommendation. That said, 2-in-1 x86_64 Chrome OS devices are bearable. Unlike Android; all the drivers are upstream. I really like my Samsung Chromebook Pro, but would recommend looking for something that's on a later Linux kernel (at least 4.4) because not all the new features get backported. (See http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-fo... for a list of all the options.)

akhilcacharya 8y ago

The way I see it the only good pieces of Google Hardware are the Chromecasts (which are absolutely amazing devices, might be near perfection in terms of simplicity and price) and the Google Home (though that's still 2nd in the smart speaker market). Everything else is either niche (Google WiFi, which I forgot existed even as a techie) or a hanger on (Nest).

rtkwe 8y ago
The Pixel/Nexus phones have been my only phone for the last several years. I'd put them on the good list too just for giving a good phone without having to use Samsung's OS and avoid their attempt to force Bixby on the world.
- Marsymars 8y ago
  I do wish they'd give their Nexus/Pixel devices some longer support periods though. The Lumia 950 was released at the same time as the Nexus 5X, and despite Windows 10 Mobile being dead, is receiving security updates for a full year longer than the Nexus.
- akhilcacharya 8y ago
  I loved my Nexus 5... but the pixels have been incredibly disappointing in all respects save for the camera.
  - mohaine 8y ago
    The price is high but they are really nice. I bought Pixel 1 on launch day and still have no desire to upgrade. (To be fair I have replaced the device a few times due to cracked glass but still a Pixel 1). This could just be a slowdown in hardware needs thought. Good enough is sometimes good enough.
    - turbinerneiter 8y ago
      My Pixel 1 died for no reason 4 months after the warranty ended. Google Support basically said: "lol sucks". Repairing means dealing with a shitty third party service, and even the most trivial repair costs more than the device is worth. For me the high price was totally not worth it. I have a Pixel 3 which I bought 4 months after release for 30% less than the release price. I was considering an iPhone, but the cheapest one they sell in Germany is 850€, which is a bad joke. I got my Librem 5 devkit tough, and maybe, hopefully something will come out of that.

ChuckMcM 8y ago

The move comes after the group received pressure to turn Google Hardware into "a real business" from higher-ups at Google/Alphabet -- the squeeze continues unabated :-) Its too bad, since the Pixelbook is pretty nice and with actual investment it could have been something much more than it is, but alas it would not have the margins search advertising does. Back in the 90's I met the head of Xerox's PARC after he had given a talk on innovation. One of the challenges he saw was that gardening innovation was like gardening crops, which was to say it was very hard to know when sprouts had one leaf out of the ground which were weeds and which were crops. Ideas were the same way, you need to nurture them to at least adolescence before you can reasonably decide if they are going to go on to be great or not so great. From the outside, Google appears to be at that stage where they have not learned how to nurture an idea to see if it will be great or not before killing it.

jpm_sd 8y ago
As an Xoogler, I can tell you that promising products that "will never be a billion-dollar business" get killed all the time. $100M in projected revenue? Yawn. Kill it.
- ChuckMcM 8y ago
  That was true when I was there as well. Organically Google needs to figure out how to create 100M businesses within itself that pay for the organizations that enable them, and staff them for long term success. Doing so would incrementally add a small bit of margin for each one. I expect though they are caught up in scarcity thinking, which leads to bad choices overall.
- dv_dt 8y ago
  The odd part is that this doesn't select for billion-dollar businesses, it selects for billion-dollar businesses that can be developed with revenue growth that doesn't pass through $100m for more than x-years. Essentially billion dollar rev with discontinuous growth through lower revenue - this seems unnecessarily constrained for any business that plans to be around for the long haul.

remir 8y ago

In the grand scheme of things, I think it is a good thing that Google, or any other big tech company, isn't dominating every product category. Think about it: Google is dominating search and online advertising, they have the most popular web browser in the world, the most used mobile OS in the world, they have Youtube, Maps, Gmail, Chromebooks. Now imagine if they also ruled messaging, social media, had the most used laptops and tablet in the world, were dominating on cloud, etc... I cannot see that as being a good thing for consumer.

lainga 8y ago
Or for Google: it would just build an antitrust case against themselves.

abrowne 8y ago

Any impact on Fuchsia, I wonder? Or a much more short-term change?

jpm_sd 8y ago

I'm looking forward to the upcoming announcement of a Google game console in 2019 [0], and the subsequent announcement that it has been discontinued in 2022. [0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/03/all-signs-point-to-a-google-game-console-announcement-at-gdc/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/03/all-signs-point-to-a...

