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Agreed ; but the fact that people notice the pattern and are either amused or disappointed by it, to me is telling that maybe they're doing something wrong abou

Agreed ; but the fact that people notice the pattern and are either amused or disappointed by it, to me is telling that maybe they're doing something wrong about it. Google isn't a startup and tends to shutdown services that are popular but on which they can't find a correct business model (e.g. Reader or Inbox) without much warning, actual replacement options, or open sourcing solutions for self hosting. Since they're so large, that creates a discrepancy between the stability you would expect from an established company, and the "kill your babies" culture they clearly have. Past behaviour predicts future behaviour, and so people start to notice that and lose trust, which is a problem when you start asking for significant investments from your customers (e.g. Stadia or Nest).

AJ007 7y ago
They need to stop slapping their name on every product launch. Look at Amazon, they have a lot of white label brands and almost none of the customers have a clue they are purchasing Amazon's own brands. This clearly isn't the only problem Google is having. They need a top and mid level management purge, and new leadership needs to figure out why the hell they need over 200,000 employees and contractors to run a search engine and Youtube.
- jogjayr 7y ago
  Google's offers a bit more than "a search engine and Youtube." They also have Android, Maps, Drive, Chrome, Photos, Cloud, and hardware (Nest, Pixel, Chromebooks).
  - andrewnc 7y ago
    Agreed, I think the parent comment was implying that those few services are making a disproportionate amount of the company's revenue compared to what most employees are working on
  - matheussampaio 7y ago
    Also Google Docs/Spreadsheet/Forms/Slides, Google Calendar, Google Translate, GMail, Inbox, Google Analytics, and lot of internal tools.
    - eastendguy 7y ago
      ...but these pay for themselves?
      - xiphias2 7y ago
        If you include the ad revenue from links to Google Search (which you should), then definately yes.
        scarface74 7y ago
        Google docs has no link to ads. I’ve never used the Google Calendar web interface. I just use it with the built in calendar app on iOS. Same with gmail. Rumors are that Youtube is barely at break even after all of these years. As far as Android, it came out in the Oracle trial that it has made less than $40 billion in profit during its entire existence. Which isn’t nothing, but seeing that Google has close to 80% market share (not including AOSP based Android phones in China) is not really impressive.
        xiphias2 7y ago
        You may be right with the apps, but Google is paying a lot Apple for providing the default search engine. It doesn't need to pay for being the default for Android (other companies pay Google for Play Sevices). Mobile revenue is at this point bigger than desktop revenue, so Android and Chrome were really necessary projects for Google to not lose direct contact with users. With youtube you're right, it took a lot of time to be slightly profitable, but I'm happy to pay for it monthly, as I'm learning a lot from youtube videos.
        scarface74 7y ago
  - v7p1Qbt1im 7y ago
    Most of the headcount growth is cloud atm. But even so. They hire top talent exclusively pretty much. So It‘s advantageous to retain as many as possible and let them choose projects or build new ones. It doesn‘t matter. Worst case the project doesn‘t go anywhere, at best it‘s something useful or successful. Either way, the main point is to stop them running off to other FAANG‘s. Talent is the most important thing they have and it‘s important for them to stay the top employer for new hires.
- jicailh 7y ago
  "What got us here today will not get us where we want to be tomorrow". - A quote from someone smarter than me.
polote 7y ago
> Google isn't a startup and tends to shutdown services that are popular but on which they can't find a correct business mode Yes this is true, If you visualize Google as an incubator, then instead of talking about service you can talk about startup, and then what is happening is just the real life of an incubator, some projects fail, some success. People are quoting all the time "failure is good for success" but when Google is doing it, sounds like they disagree
- mayankkaizen 7y ago
  Though Google might still have a start-up culture, general public doesn't perceive Google to be a start-up. Now everyone, may be except techies, consider Google as an established brand which offers top quality product. General public doesn't know much about startup culture or business.
- cannonedhamster 7y ago
  Wouldn't that have been what Project X or Google labs was for? People don't generally like to constantly be unwilling beta testers. Google is doing it wrong. They ditch popular products that could work and are popular instead of spinning them out. They buy and then kill profitable and popular products. Google hasn't really had a successful project in a while. The last major one I can think of being Google Docs. Google sometimes builds applications that compete with their own products and then kills both the stable and new product. What people expect is that one you have a stable of popular and successful products that you will either focus or provide long term support for the products that they rely on, whether you have to move to a different model or not. Microsoft and Apple both build new products and don't have the same animus directed at them because there's and expectation of stability or planning when a product gets sunsetted. How long did XP last? Windows 7 still gets security updates even if it's a dead product. Google just kills things, even Google Fiber that people rely on, with no transition plan and messaging that basically reflects that customers or users of the product don't matter to then at all. Google has worked hard to get their bad reputation and it turned from a darling into a dangerous entity.
paulryanrogers 7y ago
> Since they're so large, that creates a discrepancy between the stability you would expect from an established company, and the "kill your babies" culture they clearly have. Curious why they don't spin some of these out, or sell to, independent businesses. Reader looks like it could have at least been profitable.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Swenrekcah 7y ago
  I think they wouldn’t do that because their whole thing is to become the only software provider in the world.
- HALtheWise 7y ago
  There's a lot of reasons, but at least part of the answer is technical. Most Google software is extremely dependent on a massive set of proprietary internal libraries, and it is so difficult to disentangle them that rewriting the entire thing from scratch is often easier (like they did to create Docker). I'm not sure whether it is possible to provide a contractual lease to an external company granting access to the entire Google codebase, but it certainly has enough challenges they would rather avoid it if they can.
- yoz-y 7y ago
  When Reeder died other software appeared, Feedly and Feedbin to name two. I guess that for many systems it makes more sense to rewrite them.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Curious why they don't spin some of these out, or sell to, independent businesses. Reader looks like it could have at least been profitable. Probably because of self-competition and proprietary shared dependencies; Reader, IIRC, was killed partially because it was incompatible with the way some of it's internal infrastructure dependencies were being evolved to support other services with more promising business prospects; it couldn't practically be sold off as is (and even if the infrastructure was forked, the people maintaining it wouldn't go with it, since they were being retasked.) And lots of Google products that are killed are killed in favor of other Google products with overlapping markets, so selling them off would mean Google would be fueling competition to the services it wanted to focus on. In many cases, I suspect both factors apply to individual products.

