33 ms·

Sunsetting Hire

205 points by gdeglin 7y ago

xvector 7y ago
Nothing new under the sunset. https://gcemetery.co https://gcemetery.co
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  Use https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/ ! It's open source, and writes savage tweets. It also answers a question I usually have to ask about shut down Google products: What was it in the first place? Someone already has a PR to add Hire: https://github.com/codyogden/killedbygoogle/pull/567 https://github.com/codyogden/killedbygoogle/pull/567
  - sduff 7y ago
    Yep, that was me. I closed the PR before ready, but Cody quickly sorted it out.
    - codyogden 7y ago
      Cheers. :) Thanks for the PR!
tmlee 7y ago
This product was fairly recent if I'm not wrong, just slightly over 2 years old
- jffry 7y ago
  Wikipedia says "Initial release: July 18, 2017" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Hire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Hire
- jldugger 7y ago
  IIRC, it was an acquihire situation. The founder sold their company to Google, presumably as a condition of accepting a role as the head of Google Cloud. She's no longer at Google, so it makes some sense that they're not running her service at a loss.
  - ra7 7y ago
    Do you mean Diane Green? What the company's name that was sold to Google?
    - kijiki 7y ago
      Bebop
      - cj 7y ago
        I thought you were joking, but the name really is Bebop... https://www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/news/latest-news/2018/11/google-cloud-ceo-diane-greene-departing.html?page=all https://www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/news/latest-news/2018/1... "Greene joined Google in 2015 when the search giant bought her startup, Bebop, for $380 million." $380mm sounds like a pretty great signing bonus. Edit: I shouldn't have spoke so soon re: the signing bonus joke. Looks like she ended up donating her $150mm share: "Greene intends to donate $148.62 million of those proceeds 'to a donor advised fund.'"
yawz 7y ago
Another one bites the dust.
- lapnitnelav 7y ago
  Somewhere on their product usage dashboard there's a button automatically injected. "Let me sunset that for you"
- hinkley 7y ago
  Bill, if you'll come with me, you'll float too.
aeternum 7y ago
Companies are going to avoid new Google offerings given this behavior. They marketed Hire by Google hard. Glad we didn't sign up and waste integration effort on this.
- markmark 7y ago
  Are going to? They already are. I will no longer consider a Google product for work purposes. Even for big stuff they are committed to like their cloud offering there is no confidence that individual features within it they you rely on won't get killed off.
  - misiti3780 7y ago
    you dont use gmail or google apps for business? i think their mail and docs/sheets are not a risk. everything else i wouldnt place a bet on
    - jvolkman 7y ago
      I'd consider those products safe since Google is completely dependent on them internally.
      - chillfox 7y ago
        until someday they aren't
    - chillfox 7y ago
      Microsoft, Zoho, and AWS all have a mail/docs offering that one can count on to stick around.
    - tomjen3 7y ago
      Once I started doing just a little advanced stuff in Microsoft Word I realized how poor Google Doc is. You can't define your own style for crying out loud, you have to redefine an existing one.
wilkystyle 7y ago
Every time there's a post about a Google service being shut down, there are the usual remarks. I'm not saying they aren't deserved, but I'm curious if there's an alternate perspective here? Perhaps sunsetting these services ultimately leads to a more trim and lean Google, and better profit margins? Put another way, is it just the HN circle that is so put off by this?
- pwinnski 7y ago
  The two positions don't seem to be in any conflict: I'm sure it is good for Google to shut these services down. I'm sure it does result in a leaner and more profitable company. The end result is still that Google cannot be trusted to keep any service running that isn't extremely profitable, and people who come to depend on these less-profitable services still end up orphaned.
  - jtbayly 7y ago
    It's good short term anyway. Whether it bites them in the end is basically a question of whether they make their brand untrustworthy. They seem to be doing so.
  - lumost 7y ago
    Google has largely failed to diversify. In contrast with Amazon, or Microsoft they only have two closely coupled revenue lines ( search and ads ). Overall this makes them vulnerable to a shift in the marketplace such as increased demand for privacy.
    - xyzzyz 7y ago
      > only have two closely coupled revenue lines ( search and ads ) There is (practically) no "search" revenue that is not "ads" revenue. Ads is close to 90% of all Google's revenue. The remainder is not broken down in the earnings report, although I suspect it's largely their cloud computing business. Thus, Google's two revenue lines are really ads and cloud, with the latter much smaller than the former, and probably with a lower margin too.
    - 7y ago
cbisnett 7y ago
I wonder if Google has unintentionally created a self-reinforcing feedback loop where potential customers don’t trust the products will be supported for more than 24 months which leads to limited adoption which in turn leads to the products being canceled before 24 months. Pair that with other HN comments that have described a situation where it’s easier to get promoted from launching a product vs maintaining an existing product. I understand the startup-like culture where they are looking for huge successes but I think they abandon these products before they’ve had enough time or exposure.
- pbreit 7y ago
  Doubt it. This never made much sense as a Google offering. Very strong players in this category offering more complete solutions. Not obvious what Google brings here.
  - joedevon 7y ago
    It was the best product we tried. We literally discussed internally will they drop support and thought they would keep it. The feedback loop grows.
    - aaronharnly 7y ago
      We didn’t sign up because we’d just launched another system, but I really really liked it in the demo. We’ve ended up building homegrown GSuite + Google Script + Zapier automation tooling to approximate some of the workflows, because GSuite is such a natural place to do so many of the recruiting and interviewing tasks. I’m genuinely surprised to see this go away.
- smt88 7y ago
  After the Hangouts/Allo/Duo debacle, I've done exactly this. I'll never put time into a new Google product again. My projects don't use G Suites or Cloud, either. I can't be the only one.
  - 7y ago
CaliforniaKarl 7y ago
I did not know that this was a product, but it kindof makes sense, especially if you can leverage existing G Suite offerings. I don't know how many companies were using it, which probably explains why it is being sunsetted. And they're giving it a year before turning it off.
blaisio 7y ago
Does anyone have recommendations for good alternatives? We were sure this would be a good idea when moving to it. :(
- aeternum 7y ago
  We use Lever and have been pretty happy with it. Easy to use and good integrations.
  - cj 7y ago
    We used Lever too. Until the renewal price came. $10,000+ doesn’t make any sense if only planning to hire a handful of people / yr
    - roguecoder 7y ago
      That was the biggest advantage of Google Hire: it was actually affordable as a startup.
      - jmtame 7y ago
        This is the main reason I built Agave Hire (agave.com). I wanted something I could easily customize, and also wasn't expensive.
    - noeloc 7y ago
      Check out https://hirehive.com https://hirehive.com, I'm the CTO and we have a great set of features. Our pricing is based on the number of open roles and prices start at $49 per month for 3 open roles.
  - nateps 7y ago
    Glad to hear! I'm the Founder and CTO of Lever. Anything I can do to help?
- dekhn 7y ago
  we migrated to Bamboo recently. It's OK.
Scipio_Afri 7y ago
Can we just combine all services Google cuts in the last month into a mega post on the say 14th of every month?
- DesiLurker 7y ago
  https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
  - eindiran 7y ago
    I remember clicking on that a while back on thinking there weren't that many products listed there. They must have filled in a lot of killed-off-projects because now I'm struck by what a large number of projects are in the graveyard.
    - SanchoPanda 7y ago
      The age at the end of each one makes it genuinely sad. Well done them.
    - DesiLurker 7y ago
      Dont think of them as products, think of them as a promotion for a googler to principal engineers.
  - mcbain 7y ago
    They’ve killed goo.gl? Ok, that was news to me.
- adrianmonk 7y ago
  Just call it "Axe Tuesday".
rvz 7y ago
While this is splendid news of another fallen Google product, I'm afraid this time it is different. Google has a similar alternative to outgrow and to completely replace Hire which is called Byteboard [0]. [0] https://byteboard.dev/ https://byteboard.dev/
- roguecoder 7y ago
  That only appears to cover engineering hiring, whereas Google Hire was a general ATS. Byteboard definitely isn't a replacement yet, and it isn't clear that it aspires to be one.
- kbumsik 7y ago
  > I'm afraid this time it is different. Exactly the same. Google often shuts down a service in favor of alternatives it already have, like Hangouts=>Duo and Inbox=>GMail.
- bduerst 7y ago
  That's an a120 incubator project, meaning it's being created in a separate part of the company as an experimental product. https://area120.google.com/ https://area120.google.com/
- luckydata 7y ago
  that's an assessment tool, not an applicant tracker as far as I can see. Not the same thing at all.
person_of_color 7y ago