Balvarez 8y ago
Agreed. There's no way I'd buy a Google gaming console for this reason.
- xvector 8y ago
  This is the issue with most Google products/services, period. Literally nothing outside of Google's core services is trustworthy. Even their mail isn't entirely trustworthy! I've come to rely on Inbox and it's being killed for an inferior product.
stevenwoo 8y ago
There was some hiring mini surge around 2006 or so where Google seemed to hire a lot of my game development coworkers and they already cancelled whatever they were working on within three years.
- akchin 8y ago
  Ha - I think you might be thinking about 2009-2011 or so. That was the Google+ effort (under VicG) and thinking that games (like it did with Facebook) would be a key driver of growth. I think this was also around the time of the bad $180M+ acquisition of Slide to get Max Levchin. Lots of folks used this "social games" and the Google+ track to launch stuff and get promoted quickly and then after it shuts down, find another place within the org where they can now hang out with the nice salary that comes with the promotions they got. :-)
optymizer 8y ago
I used to believe in Google's ability to deliver quality devices: I bought the G2 when it first came out with its hardware keyboard, I've only owned Nexus and Pixel phones, and I've got Chromecasts in the house. I'm also the owner of a Google Nexus Player - remember that device? I liked the idea of an Android TV / console for Android games. I bought 4 gamepads they were selling for it. It was buggy. It was rarely updated. They stopped updates after about a year. Then it died unexpectedly - it didn't even last 2 years. Now I'm left with 4 bluetooth gamepads and a dead Nexus Player in a box in the basement. It saddens me to say this, but I would never buy a device from Google again unless it's the second+ iteration in a successful line of products, and even then I would have to factor the chance that they'll discontinue it at any time.

robocat 8y ago

Please build me a Linux laptop for software engineering, Google. For engineers only. No software support beyond ensuring the BIOS and the drivers work and are updated. I hate Dell, but I got a Dell XPS 15 because it was the only laptop I knew would: boot Linux reliably; last two Ubuntu LTS upgrades (4 years); have a high spec (i9 etc); and was reasonably priced (Apple tax was 50% higher for worse hardware). Is it impossible to make a laptop better than Dell or Apple? Google: how much goodwill would you receive through developer love? Why do I have to pay for Windows when the OS division seems to be actively working against making my work easier? Google, you have the skills and size to make a secure laptop. Google, maybe it is because most of your engineers internally just need a good terminal, instead of a fast laptop?

jpm_sd 8y ago
I have used a few different system76 laptops with Ubuntu LTS pre-installed (you can opt-out of Pop!OS, whatever that is!). They've been just fine for my purposes. https://system76.com/laptops https://system76.com/laptops
- robocat 8y ago
  I am in New Zealand (we are far away from everything!) and I wanted something that at least had the potential to be supported locally.
cletus 8y ago
I'm not sure I understand what your issue with the Dell is. I mean I have a Dell XPS 15. It's... fine, I guess. As for the so-called "Apple tax", I just don't buy into this. I mean I miss the glory days of the 2011-2012 Macbook Airs. These were so cheaply priced they destroyed the competition because no one could produce a similar spec laptop at that price point. But then the numbers men decided dropping the average ASP for Macbooks was "bad" so they had to invent new features nobody needed or wanted to drive up the cost (Touchbar being the poster child) but for the hardware you get, it's actually pretty good. Or it was. > Is it impossible to make a laptop better than Dell or Apple? It's clearly not trivial. > Google: how much goodwill would you receive through developer love? Based on the bubble that is HN the answer is clearly "absolutely none". Just look at Chrome adding DDG as a search engine option. Where in that thread do you see people saying "this is great"? No, the top comments are littered with theories about how this is just an effort to avoid antitrust or other such ulterior motives. I guarantee you that if Google produced the laptop that you and 22 other people would buy you'd hear nothing but complaints about it.