AJ007 7y ago

They need to stop slapping their name on every product launch. Look at Amazon, they have a lot of white label brands and almost none of the customers have a clue they are purchasing Amazon's own brands. This clearly isn't the only problem Google is having. They need a top and mid level management purge, and new leadership needs to figure out why the hell they need over 200,000 employees and contractors to run a search engine and Youtube.

jogjayr 7y ago
Google's offers a bit more than "a search engine and Youtube." They also have Android, Maps, Drive, Chrome, Photos, Cloud, and hardware (Nest, Pixel, Chromebooks).
- andrewnc 7y ago
  Agreed, I think the parent comment was implying that those few services are making a disproportionate amount of the company's revenue compared to what most employees are working on
- matheussampaio 7y ago
  Also Google Docs/Spreadsheet/Forms/Slides, Google Calendar, Google Translate, GMail, Inbox, Google Analytics, and lot of internal tools.
  - eastendguy 7y ago
    ...but these pay for themselves?
    - xiphias2 7y ago
      If you include the ad revenue from links to Google Search (which you should), then definately yes.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Google docs has no link to ads. I’ve never used the Google Calendar web interface. I just use it with the built in calendar app on iOS. Same with gmail. Rumors are that Youtube is barely at break even after all of these years. As far as Android, it came out in the Oracle trial that it has made less than $40 billion in profit during its entire existence. Which isn’t nothing, but seeing that Google has close to 80% market share (not including AOSP based Android phones in China) is not really impressive.
        xiphias2 7y ago
        You may be right with the apps, but Google is paying a lot Apple for providing the default search engine. It doesn't need to pay for being the default for Android (other companies pay Google for Play Sevices). Mobile revenue is at this point bigger than desktop revenue, so Android and Chrome were really necessary projects for Google to not lose direct contact with users. With youtube you're right, it took a lot of time to be slightly profitable, but I'm happy to pay for it monthly, as I'm learning a lot from youtube videos.
        scarface74 7y ago
- v7p1Qbt1im 7y ago
  Most of the headcount growth is cloud atm. But even so. They hire top talent exclusively pretty much. So It‘s advantageous to retain as many as possible and let them choose projects or build new ones. It doesn‘t matter. Worst case the project doesn‘t go anywhere, at best it‘s something useful or successful. Either way, the main point is to stop them running off to other FAANG‘s. Talent is the most important thing they have and it‘s important for them to stay the top employer for new hires.
jicailh 7y ago
"What got us here today will not get us where we want to be tomorrow". - A quote from someone smarter than me.