I always felt this was a hack on top of GForms.
- roguecoder 7y ago
  It turns out that's basically all I need to run a hiring process :shrug:
ahupp 7y ago
Does google actually have a worse track record on shutdowns than the average startup? Random 10 person companies shut down all the time, but we seem to pay extra attention when it's a 10 person team inside Google.
- 4ntonius8lock 7y ago
  When I get involved with a random 10 person company, I know what I'm getting into. Using the google brand provides(provided) a sense of respectability and deeper pockets/longer term vision. Some users, I believe rightfully so, feel betrayed by google's lackadaisical approach to starting and shutting down projects. Especially when comparing the effort to market vs create a great product. Like google +, it was shoved down people's throats, only to be tossed.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    This all seems pretty fair to me. I know how to evaluate a startup's potential failure. Who's funding them? How much money do they have? How popular are they? How solid's the product? What are the founders like? Heck, for a lot of small startups, you can just ask to talk to the CEO if it's what it will take to close the deal. And I have a good idea of the conditions under which they'll throw in the towel. But Google product success seems to depend entirely on internal politics, which are completely opaque to me. As traek explains, this product only exists at Google because Google wanted to hire the company's CEO: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20815572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20815572 And it stopped existing because she left Google. How could I possibly predict that? Better just to stay away, I figure, unless it's an obvious money-maker or has high strategic value.
    - bigiain 7y ago
      Also - if I build a business around a 10 person startup, and they run into trouble or get acquired - there's at least some chance I could negotiate to buy/lease/rent the piece of IP and platform I'm relying on, or to reasonable expect to replicate the important bits of APIs I'm using by starting my own 10 person team. I cannot ever expect to "negotiate with Google".
deleted 7y ago
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traek 7y ago
This makes sense, Hire was born out of Bebop (founded by Diane Greene, former VMware founder/CEO). Google acquihired Bebop to get Diane Greene as head of Google Cloud (which is why this product was lumped under their cloud division), but she left Google earlier this year. No reason for Google to keep it running now.
- xg15 7y ago
  So I guess we now passed the aqui-hire (acquire a company you're not interested in to get the people you want) and arrived at the prod-hire: Build a product you're not interested in to acquire a company you're not interested in to get the people you want.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - stephenr 7y ago
    ... until they leave.
- cateye 7y ago
  There was probably tension between Diane Green and Sundar Pichai. The general struggle for Google is the difficulty in choosing a strategy for serving both 1. Enterprise customers with custom / manual / labor intensive needs 2. Fully automated products and processes for a wide spectrum of users who need to adopt to Google and not the other way around To sell big Enterprise contracts, Google needs to listen to these customers specific needs and promise solutions. I don't think Google has this capability in its DNA. This must be very frustrating from someone like Diana Green that is used to operate a company in a different way. Could be the reason that she left her role.
roguecoder 7y ago
There is no reason this needs to be a SAAS product, and at this point we should know better than to trusting any SAAS product offered by Google. I wish they would take the approach of making it trivial for me to host an open source version myself on Google Cloud rather than just throwing away the work: it would let them keep making money and mean that I could actually have enough faith to use their products.
ckorhonen 7y ago
My first thought was "Wait, didn't they only launch this a year or so ago?".
AzzieElbab 7y ago
I thought Google stopped hiring. Had no idea this product exists
daviddavis 7y ago
Just out of curiosity, what happens to the engineers that work on these projects that get shutdown by Google? Do they get laid off?
- throwaway94a9e3 7y ago
  Lord no. My thinking was "I wonder what high-priority project required the talent that was working on Hire that they had to reorg the teams to it and kill the product." I don't think Google has ever had any layoffs. (The use of contractors allows many companies to downsize without actual layoffs, but I don't think even that strategy has really been the case during Google's history so far, which has been growth heavy and cash rich for the most part.)
hysan 7y ago
This is surprising considering how many companies I've seen use Hire in my current job search. Was it not profitable? I wonder what the backlash is going to be for all the companies that spent time integrating it into their hiring workflows.
deleted 7y ago
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Havoc 7y ago
Starting to think that the key is to build your toys on a VM you control. That way nobody can take them away Proprietary stuff is starting to become flakey not in the uptime sense but pure lifespan. Almost like planned obsolescence became a thing with gear
- vturner 7y ago
  I'd love this, a private server that ran apps (running on my box at home or maybe on an AWS instance) I can access via a web browser: no more senseless version upgrades with all the UI changes to boot, dropped file formats, license key nightmares, and of course ended products.
  - Havoc 7y ago
    Do it! It comes with it's own set of challenges, but I've found with the advent of docker it's quit easy to test running your own xyz server.
- stephenr 7y ago
  Some people have never stopped thinking that way. Some of us have questioned every single "we'll just use google <blah>" decision/discussion every time it's come up.
  - Havoc 7y ago
    Yep. Though some of the cloud glue-like things sure do seem appealing. So my current thinking is build it on VM but glue it together with cloud...ideally with something that is available in multiple clouds. e.g. GCP and Azure both have pub/sub and both have cloud functions
a3n 7y ago
> While Hire has been successful, we’re focusing our resources on other products in the Google Cloud portfolio. The corporate equivalent of "spending more time with his family."
a3n 7y ago
Is this related to the EU accusing Google of favoring their job search product on relevant Google searches?
foota 7y ago
I'm surprised by this move seeing as it seemed to be fairly heavily marketed, but the deprecation timeline seems generous.
deleted 7y ago
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Yhippa 7y ago
What a bummer. By far the best candidate management software I've used. I guess it's not too crazy complicated where another company couldn't ape all the features.
gatsby 7y ago
Almost every successful Google product over the last 15 years has been the result of acquiring an already-built product and marketing + distributing it well: Youtube, Nest, Waze, Doubleclick, Android. Products that are organically created within Google (even Google Hire, created via acquihire) have a pretty awful track record.
- lquist 7y ago
  Gmail? Google maps? Chrome?
  - gatsby 7y ago
    Gmail is 15 years old. Maps is ~15 years old (and was the combination of several acquisitions in the maps space: Keyhole, Where2, Zipdash, etc.) Chrome is 11 years old + extremely successful, but my point still stands.
    - Iv 7y ago
      Plus Chrome is not really a product as, to my knowledge, it generates zero income.
      - wmf 7y ago
        Firefox and Safari generate tons of money for Google via search referrals so Chrome would have billions in revenue if it was valued the same way.
        jldugger 7y ago
        Indeed, when you value Chrome's market share in terms of traffic acquisition, it's pretty straightforward. Especially since they designed it from the ground up to do more searches.
      - whatcd 7y ago
        I believe it indirectly makes money as being a platform for Google's ecosystem, especially for their Enterprise Cloud apps suite or even Chromebooks.
nateps 7y ago
I'm the founder and CTO of Lever (https://www.lever.co https://www.lever.co), a similar product and part of YC S12. I recommend you check us out! I was also a PM at Google from 2007-2011. A big part of why I left and founded Lever is that I'm super passionate about enterprise software, and vertical enterprise software (even in huge markets) isn't aligned well with Google's core business.
- generalpf 7y ago
  I use Lever at work and it’s absolutely excellent.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - nateps 7y ago
    Thank you! I appreciate the support. Means a lot.
- rswail 7y ago
  > and vertical enterprise software (even in huge markets) isn't aligned well with Google's core business. That's exactly the point that everyone who says "Don't use google products" is missing. Anything horizontal (eg GSuite basics, docs/sheets, mail, calendar) are relatively safe. Anything vertical isn't going to move the needle in Google's view of their finances. MS and Oracle have had issues with their "verticals" in the past, but they weren't actually big enough that they could kill them off, given their reliance on enterprise customers for their income. FAANG (except Netflix obv) aren't dependent on enterprise customers. Facebook and Apple don't really offer enterprise products and AWS/Google have, basically Workspaces/Workdocs for AWS and GSuite from Google. Both Facebook and Google are "vertical" in that they sell ads on the internet, or, more accurately, they provide access to their users to advertisers. Everything else is noise. So the general rule is "Don't buy vertical services from a horizontal company".