ralmidani 8y ago

I used a Samsung Chromebook 2 (Exynos processor, 4GB RAM, 13 in. screen) as my primary laptop for a couple years. It was fast and quiet, but getting GNU/Linux running via Crouton meant jumping through hoops every time it powered off and back on. I now use a Macbook, and really wonder why any developer would buy a Pixelbook vs. a Macbook. If you want to run GNU/Linux, you can install a VM, and otherwise you still have a functional OS. Edit: I see the value proposition in $200-300 Chromebooks. I'm specifically puzzled by the Pixelbook, which starts at $999 (not much less expensive than a new Macbook Air).

mav3rick 8y ago
Chrome OS comes with Linux VMs now. You can do most dev work with it
- ralmidani 8y ago
  Do you have to enable developer mode, and if so, does it stay enabled between boots?
  - netinstructions 8y ago
    No, as I understand it, that was the "old way" of doing it. The "new way" (which I think is called Project Crostini) is much smoother. I got a Pixelbook a couple months ago and it was as simple as going into the Chrome OS settings, clicking the button to enable Linux support, and then it sets you up with a terminal to Linux. I've had no issue accessing the Linux environment / apps between boots.
  - mav3rick 8y ago
    No. You don't. It's fully secure and the host OS is aware of it as a feature. You can see your Linux files in the Files app etc..
  - mav3rick 8y ago
    And yes it does stay enabled.
8y ago

izzydata 8y ago

Who do I have to kill to get a Nexus 7 (2020) model?

ggm 8y ago
Would that be without the bad eeprom hardware AND a headphone jack?

jmull 8y ago

"Dozens" of employees may indicate a fairly small course correction rather than a change in direction.

imroot 8y ago

The biggest issue that I have with google is product sustainability -- if something doesn't seem to have "Hockey stick" levels of growth and use, google kills it. Do I want to spend $500 on yet another google branded brick?

threatofrain 8y ago
Does Google kill hardware often? What's the previous Google brick you can remember?
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Does Google kill hardware often? Its killed several hardware projects (Nexus Q comes to mind immediately, though that only got into anyone's hands as a prerelease version at I/O 2012), but I don't know that any of those have involved bricking devices already sold (though cutting off software support and associated services may have reduced the potential lifespan for some, but that happens for old models from most makers even if the project isn't killed; Nexus Q, for instance, had support dropped in Google Play Music and Google Movies & TV in May and June of 2013.)
  - Rebelgecko 8y ago
    If we look at Alphabet and not just Google, there's the Revolv hub that was bricked. However they assured us that it's not the end... just the beginning of a new wonderful chapter in the journey of home automation, and sorry that the hardware we sold you doesn't work any more http://revolv.com/ http://revolv.com/
    - mkozlows 8y ago
      That's a product that was made by a failed company that Google acquihired people from. And Google supported it well past when that company would have if they had died on their own.
      - 8y ago

hiven 8y ago

It’s not really worth investing in google hardware in my opinion- you get invested and they just can it. They have no staying power.

bepvte 8y ago

I really loved the design of the pixelbook, but I just didnt see who would be interested in it. When I buy a 1,000$ machine i dont go for that kind of OS and it just didnt stand out very much. I wish the best to those who worked on these.

vkaku 8y ago

Well, Google wanted to promote ChromeOS, and now it's killing it and slaughter all the engineers involved in the project. Doesn't that sound hypocritical to say the least? Why axe those engineers? Why not get them to fix Android, Fuchsia or whatever needs fixing?

naner 8y ago
I don't think they're killing Chrome OS, Chromebooks seem to be as popular as ever with schools. Schools that can afford to buy Pixels probably would go for iPads instead, though. I doubt there is much of a market for high end Chrome OS hardware.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  US schools, hardly used anywhere else around the world.

mruts 8y ago

What's wrong with Google nowadays? They seem completely unable or unwilling to invest in anything besides search for longer than 3-4 years. Completely untrustworthy at this point. I would never buy another Google product ever again.