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> you get a company that throws stuff at the wall to see if it sticks, and if it doesn't kills it immediately. I would love if they followed this strategy. In

> you get a company that throws stuff at the wall to see if it sticks, and if it doesn't kills it immediately. I would love if they followed this strategy. Instead, you have products like reader and inbox with many passionate users, which demonstrate some wall stickiness, and they're killed rather than monetized. Monetize me. I recognize that the things I like cost money. Figure out how to make money off me! I would have accepted ads in reader or inbox. Hell, I would have paid dollars to make those ads go away even.

michaelbuckbee 8y ago
Google reader is the one that kills me. Not only do they not monetize it / promote it, but it's Google subsidized free existence killed the market for alternatives. Then Google+ and their failed social efforts killed Reader and RSS feeds have now disappeared from the landscape leaving us with only proprietary options.
- jamesgeck0 8y ago
  > it's Google subsidized free existence killed the market for alternatives Did it? IIRC, there were at least six decent alternatives available when Reader closed. More if you count desktop and mobile applications.
  - s0rce 8y ago
    I tested a few that appeared from the ashes. Ended up not liking most of them but eventually found bazqux and pay them money.
    - CobrastanJorji 8y ago
      I switched to Feedly the day they announced the shutdown because it could import from Reader, looked like Reader, and used a lot of the same shortcuts. Is bazqux better?
      - acemarke 8y ago
        Haven't used Feedly, but I was a hardcore Google Reader user, and I _love_ BazQux Reader. It does exactly what I need - shows RSS, has APIs that allow mobile apps to hook in, is fast, and it _just works_. Totally worth the $20/yr, and I'm amazed more folks don't talk about it.
      - amyjess 8y ago
        I found the way Feedly handles scrolling to be aggravating to the point where I couldn't use it. The Old Reader is great, but it doesn't have a mobile app. For a while, I ended up having accounts with both The Old Reader and Feedly, so I could use The Old Reader on desktop and GReader (a Feedly client) on mobile.
        jamesgeck0 8y ago
        The Old Reader is compatible with a number of 3rd party clients, including GReader.
        amyjess 8y ago
        Ah thanks. It's been a while since I've used RSS, though... I eventually gave up after a while.
jfasi 8y ago
The metric you need to keep in mind here is revenue per employee. Keeping one product up and running necessarily means withholding engineers from another. As an extreme example, ads engineers make Google many times their salary, benefits, and ephemeral costs, and even non-revenue-generating services like Photos and Assistant indirectly drive traffic to the money makers. Meanwhile, consider Reader. A product with only a couple million users, mostly pointy-headed techie types, that doesn’t drive business to any money-making effort, with no alignment with any stategic effort, that could be reimplemented by a particularly talented and hardworking high school senior, staffed by about a dozen engineers. That product will be the first on the chopping block, if only to encourage those engineering resources to find more profitable employment.
- RPLong 8y ago
  This comment makes it sound as if you don't think generating massive amounts of goodwill among your most passionate customer base "drives business." Google Reader was the loss leader that drove me deeply into Google's whole suite of applications and made me a paying customer of theirs.
- throw_away 8y ago
  I feel this is a sort of corporate Dutch Disease. Highly profitable sectors drive out investment in the rest. I get this, but then why even launch if there's no vision at all beyond cancel it in a couple years since they're not willing to even try to drive new revenue with these? No profits, burnt goodwill—cynically, I wonder, is it just make-work to keep restless engineers happy and out of the arms of potential upstarts and competitors? Cool cool, if that's what you must do. Google can go on making piles of cash with their money engines and on the side, going through an elaborate game of charades as if they were making real products so they can figure out who gets get a promotion for best pretending to create anything of actual value. But, I'm going to ignore all Google product launches and treat them as the mistimed april fools jokes they are.
  - cpeterso 8y ago
    For people (like me) who hadn't heard of Dutch Disease: "In economics, the Dutch disease is the apparent causal relationship between the increase in the economic development of a specific sector (for example natural resources) and a decline in other sectors (like the manufacturing sector or agriculture)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
linsomniac 8y ago
Google is in a unique position there: I often will avoid adding a new small service that I might like because I don't want to add another small payment I have to manage. With Google, I'm already paying them for storage and Youtube. I wouldn't think nearly as hard about adding a new Google service as I do others.