amitutk 7y ago
Phew ... tragedy averted. I ranted earlier about them [0]. We didn't use google Hire exactly for this reason. And they were more expensive than existing software while providing few features with less polish. And yes, they had a more aggressive sales force pushing the product, who would cold call, play the discount game, etc. This could have been a good value add to the G-Suite. Alas. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18160658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18160658
- machiste77 7y ago
  Same. I'm from a product/tech background and working with a People (aka HR) team these days. Google Hire looked very appealing since we're on Gsuite but now I'm really happy that my spidey-senses told me not to take the risk. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19556214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19556214
mrnobody_67 7y ago
calling it a "success" and then shutting it down? talk about talking out of both sides of the mouth.
nexuist 7y ago
"It was built mostly for small to medium sized businesses, with a price that ranged from $200 to $400 a month depending on how many G Suite licenses you needed." Hm. Does that price seem too high? When I think small business I think mom and pop restaurants or utility stores. Would they be willing to pay so much per month just to hire people which they'll inevitably have to pay for anyways? Do small and medium businesses hire at such large rates to justify this expense? Obviously I'm just armchair generaling here, I'm sure G Suite's sales team crunched the numbers to make sure they made sense. But they don't make sense to me, and I'm wondering if someone can explain why.
- dpandya 7y ago
  The target market for Google Hire was probably Lever's (https://www.lever.co https://www.lever.co) customers, i.e. mostly funded startups and other companies hiring white collar employees. For these businesses, $200-400/month for an Applicant Tracking System is pretty inline with market. Lever's pricing is higher as far as I've seen.
- wheelerwj 7y ago
  small business is defined as anything up to 500 people. mom and pop, restaurants are in the same group but it covers a pretty big swath.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - kensai 7y ago
    500 people is a small business? Wow, definitely this definition is not used in Europe.
    - nolok 7y ago
      Mmm it’s not that far in France a TPE is below 10, a PME between 10 and 250, ETI between 250 and 5000 and a GE above 5000. 500 is almost PME which stands for Petites et Moyennes Entreprises, literally small and medium sized business.
dmix 7y ago
If it was successful why not sell it and let it live on?
- cortesoft 7y ago
  Because they want the people who worked on it to work on something else.
  - Scipio_Afri 7y ago
    A LinkedIn clone that will be closed in less than 2 years after debuting it.
    - NullPrefix 7y ago
      Would be perfect if LI closed shop during those 2 years.
    - rhizome 7y ago
      I'm guessing that's the one industry feature that LinkedIn won't be copying.
- truncate 7y ago
  I can think of two reasons: 1. The code can be tightly tied to their internal systems and infra. It may just be more expensive to separate it out, not to mention engineers at Google are smart enough to avoid such projects (I mean, separate it out so that they can sell it) with no value to career. 2. Its success (of whatever scale) is probably tied to Google branding. Once it goes away, its probably as good as yet another job listing site which isn't super hard to make.
  - dmix 7y ago
    Right, #1 makes a lot of sense. The management/engineer’s time and commitment is the most finite resource and it’s possible they integrated it heavily since the 2015 acquisition. That said, they paid $380 million for it when it was called Bebop so it’s not entirely chump change if it retained that value.
jmtame 7y ago
Founder and CEO of Agave.com here. We're a new player in the space and we've focused on making it easy for startups to get going quickly with an ATS that doesn't suck. If you're interested in a demo or getting an invite to join (we haven't launched publicly yet), shoot me an email at jared@agave.com.
jmtame 7y ago
Founder and CEO of Agave.com here. We're a new player in the space and we've focused on making it easy for startups to get going quickly with an ATS that doesn't suck. If you're interested in a demo or getting an invite to join (we haven't launched publicly yet), shoot me an email at jared@agave.com.
- deleted 7y ago
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- deleted 7y ago
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- dennisgorelik 7y ago
  Do you have an XML job feed? We are aggregating jobs from ATS-es. https://www.postjobfree.com/include-job-feed https://www.postjobfree.com/include-job-feed
  - jmtame 7y ago
    Hi Dennis, we do support XML job feeds for all of our customer accounts, including those on the free plan.
stanislavb 7y ago
Yet another one hits the Google Graveyard https://www.saashub.com/google-graveyard https://www.saashub.com/google-graveyard
- codyogden 7y ago
  Yeah. They definitely kill things. https://killedbygoogle.com https://killedbygoogle.com
stanislavb 7y ago
Another addition to the Google Graveyard https://www.saashub.com/google-graveyard https://www.saashub.com/google-graveyard
sjg007 7y ago
Never heard of it..
LaserToy 7y ago
I preordered Stadia. I think I made a mistake.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  You're only realizing this now? I think this Penny Arcade [0] is relevant... 0: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2019/06/10/stadioid https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2019/06/10/stadioid
  - LaserToy 7y ago
    I worked for a gaming company, so, mostly curiosity. I do believe it is going to fail.
- ulfw 7y ago
  Without a doubt. Anything that is not core I don’t have hope it will stick around.
- scotth 7y ago
  I get the feeling Stadia is different. I'm not willing to write it off quite yet.
  - craftyguy 7y ago
    When so, so, so many google experiments have been killed off[0], I'm curious what makes you think that this time it will be different? 0. https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
LaserToy 7y ago
I preordered Stadia. I think I made a mistake.
nateps 7y ago
I'm the founder and CTO of Lever, YC S12. I also worked at Google as a PM prior to founding Lever. Let me know how I can help if anyone has questions! We're a great alternative to Google Hire.
- jacob_rezi 7y ago
  Wow cool to find you like this. We built a resume software which focuses exactly on working with ats (https://rezi.io/ https://rezi.io/) We plan to make resume formats specific to certain types of ATS, Lever being amongst the first we hope to work with. Any way this message can spark that conversation? Our users & hiring partners love the idea.
  - nateps 7y ago
    Send me a note, <first name>@lever.co, and we'll take it from there!
  - shusson 7y ago
    https://rezi.io https://rezi.io is returning a 500 page :(
    - jacob_rezi 7y ago
      thanks for the notice - all sorted now
- 2arrs2ells 7y ago
  Nate - why do you think Google shut down Hire? When it launched, did you see any path for it to become a major ATS player, given Google's impatience? Thx & hope Lever scoops up a bunch of customers from the transition (if Hire even had a bunch of customers!).
  - nateps 7y ago
    As many of the news articles have talked about, Google Hire's origin was the acquisition of Bebop. Some discussion on this HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10839516 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10839516 In this case, I know that Diane Greene advocated for her team to have the opportunity to launch their product, which they had been developing in stealth from 2012-2016. I haven't worked there for some time now, but Google has historically supported teams in launching into the market through experiments, labs, new product launches, etc. However, Google's current scale makes it very difficult for a new product to be worth improving and maintaining. They must make billions in revenue directly or indirectly to show up in a meaningful way. In most cases, products are given a few years, tested for impact, and ultimately the most likely outcome is that a product will fail when that is the bar. It is not entirely different from the reality of a startup—the majority of startups don't last either.
blackoil 7y ago
Was it a showcase project for Bebop platform? Doesn't seems to be kind of project that Google should own/launch. 380 MM$ seems too much for this product.
Dwolb 7y ago
Hire user here. IMO the product was functional (and cheap relative to the market) but not good. There were a lot of UX quirks that made it feel like an outside consultancy slapped some “Material” design on a pre-built app and called it a day. Really I would’ve liked to see a product like this be a meta-layer on top of GSuite productivity tools. ie Interview feedback forms should be a Forms form, the job board should be more like Sites. From a strategic standpoint I had no idea why they pursued this particular product. The output here never seemed particularly well-aligned to any strategic motive.
- deleted 7y ago
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- rhizome 7y ago
  >made it feel like an outside consultancy slapped some “Material” design on a pre-built app and called it a day. Google's replacement motto for "Don't be evil" is "Launch and forget."
- xmprt 7y ago
  > From a strategic standpoint I had no idea why they pursued this particular product A manager wanted a promotion
kensai 7y ago