polote 7y ago

> Google isn't a startup and tends to shutdown services that are popular but on which they can't find a correct business mode Yes this is true, If you visualize Google as an incubator, then instead of talking about service you can talk about startup, and then what is happening is just the real life of an incubator, some projects fail, some success. People are quoting all the time "failure is good for success" but when Google is doing it, sounds like they disagree

mayankkaizen 7y ago
Though Google might still have a start-up culture, general public doesn't perceive Google to be a start-up. Now everyone, may be except techies, consider Google as an established brand which offers top quality product. General public doesn't know much about startup culture or business.
cannonedhamster 7y ago
Wouldn't that have been what Project X or Google labs was for? People don't generally like to constantly be unwilling beta testers. Google is doing it wrong. They ditch popular products that could work and are popular instead of spinning them out. They buy and then kill profitable and popular products. Google hasn't really had a successful project in a while. The last major one I can think of being Google Docs. Google sometimes builds applications that compete with their own products and then kills both the stable and new product. What people expect is that one you have a stable of popular and successful products that you will either focus or provide long term support for the products that they rely on, whether you have to move to a different model or not. Microsoft and Apple both build new products and don't have the same animus directed at them because there's and expectation of stability or planning when a product gets sunsetted. How long did XP last? Windows 7 still gets security updates even if it's a dead product. Google just kills things, even Google Fiber that people rely on, with no transition plan and messaging that basically reflects that customers or users of the product don't matter to then at all. Google has worked hard to get their bad reputation and it turned from a darling into a dangerous entity.

paulryanrogers 7y ago

> Since they're so large, that creates a discrepancy between the stability you would expect from an established company, and the "kill your babies" culture they clearly have. Curious why they don't spin some of these out, or sell to, independent businesses. Reader looks like it could have at least been profitable.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Swenrekcah 7y ago
I think they wouldn’t do that because their whole thing is to become the only software provider in the world.
HALtheWise 7y ago
There's a lot of reasons, but at least part of the answer is technical. Most Google software is extremely dependent on a massive set of proprietary internal libraries, and it is so difficult to disentangle them that rewriting the entire thing from scratch is often easier (like they did to create Docker). I'm not sure whether it is possible to provide a contractual lease to an external company granting access to the entire Google codebase, but it certainly has enough challenges they would rather avoid it if they can.
yoz-y 7y ago
When Reeder died other software appeared, Feedly and Feedbin to name two. I guess that for many systems it makes more sense to rewrite them.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> Curious why they don't spin some of these out, or sell to, independent businesses. Reader looks like it could have at least been profitable. Probably because of self-competition and proprietary shared dependencies; Reader, IIRC, was killed partially because it was incompatible with the way some of it's internal infrastructure dependencies were being evolved to support other services with more promising business prospects; it couldn't practically be sold off as is (and even if the infrastructure was forked, the people maintaining it wouldn't go with it, since they were being retasked.) And lots of Google products that are killed are killed in favor of other Google products with overlapping markets, so selling them off would mean Google would be fueling competition to the services it wanted to focus on. In many cases, I suspect both factors apply to individual products.