michaelbuckbee 8y ago

Google reader is the one that kills me. Not only do they not monetize it / promote it, but it's Google subsidized free existence killed the market for alternatives. Then Google+ and their failed social efforts killed Reader and RSS feeds have now disappeared from the landscape leaving us with only proprietary options.

jamesgeck0 8y ago
> it's Google subsidized free existence killed the market for alternatives Did it? IIRC, there were at least six decent alternatives available when Reader closed. More if you count desktop and mobile applications.
- s0rce 8y ago
  I tested a few that appeared from the ashes. Ended up not liking most of them but eventually found bazqux and pay them money.
  - CobrastanJorji 8y ago
    I switched to Feedly the day they announced the shutdown because it could import from Reader, looked like Reader, and used a lot of the same shortcuts. Is bazqux better?
    - acemarke 8y ago
      Haven't used Feedly, but I was a hardcore Google Reader user, and I _love_ BazQux Reader. It does exactly what I need - shows RSS, has APIs that allow mobile apps to hook in, is fast, and it _just works_. Totally worth the $20/yr, and I'm amazed more folks don't talk about it.
    - amyjess 8y ago
      I found the way Feedly handles scrolling to be aggravating to the point where I couldn't use it. The Old Reader is great, but it doesn't have a mobile app. For a while, I ended up having accounts with both The Old Reader and Feedly, so I could use The Old Reader on desktop and GReader (a Feedly client) on mobile.
      - jamesgeck0 8y ago
        The Old Reader is compatible with a number of 3rd party clients, including GReader.
        amyjess 8y ago
        Ah thanks. It's been a while since I've used RSS, though... I eventually gave up after a while.

jfasi 8y ago

The metric you need to keep in mind here is revenue per employee. Keeping one product up and running necessarily means withholding engineers from another. As an extreme example, ads engineers make Google many times their salary, benefits, and ephemeral costs, and even non-revenue-generating services like Photos and Assistant indirectly drive traffic to the money makers. Meanwhile, consider Reader. A product with only a couple million users, mostly pointy-headed techie types, that doesn’t drive business to any money-making effort, with no alignment with any stategic effort, that could be reimplemented by a particularly talented and hardworking high school senior, staffed by about a dozen engineers. That product will be the first on the chopping block, if only to encourage those engineering resources to find more profitable employment.

RPLong 8y ago
This comment makes it sound as if you don't think generating massive amounts of goodwill among your most passionate customer base "drives business." Google Reader was the loss leader that drove me deeply into Google's whole suite of applications and made me a paying customer of theirs.
throw_away 8y ago
I feel this is a sort of corporate Dutch Disease. Highly profitable sectors drive out investment in the rest. I get this, but then why even launch if there's no vision at all beyond cancel it in a couple years since they're not willing to even try to drive new revenue with these? No profits, burnt goodwill—cynically, I wonder, is it just make-work to keep restless engineers happy and out of the arms of potential upstarts and competitors? Cool cool, if that's what you must do. Google can go on making piles of cash with their money engines and on the side, going through an elaborate game of charades as if they were making real products so they can figure out who gets get a promotion for best pretending to create anything of actual value. But, I'm going to ignore all Google product launches and treat them as the mistimed april fools jokes they are.
- cpeterso 8y ago
  For people (like me) who hadn't heard of Dutch Disease: "In economics, the Dutch disease is the apparent causal relationship between the increase in the economic development of a specific sector (for example natural resources) and a decline in other sectors (like the manufacturing sector or agriculture)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease

linsomniac 8y ago

Google is in a unique position there: I often will avoid adding a new small service that I might like because I don't want to add another small payment I have to manage. With Google, I'm already paying them for storage and Youtube. I wouldn't think nearly as hard about adding a new Google service as I do others.