Is there a comparison/review of all hire tools for startup and small businesses? Every Applicant Tracking System looks so expensive if you are not heftily funded...
sittingnut 7y ago
google suffering from usual disease of bloated conglomerates. should stick to it's core competencies.
ulfw 7y ago
I stopped using every Google product besides Search and Maps. Still have Photos but thats replaceable. Oh and Youtube, which is not replaceable. Haven’t used Gmail in a decade and no use for all the other stuff that no one knows if it will be around next year or not. Sorry to say but that what it has become.
- suzzer99 7y ago
  I still have the old picasa executable so I can use it on new or reinstalled computers. It's great for browsing all the images and videos on your computer.
  - ulfw 7y ago
    Sadly doesn't run on Macs using Catalina anymore
hellofriends 7y ago
Hey friends. Lever is a great ATS so definitely check them out. Another one to add to the list is attract.ai (ATS + automated sourcing and engagement), intelliHR (HRIS) and Greenhouse.io (ATS).
RocketSyntax 7y ago
For a GCP role, a Google Hire person interviewed me >,<
n42 7y ago
What is humorous to me is that Google is hurting users who typically have the most influence over SaaS integrations at their company (managers) by taking away a tool that helped them deal with the part of their job most of them hate the most (hiring/recruiting). If it hasn't been obvious yet to managers watching this, Google's software is not a safe investment for you to make for your company. It is only a matter of time until you will suddenly have to divert your time to figuring out how to migrate away from a Good Tool to a Less Good Tool because Google built it well then took it away. Swapping a tool like this is an abysmal resource sink for you and your company. This is not the first, second, third, fourth or even fifth time this has happened, but this one should hit close to home. Google's software is not a safe investment for you to make for your company.
- kayoone 7y ago
  Well to that extent, most other SaaS products which are affordable for SMBs are not a safe investment either, it's not that non-google companies/startup never shut down. Actually most SaaS startups fail.
  - n42 7y ago
    I agree but I think it's a false dichotomy. At least with a startup you can count on them to, well, try.
    - kayoone 7y ago
      but most lack the financial stability of google and could disappear rather quickly because of that.
      - eitland 7y ago
        Look for companies like Basecamp, companies that arent looking to be aquired or get unicorn status but to stay soundly profitable year-after-year. This was one of the reasons I loved WhatsApp so much early on when that seemed to be the way it was going: a healthy >1B USD company with no dependency except on users. As the WhatsApp story and many other tells us this isn't always safe, but it should be a safer bet than anyone clearly going the "unicorn or nothing" way from the start.
shubidubi 7y ago
when was the last time Google had a successful consumer-facing product? looks like they just keep shutting down products in the past few years.
RestlessMind 7y ago
At this point, I have started seeing Google as a miniature of contemporary SV (with all its good and bad stuff). Lots of random products thrown out to the user only to be cancelled in a few years? Check! Occasional massively successful (and actually useful) products? Check! Lip service and virtue signaling for fads du jour (eg. diversity)? Check! Actual behavior hinting towards prioritizing profits over all else (eg. lots of low-wage contractors in lieu of full time employees)? Check! So it won't be a surprise if there are internal pitching sessions where Product Managers would be pitching their ideas to VPs just like YC demo days. Then get started with 2-3 engineers, put out the product, take it to some decent success level (eg. US-only, English-only, Android/iOS-only launch), pocket your promo, move on, rinse and repeat!! The real question for me is is this all by design? Could it be that they want exactly this kind of setup? I won't be surprised if Google leadership is thinking this way...
- atdt 7y ago
  Could you please explain what you mean when you say diversity is a fad du jour? I'd like to believe you didn't mean to say something this ugly.
  - otabdeveloper4 7y ago
    Gasp! Thoughtcrime alert! Call the police!
    - benblu 7y ago
      Would you prefer if he just called him a jerk? Telling someone that they're being mean or inconsiderate is not the same thing as censoring them.
      - otabdeveloper4 7y ago
        > Would you prefer if he just called him a jerk? Indeed I would. > Telling someone that they're being mean or inconsiderate is not the same thing as censoring them. Unless this 'telling' is a dogwhistle for the thought police to take action. My parent comment was already flagged. One more dogwhistle and I'll be banned.
tanilama 7y ago
Google's side projects keep being joke and untrustworthy, not even newsworthy material.
meow_mix 7y ago
classic
mrbonner 7y ago
I just have the worst nightmare: Google abandons Photo. I have all my photos synced in Google Photo and remove duplicate in my iPhone. If they shut it down, am I screwed?
- reustle 7y ago
  Yes you are, if they do that. This is why I manually export everything off my phone to an external hard drive once a month, to make sure I also keep the originals. Google Photos is very searchable & easy to use, but not a final long term storage option.
- elaus 7y ago
  Well Google might be very kill-happy with their own products but at least they always give an early notice so everybody can at least take out their data and move to another service. So even if they shut down Photo one day you will probably have time to download all your photos. Even today you can just download all your photos at once if you have already deleted them from your phone/computer. Btw you should be aware that if you bulk-download your photos from Google they might be in lower resolution and they will be missing some information (e.g. the geo-coordinates). So it might be a good idea to also store your (original) photos on your own devices.
- kkarakk 7y ago
  Google is very very very very nice about product sunsetting - generous timelines and no bandwidth throttling. Also photos and videos are part of their core business now, i don't think they'd ever abandon the space unless something seriously disrupted the market.
nkkollaw 7y ago
Google is the new Yahoo. They cannot keep services running for more than 24 months. I would be terrified about starting to rely on any new service they create.
atdt 7y ago
This is a good decision, reflecting the wisdom of Silenus, who, legend goes, once mused that the best thing is not to be born, and if already born, to die quickly. Google is intent on gaining the lead in Cloud, and this was a distraction from that.
guessmyname 7y ago
Google Hire is being replaced by ByteBoard — https://byteboard.dev/ https://byteboard.dev/ — which started at Area 120, Google’s incubator.
nikolay 7y ago
Don't trust Google with anything!
Kiro 7y ago
As usual a lot of talk in these threads from people who have actually not used the product in question but just love bashing Google for "cancelling everything".
nprateem 7y ago
Looking through https://killedbygoogle.com https://killedbygoogle.com most of the projects look like crappy side projects so I can understand why a multibillion dollar company would kill them off. My favourite one they killed was this one though: Google Ride Finder Killed almost 10 years ago, Google Ride Finder was a service that used GPS data to pinpoint and map the location of taxis, limos, and shuttle vehicles available for hire in 10 U.S. metro areas. It was over 4 years old. A taxi app... Close, but no cigar.
irrational 7y ago
Google doing what google does best.
naedish 7y ago
Interestingly one of the hire support links in the announcement goes to the invalid address http://perezmiguel/ http://perezmiguel/. I'm guessing that is the person who worked on the announcement document.
reeeeee 7y ago
Why do they cancel this product? Are they losing profit over this? Were they working on any new features? If no new features are required, would it be such a hassle to just keep the product working without assigning engineers to it? Only support?
noeloc 7y ago
I'm the CTO and co-founder of https://hirehive.com https://hirehive.com, we're an ATS built for small to medium sized companies. Our pricing is based on the number of open roles at a time. We've been around for over 5 years and have great set of features to help your hiring process, including custom application forms and multilingual hiring. Check us out or get in touch.
roystonvassey 7y ago
I think there should be a law that mandates orgs offering SaaS products (probably, with a min. base of users, say >100) to open-source their code, if they decide to sundown it. It almost appears to be the bare minimum, from a consumer protection perspective, for a responsible company (or, even Google) to do.
NickATS 7y ago
SmartRecruiters offers a lightweight version of our enterprise product for around a similar cost. We are also offering a free data migration and Recruiting AI seat for current//former Google Hire customers. Just give us a shout if interested. https://www.smartrecruiters.com/resources/get-a-demo/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=ghire https://www.smartrecruiters.com/resources/get-a-demo/?utm_so...
roy-baladi 7y ago
I think Google, as most do, underestimated the time and effort it takes to build a recruiting suite, even for the SMB market. I've spent 5 years SmartRecruiters as PM and in partnerships. It's taken 80 engineers a good 5+ years to build a clean solution that can scale globally with different local customs, job boards, assessments, and regulations.

Sunsetting Hire

205 points by gdeglin 7y ago

xvector 7y ago

Nothing new under the sunset. https://gcemetery.co https://gcemetery.co

ocdtrekkie 7y ago
Use https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/ ! It's open source, and writes savage tweets. It also answers a question I usually have to ask about shut down Google products: What was it in the first place? Someone already has a PR to add Hire: https://github.com/codyogden/killedbygoogle/pull/567 https://github.com/codyogden/killedbygoogle/pull/567
- sduff 7y ago
  Yep, that was me. I closed the PR before ready, but Cody quickly sorted it out.
  - codyogden 7y ago
    Cheers. :) Thanks for the PR!

tmlee 7y ago

This product was fairly recent if I'm not wrong, just slightly over 2 years old

jffry 7y ago
Wikipedia says "Initial release: July 18, 2017" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Hire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Hire
jldugger 7y ago
IIRC, it was an acquihire situation. The founder sold their company to Google, presumably as a condition of accepting a role as the head of Google Cloud. She's no longer at Google, so it makes some sense that they're not running her service at a loss.
- ra7 7y ago
  Do you mean Diane Green? What the company's name that was sold to Google?
  - kijiki 7y ago
    Bebop
    - cj 7y ago
      I thought you were joking, but the name really is Bebop... https://www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/news/latest-news/2018/11/google-cloud-ceo-diane-greene-departing.html?page=all https://www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/news/latest-news/2018/1... "Greene joined Google in 2015 when the search giant bought her startup, Bebop, for $380 million." $380mm sounds like a pretty great signing bonus. Edit: I shouldn't have spoke so soon re: the signing bonus joke. Looks like she ended up donating her $150mm share: "Greene intends to donate $148.62 million of those proceeds 'to a donor advised fund.'"

yawz 7y ago

Another one bites the dust.

lapnitnelav 7y ago
Somewhere on their product usage dashboard there's a button automatically injected. "Let me sunset that for you"
hinkley 7y ago
Bill, if you'll come with me, you'll float too.

aeternum 7y ago

Companies are going to avoid new Google offerings given this behavior. They marketed Hire by Google hard. Glad we didn't sign up and waste integration effort on this.

markmark 7y ago
Are going to? They already are. I will no longer consider a Google product for work purposes. Even for big stuff they are committed to like their cloud offering there is no confidence that individual features within it they you rely on won't get killed off.
- misiti3780 7y ago
  you dont use gmail or google apps for business? i think their mail and docs/sheets are not a risk. everything else i wouldnt place a bet on
  - jvolkman 7y ago
    I'd consider those products safe since Google is completely dependent on them internally.
    - chillfox 7y ago
      until someday they aren't
  - chillfox 7y ago
    Microsoft, Zoho, and AWS all have a mail/docs offering that one can count on to stick around.
  - tomjen3 7y ago
    Once I started doing just a little advanced stuff in Microsoft Word I realized how poor Google Doc is. You can't define your own style for crying out loud, you have to redefine an existing one.

wilkystyle 7y ago

Every time there's a post about a Google service being shut down, there are the usual remarks. I'm not saying they aren't deserved, but I'm curious if there's an alternate perspective here? Perhaps sunsetting these services ultimately leads to a more trim and lean Google, and better profit margins? Put another way, is it just the HN circle that is so put off by this?

pwinnski 7y ago
The two positions don't seem to be in any conflict: I'm sure it is good for Google to shut these services down. I'm sure it does result in a leaner and more profitable company. The end result is still that Google cannot be trusted to keep any service running that isn't extremely profitable, and people who come to depend on these less-profitable services still end up orphaned.
- jtbayly 7y ago
  It's good short term anyway. Whether it bites them in the end is basically a question of whether they make their brand untrustworthy. They seem to be doing so.
- lumost 7y ago
  Google has largely failed to diversify. In contrast with Amazon, or Microsoft they only have two closely coupled revenue lines ( search and ads ). Overall this makes them vulnerable to a shift in the marketplace such as increased demand for privacy.
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
    > only have two closely coupled revenue lines ( search and ads ) There is (practically) no "search" revenue that is not "ads" revenue. Ads is close to 90% of all Google's revenue. The remainder is not broken down in the earnings report, although I suspect it's largely their cloud computing business. Thus, Google's two revenue lines are really ads and cloud, with the latter much smaller than the former, and probably with a lower margin too.
  - 7y ago

cbisnett 7y ago

I wonder if Google has unintentionally created a self-reinforcing feedback loop where potential customers don’t trust the products will be supported for more than 24 months which leads to limited adoption which in turn leads to the products being canceled before 24 months. Pair that with other HN comments that have described a situation where it’s easier to get promoted from launching a product vs maintaining an existing product. I understand the startup-like culture where they are looking for huge successes but I think they abandon these products before they’ve had enough time or exposure.

pbreit 7y ago
Doubt it. This never made much sense as a Google offering. Very strong players in this category offering more complete solutions. Not obvious what Google brings here.
- joedevon 7y ago
  It was the best product we tried. We literally discussed internally will they drop support and thought they would keep it. The feedback loop grows.
  - aaronharnly 7y ago
    We didn’t sign up because we’d just launched another system, but I really really liked it in the demo. We’ve ended up building homegrown GSuite + Google Script + Zapier automation tooling to approximate some of the workflows, because GSuite is such a natural place to do so many of the recruiting and interviewing tasks. I’m genuinely surprised to see this go away.
smt88 7y ago
After the Hangouts/Allo/Duo debacle, I've done exactly this. I'll never put time into a new Google product again. My projects don't use G Suites or Cloud, either. I can't be the only one.
- 7y ago

CaliforniaKarl 7y ago

I did not know that this was a product, but it kindof makes sense, especially if you can leverage existing G Suite offerings. I don't know how many companies were using it, which probably explains why it is being sunsetted. And they're giving it a year before turning it off.

blaisio 7y ago

Does anyone have recommendations for good alternatives? We were sure this would be a good idea when moving to it. :(

aeternum 7y ago
We use Lever and have been pretty happy with it. Easy to use and good integrations.
- cj 7y ago
  We used Lever too. Until the renewal price came. $10,000+ doesn’t make any sense if only planning to hire a handful of people / yr
  - roguecoder 7y ago
    That was the biggest advantage of Google Hire: it was actually affordable as a startup.
    - jmtame 7y ago
      This is the main reason I built Agave Hire (agave.com). I wanted something I could easily customize, and also wasn't expensive.
  - noeloc 7y ago
    Check out https://hirehive.com https://hirehive.com, I'm the CTO and we have a great set of features. Our pricing is based on the number of open roles and prices start at $49 per month for 3 open roles.
- nateps 7y ago
  Glad to hear! I'm the Founder and CTO of Lever. Anything I can do to help?
dekhn 7y ago
we migrated to Bamboo recently. It's OK.

Scipio_Afri 7y ago

Can we just combine all services Google cuts in the last month into a mega post on the say 14th of every month?

DesiLurker 7y ago
https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
- eindiran 7y ago
  I remember clicking on that a while back on thinking there weren't that many products listed there. They must have filled in a lot of killed-off-projects because now I'm struck by what a large number of projects are in the graveyard.
  - SanchoPanda 7y ago
    The age at the end of each one makes it genuinely sad. Well done them.
  - DesiLurker 7y ago
    Dont think of them as products, think of them as a promotion for a googler to principal engineers.
- mcbain 7y ago
  They’ve killed goo.gl? Ok, that was news to me.
adrianmonk 7y ago
Just call it "Axe Tuesday".

rvz 7y ago

While this is splendid news of another fallen Google product, I'm afraid this time it is different. Google has a similar alternative to outgrow and to completely replace Hire which is called Byteboard [0]. [0] https://byteboard.dev/ https://byteboard.dev/

roguecoder 7y ago
That only appears to cover engineering hiring, whereas Google Hire was a general ATS. Byteboard definitely isn't a replacement yet, and it isn't clear that it aspires to be one.
kbumsik 7y ago
> I'm afraid this time it is different. Exactly the same. Google often shuts down a service in favor of alternatives it already have, like Hangouts=>Duo and Inbox=>GMail.
bduerst 7y ago
That's an a120 incubator project, meaning it's being created in a separate part of the company as an experimental product. https://area120.google.com/ https://area120.google.com/
luckydata 7y ago
that's an assessment tool, not an applicant tracker as far as I can see. Not the same thing at all.

person_of_color 7y ago

I always felt this was a hack on top of GForms.

roguecoder 7y ago
It turns out that's basically all I need to run a hiring process :shrug:

ahupp 7y ago

Does google actually have a worse track record on shutdowns than the average startup? Random 10 person companies shut down all the time, but we seem to pay extra attention when it's a 10 person team inside Google.

4ntonius8lock 7y ago
When I get involved with a random 10 person company, I know what I'm getting into. Using the google brand provides(provided) a sense of respectability and deeper pockets/longer term vision. Some users, I believe rightfully so, feel betrayed by google's lackadaisical approach to starting and shutting down projects. Especially when comparing the effort to market vs create a great product. Like google +, it was shoved down people's throats, only to be tossed.
- wpietri 7y ago
  This all seems pretty fair to me. I know how to evaluate a startup's potential failure. Who's funding them? How much money do they have? How popular are they? How solid's the product? What are the founders like? Heck, for a lot of small startups, you can just ask to talk to the CEO if it's what it will take to close the deal. And I have a good idea of the conditions under which they'll throw in the towel. But Google product success seems to depend entirely on internal politics, which are completely opaque to me. As traek explains, this product only exists at Google because Google wanted to hire the company's CEO: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20815572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20815572 And it stopped existing because she left Google. How could I possibly predict that? Better just to stay away, I figure, unless it's an obvious money-maker or has high strategic value.
  - bigiain 7y ago
    Also - if I build a business around a 10 person startup, and they run into trouble or get acquired - there's at least some chance I could negotiate to buy/lease/rent the piece of IP and platform I'm relying on, or to reasonable expect to replicate the important bits of APIs I'm using by starting my own 10 person team. I cannot ever expect to "negotiate with Google".

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

traek 7y ago

This makes sense, Hire was born out of Bebop (founded by Diane Greene, former VMware founder/CEO). Google acquihired Bebop to get Diane Greene as head of Google Cloud (which is why this product was lumped under their cloud division), but she left Google earlier this year. No reason for Google to keep it running now.

xg15 7y ago
So I guess we now passed the aqui-hire (acquire a company you're not interested in to get the people you want) and arrived at the prod-hire: Build a product you're not interested in to acquire a company you're not interested in to get the people you want.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- stephenr 7y ago
  ... until they leave.
cateye 7y ago
There was probably tension between Diane Green and Sundar Pichai. The general struggle for Google is the difficulty in choosing a strategy for serving both 1. Enterprise customers with custom / manual / labor intensive needs 2. Fully automated products and processes for a wide spectrum of users who need to adopt to Google and not the other way around To sell big Enterprise contracts, Google needs to listen to these customers specific needs and promise solutions. I don't think Google has this capability in its DNA. This must be very frustrating from someone like Diana Green that is used to operate a company in a different way. Could be the reason that she left her role.

roguecoder 7y ago

There is no reason this needs to be a SAAS product, and at this point we should know better than to trusting any SAAS product offered by Google. I wish they would take the approach of making it trivial for me to host an open source version myself on Google Cloud rather than just throwing away the work: it would let them keep making money and mean that I could actually have enough faith to use their products.

ckorhonen 7y ago

My first thought was "Wait, didn't they only launch this a year or so ago?".

AzzieElbab 7y ago

I thought Google stopped hiring. Had no idea this product exists

daviddavis 7y ago

Just out of curiosity, what happens to the engineers that work on these projects that get shutdown by Google? Do they get laid off?

throwaway94a9e3 7y ago
Lord no. My thinking was "I wonder what high-priority project required the talent that was working on Hire that they had to reorg the teams to it and kill the product." I don't think Google has ever had any layoffs. (The use of contractors allows many companies to downsize without actual layoffs, but I don't think even that strategy has really been the case during Google's history so far, which has been growth heavy and cash rich for the most part.)

hysan 7y ago

This is surprising considering how many companies I've seen use Hire in my current job search. Was it not profitable? I wonder what the backlash is going to be for all the companies that spent time integrating it into their hiring workflows.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Havoc 7y ago

Starting to think that the key is to build your toys on a VM you control. That way nobody can take them away Proprietary stuff is starting to become flakey not in the uptime sense but pure lifespan. Almost like planned obsolescence became a thing with gear

vturner 7y ago
I'd love this, a private server that ran apps (running on my box at home or maybe on an AWS instance) I can access via a web browser: no more senseless version upgrades with all the UI changes to boot, dropped file formats, license key nightmares, and of course ended products.
- Havoc 7y ago
  Do it! It comes with it's own set of challenges, but I've found with the advent of docker it's quit easy to test running your own xyz server.
stephenr 7y ago
Some people have never stopped thinking that way. Some of us have questioned every single "we'll just use google <blah>" decision/discussion every time it's come up.
- Havoc 7y ago
  Yep. Though some of the cloud glue-like things sure do seem appealing. So my current thinking is build it on VM but glue it together with cloud...ideally with something that is available in multiple clouds. e.g. GCP and Azure both have pub/sub and both have cloud functions

a3n 7y ago

> While Hire has been successful, we’re focusing our resources on other products in the Google Cloud portfolio. The corporate equivalent of "spending more time with his family."

a3n 7y ago

Is this related to the EU accusing Google of favoring their job search product on relevant Google searches?

foota 7y ago

I'm surprised by this move seeing as it seemed to be fairly heavily marketed, but the deprecation timeline seems generous.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Yhippa 7y ago

What a bummer. By far the best candidate management software I've used. I guess it's not too crazy complicated where another company couldn't ape all the features.

gatsby 7y ago

Almost every successful Google product over the last 15 years has been the result of acquiring an already-built product and marketing + distributing it well: Youtube, Nest, Waze, Doubleclick, Android. Products that are organically created within Google (even Google Hire, created via acquihire) have a pretty awful track record.

lquist 7y ago
Gmail? Google maps? Chrome?
- gatsby 7y ago
  Gmail is 15 years old. Maps is ~15 years old (and was the combination of several acquisitions in the maps space: Keyhole, Where2, Zipdash, etc.) Chrome is 11 years old + extremely successful, but my point still stands.
  - Iv 7y ago
    Plus Chrome is not really a product as, to my knowledge, it generates zero income.
    - wmf 7y ago
      Firefox and Safari generate tons of money for Google via search referrals so Chrome would have billions in revenue if it was valued the same way.
      - jldugger 7y ago
        Indeed, when you value Chrome's market share in terms of traffic acquisition, it's pretty straightforward. Especially since they designed it from the ground up to do more searches.
    - whatcd 7y ago
      I believe it indirectly makes money as being a platform for Google's ecosystem, especially for their Enterprise Cloud apps suite or even Chromebooks.

nateps 7y ago

I'm the founder and CTO of Lever (https://www.lever.co https://www.lever.co), a similar product and part of YC S12. I recommend you check us out! I was also a PM at Google from 2007-2011. A big part of why I left and founded Lever is that I'm super passionate about enterprise software, and vertical enterprise software (even in huge markets) isn't aligned well with Google's core business.

generalpf 7y ago
I use Lever at work and it’s absolutely excellent.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- nateps 7y ago
  Thank you! I appreciate the support. Means a lot.
rswail 7y ago
> and vertical enterprise software (even in huge markets) isn't aligned well with Google's core business. That's exactly the point that everyone who says "Don't use google products" is missing. Anything horizontal (eg GSuite basics, docs/sheets, mail, calendar) are relatively safe. Anything vertical isn't going to move the needle in Google's view of their finances. MS and Oracle have had issues with their "verticals" in the past, but they weren't actually big enough that they could kill them off, given their reliance on enterprise customers for their income. FAANG (except Netflix obv) aren't dependent on enterprise customers. Facebook and Apple don't really offer enterprise products and AWS/Google have, basically Workspaces/Workdocs for AWS and GSuite from Google. Both Facebook and Google are "vertical" in that they sell ads on the internet, or, more accurately, they provide access to their users to advertisers. Everything else is noise. So the general rule is "Don't buy vertical services from a horizontal company".

amitutk 7y ago

Phew ... tragedy averted. I ranted earlier about them [0]. We didn't use google Hire exactly for this reason. And they were more expensive than existing software while providing few features with less polish. And yes, they had a more aggressive sales force pushing the product, who would cold call, play the discount game, etc. This could have been a good value add to the G-Suite. Alas. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18160658 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18160658

machiste77 7y ago
Same. I'm from a product/tech background and working with a People (aka HR) team these days. Google Hire looked very appealing since we're on Gsuite but now I'm really happy that my spidey-senses told me not to take the risk. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19556214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19556214

mrnobody_67 7y ago

calling it a "success" and then shutting it down? talk about talking out of both sides of the mouth.

nexuist 7y ago

"It was built mostly for small to medium sized businesses, with a price that ranged from $200 to $400 a month depending on how many G Suite licenses you needed." Hm. Does that price seem too high? When I think small business I think mom and pop restaurants or utility stores. Would they be willing to pay so much per month just to hire people which they'll inevitably have to pay for anyways? Do small and medium businesses hire at such large rates to justify this expense? Obviously I'm just armchair generaling here, I'm sure G Suite's sales team crunched the numbers to make sure they made sense. But they don't make sense to me, and I'm wondering if someone can explain why.

dpandya 7y ago
The target market for Google Hire was probably Lever's (https://www.lever.co https://www.lever.co) customers, i.e. mostly funded startups and other companies hiring white collar employees. For these businesses, $200-400/month for an Applicant Tracking System is pretty inline with market. Lever's pricing is higher as far as I've seen.
wheelerwj 7y ago
small business is defined as anything up to 500 people. mom and pop, restaurants are in the same group but it covers a pretty big swath.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- kensai 7y ago
  500 people is a small business? Wow, definitely this definition is not used in Europe.
  - nolok 7y ago
    Mmm it’s not that far in France a TPE is below 10, a PME between 10 and 250, ETI between 250 and 5000 and a GE above 5000. 500 is almost PME which stands for Petites et Moyennes Entreprises, literally small and medium sized business.

dmix 7y ago

If it was successful why not sell it and let it live on?

cortesoft 7y ago
Because they want the people who worked on it to work on something else.
- Scipio_Afri 7y ago
  A LinkedIn clone that will be closed in less than 2 years after debuting it.
  - NullPrefix 7y ago
    Would be perfect if LI closed shop during those 2 years.
  - rhizome 7y ago
    I'm guessing that's the one industry feature that LinkedIn won't be copying.
truncate 7y ago
I can think of two reasons: 1. The code can be tightly tied to their internal systems and infra. It may just be more expensive to separate it out, not to mention engineers at Google are smart enough to avoid such projects (I mean, separate it out so that they can sell it) with no value to career. 2. Its success (of whatever scale) is probably tied to Google branding. Once it goes away, its probably as good as yet another job listing site which isn't super hard to make.
- dmix 7y ago
  Right, #1 makes a lot of sense. The management/engineer’s time and commitment is the most finite resource and it’s possible they integrated it heavily since the 2015 acquisition. That said, they paid $380 million for it when it was called Bebop so it’s not entirely chump change if it retained that value.

jmtame 7y ago

Founder and CEO of Agave.com here. We're a new player in the space and we've focused on making it easy for startups to get going quickly with an ATS that doesn't suck. If you're interested in a demo or getting an invite to join (we haven't launched publicly yet), shoot me an email at jared@agave.com.

jmtame 7y ago

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dennisgorelik 7y ago
Do you have an XML job feed? We are aggregating jobs from ATS-es. https://www.postjobfree.com/include-job-feed https://www.postjobfree.com/include-job-feed
- jmtame 7y ago
  Hi Dennis, we do support XML job feeds for all of our customer accounts, including those on the free plan.

stanislavb 7y ago

Yet another one hits the Google Graveyard https://www.saashub.com/google-graveyard https://www.saashub.com/google-graveyard

codyogden 7y ago
Yeah. They definitely kill things. https://killedbygoogle.com https://killedbygoogle.com

stanislavb 7y ago

Another addition to the Google Graveyard https://www.saashub.com/google-graveyard https://www.saashub.com/google-graveyard

sjg007 7y ago

Never heard of it..

LaserToy 7y ago

I preordered Stadia. I think I made a mistake.

DuskStar 7y ago
You're only realizing this now? I think this Penny Arcade [0] is relevant... 0: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2019/06/10/stadioid https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2019/06/10/stadioid
- LaserToy 7y ago
  I worked for a gaming company, so, mostly curiosity. I do believe it is going to fail.
ulfw 7y ago
Without a doubt. Anything that is not core I don’t have hope it will stick around.
scotth 7y ago
I get the feeling Stadia is different. I'm not willing to write it off quite yet.
- craftyguy 7y ago
  When so, so, so many google experiments have been killed off[0], I'm curious what makes you think that this time it will be different? 0. https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/

LaserToy 7y ago

I preordered Stadia. I think I made a mistake.

nateps 7y ago

I'm the founder and CTO of Lever, YC S12. I also worked at Google as a PM prior to founding Lever. Let me know how I can help if anyone has questions! We're a great alternative to Google Hire.

jacob_rezi 7y ago
Wow cool to find you like this. We built a resume software which focuses exactly on working with ats (https://rezi.io/ https://rezi.io/) We plan to make resume formats specific to certain types of ATS, Lever being amongst the first we hope to work with. Any way this message can spark that conversation? Our users & hiring partners love the idea.
- nateps 7y ago
  Send me a note, <first name>@lever.co, and we'll take it from there!
- shusson 7y ago
  https://rezi.io https://rezi.io is returning a 500 page :(
  - jacob_rezi 7y ago
    thanks for the notice - all sorted now
2arrs2ells 7y ago
Nate - why do you think Google shut down Hire? When it launched, did you see any path for it to become a major ATS player, given Google's impatience? Thx & hope Lever scoops up a bunch of customers from the transition (if Hire even had a bunch of customers!).
- nateps 7y ago
  As many of the news articles have talked about, Google Hire's origin was the acquisition of Bebop. Some discussion on this HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10839516 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10839516 In this case, I know that Diane Greene advocated for her team to have the opportunity to launch their product, which they had been developing in stealth from 2012-2016. I haven't worked there for some time now, but Google has historically supported teams in launching into the market through experiments, labs, new product launches, etc. However, Google's current scale makes it very difficult for a new product to be worth improving and maintaining. They must make billions in revenue directly or indirectly to show up in a meaningful way. In most cases, products are given a few years, tested for impact, and ultimately the most likely outcome is that a product will fail when that is the bar. It is not entirely different from the reality of a startup—the majority of startups don't last either.

blackoil 7y ago

Was it a showcase project for Bebop platform? Doesn't seems to be kind of project that Google should own/launch. 380 MM$ seems too much for this product.

Dwolb 7y ago

Hire user here. IMO the product was functional (and cheap relative to the market) but not good. There were a lot of UX quirks that made it feel like an outside consultancy slapped some “Material” design on a pre-built app and called it a day. Really I would’ve liked to see a product like this be a meta-layer on top of GSuite productivity tools. ie Interview feedback forms should be a Forms form, the job board should be more like Sites. From a strategic standpoint I had no idea why they pursued this particular product. The output here never seemed particularly well-aligned to any strategic motive.

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rhizome 7y ago
>made it feel like an outside consultancy slapped some “Material” design on a pre-built app and called it a day. Google's replacement motto for "Don't be evil" is "Launch and forget."
xmprt 7y ago
> From a strategic standpoint I had no idea why they pursued this particular product A manager wanted a promotion

kensai 7y ago

Is there a comparison/review of all hire tools for startup and small businesses? Every Applicant Tracking System looks so expensive if you are not heftily funded...

sittingnut 7y ago

google suffering from usual disease of bloated conglomerates. should stick to it's core competencies.

ulfw 7y ago

I stopped using every Google product besides Search and Maps. Still have Photos but thats replaceable. Oh and Youtube, which is not replaceable. Haven’t used Gmail in a decade and no use for all the other stuff that no one knows if it will be around next year or not. Sorry to say but that what it has become.

suzzer99 7y ago
I still have the old picasa executable so I can use it on new or reinstalled computers. It's great for browsing all the images and videos on your computer.
- ulfw 7y ago
  Sadly doesn't run on Macs using Catalina anymore

hellofriends 7y ago

Hey friends. Lever is a great ATS so definitely check them out. Another one to add to the list is attract.ai (ATS + automated sourcing and engagement), intelliHR (HRIS) and Greenhouse.io (ATS).

RocketSyntax 7y ago

For a GCP role, a Google Hire person interviewed me >,<

n42 7y ago

What is humorous to me is that Google is hurting users who typically have the most influence over SaaS integrations at their company (managers) by taking away a tool that helped them deal with the part of their job most of them hate the most (hiring/recruiting). If it hasn't been obvious yet to managers watching this, Google's software is not a safe investment for you to make for your company. It is only a matter of time until you will suddenly have to divert your time to figuring out how to migrate away from a Good Tool to a Less Good Tool because Google built it well then took it away. Swapping a tool like this is an abysmal resource sink for you and your company. This is not the first, second, third, fourth or even fifth time this has happened, but this one should hit close to home. Google's software is not a safe investment for you to make for your company.

kayoone 7y ago
Well to that extent, most other SaaS products which are affordable for SMBs are not a safe investment either, it's not that non-google companies/startup never shut down. Actually most SaaS startups fail.
- n42 7y ago
  I agree but I think it's a false dichotomy. At least with a startup you can count on them to, well, try.
  - kayoone 7y ago
    but most lack the financial stability of google and could disappear rather quickly because of that.
    - eitland 7y ago
      Look for companies like Basecamp, companies that arent looking to be aquired or get unicorn status but to stay soundly profitable year-after-year. This was one of the reasons I loved WhatsApp so much early on when that seemed to be the way it was going: a healthy >1B USD company with no dependency except on users. As the WhatsApp story and many other tells us this isn't always safe, but it should be a safer bet than anyone clearly going the "unicorn or nothing" way from the start.

shubidubi 7y ago

when was the last time Google had a successful consumer-facing product? looks like they just keep shutting down products in the past few years.

RestlessMind 7y ago

At this point, I have started seeing Google as a miniature of contemporary SV (with all its good and bad stuff). Lots of random products thrown out to the user only to be cancelled in a few years? Check! Occasional massively successful (and actually useful) products? Check! Lip service and virtue signaling for fads du jour (eg. diversity)? Check! Actual behavior hinting towards prioritizing profits over all else (eg. lots of low-wage contractors in lieu of full time employees)? Check! So it won't be a surprise if there are internal pitching sessions where Product Managers would be pitching their ideas to VPs just like YC demo days. Then get started with 2-3 engineers, put out the product, take it to some decent success level (eg. US-only, English-only, Android/iOS-only launch), pocket your promo, move on, rinse and repeat!! The real question for me is is this all by design? Could it be that they want exactly this kind of setup? I won't be surprised if Google leadership is thinking this way...

atdt 7y ago
Could you please explain what you mean when you say diversity is a fad du jour? I'd like to believe you didn't mean to say something this ugly.
- otabdeveloper4 7y ago
  Gasp! Thoughtcrime alert! Call the police!
  - benblu 7y ago
    Would you prefer if he just called him a jerk? Telling someone that they're being mean or inconsiderate is not the same thing as censoring them.
    - otabdeveloper4 7y ago
      > Would you prefer if he just called him a jerk? Indeed I would. > Telling someone that they're being mean or inconsiderate is not the same thing as censoring them. Unless this 'telling' is a dogwhistle for the thought police to take action. My parent comment was already flagged. One more dogwhistle and I'll be banned.

tanilama 7y ago

Google's side projects keep being joke and untrustworthy, not even newsworthy material.

meow_mix 7y ago

classic

mrbonner 7y ago

I just have the worst nightmare: Google abandons Photo. I have all my photos synced in Google Photo and remove duplicate in my iPhone. If they shut it down, am I screwed?

reustle 7y ago
Yes you are, if they do that. This is why I manually export everything off my phone to an external hard drive once a month, to make sure I also keep the originals. Google Photos is very searchable & easy to use, but not a final long term storage option.
elaus 7y ago
Well Google might be very kill-happy with their own products but at least they always give an early notice so everybody can at least take out their data and move to another service. So even if they shut down Photo one day you will probably have time to download all your photos. Even today you can just download all your photos at once if you have already deleted them from your phone/computer. Btw you should be aware that if you bulk-download your photos from Google they might be in lower resolution and they will be missing some information (e.g. the geo-coordinates). So it might be a good idea to also store your (original) photos on your own devices.
kkarakk 7y ago
Google is very very very very nice about product sunsetting - generous timelines and no bandwidth throttling. Also photos and videos are part of their core business now, i don't think they'd ever abandon the space unless something seriously disrupted the market.

nkkollaw 7y ago

Google is the new Yahoo. They cannot keep services running for more than 24 months. I would be terrified about starting to rely on any new service they create.

atdt 7y ago

This is a good decision, reflecting the wisdom of Silenus, who, legend goes, once mused that the best thing is not to be born, and if already born, to die quickly. Google is intent on gaining the lead in Cloud, and this was a distraction from that.

guessmyname 7y ago

Google Hire is being replaced by ByteBoard — https://byteboard.dev/ https://byteboard.dev/ — which started at Area 120, Google’s incubator.

nikolay 7y ago

Don't trust Google with anything!

Kiro 7y ago

As usual a lot of talk in these threads from people who have actually not used the product in question but just love bashing Google for "cancelling everything".

nprateem 7y ago

Looking through https://killedbygoogle.com https://killedbygoogle.com most of the projects look like crappy side projects so I can understand why a multibillion dollar company would kill them off. My favourite one they killed was this one though: Google Ride Finder Killed almost 10 years ago, Google Ride Finder was a service that used GPS data to pinpoint and map the location of taxis, limos, and shuttle vehicles available for hire in 10 U.S. metro areas. It was over 4 years old. A taxi app... Close, but no cigar.

irrational 7y ago

Google doing what google does best.

naedish 7y ago

Interestingly one of the hire support links in the announcement goes to the invalid address http://perezmiguel/ http://perezmiguel/. I'm guessing that is the person who worked on the announcement document.

reeeeee 7y ago

Why do they cancel this product? Are they losing profit over this? Were they working on any new features? If no new features are required, would it be such a hassle to just keep the product working without assigning engineers to it? Only support?

noeloc 7y ago

I'm the CTO and co-founder of https://hirehive.com https://hirehive.com, we're an ATS built for small to medium sized companies. Our pricing is based on the number of open roles at a time. We've been around for over 5 years and have great set of features to help your hiring process, including custom application forms and multilingual hiring. Check us out or get in touch.

roystonvassey 7y ago

I think there should be a law that mandates orgs offering SaaS products (probably, with a min. base of users, say >100) to open-source their code, if they decide to sundown it. It almost appears to be the bare minimum, from a consumer protection perspective, for a responsible company (or, even Google) to do.

NickATS 7y ago

SmartRecruiters offers a lightweight version of our enterprise product for around a similar cost. We are also offering a free data migration and Recruiting AI seat for current//former Google Hire customers. Just give us a shout if interested. https://www.smartrecruiters.com/resources/get-a-demo/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=ghire https://www.smartrecruiters.com/resources/get-a-demo/?utm_so...

roy-baladi 7y ago

I think Google, as most do, underestimated the time and effort it takes to build a recruiting suite, even for the SMB market. I've spent 5 years SmartRecruiters as PM and in partnerships. It's taken 80 engineers a good 5+ years to build a clean solution that can scale globally with different local customs, job boards, assessments, and regulations.