8 ms·

Maybe I'm crazy but I've never thought google had a good product team. Has there ever been a coherent vision for their collection of products? Edit: just to be

Maybe I'm crazy but I've never thought google had a good product team. Has there ever been a coherent vision for their collection of products? Edit: just to be clear. I'm not saying google doesnt have good products. I use and enjoy lots of them but for a long time it has seemed like even google isn't sure how all their products fit together. Perhaps that leads to weird forays into territories that don't fit which then results in shutting things down.

perlgeek 7y ago
I think good had (and maybe still) good product teams. For example I'm regularly amazed at small features in Maps that make my life easier. What's missing is the company-level portfolio management.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  > For example I'm regularly amazed at small features in Maps that make my life easier. While I generally agree that Maps is a great and amazing product, I really feel that it is now suffering "peak product" syndrome like MS Word circa late 90s/early 00s. That is, I think Maps was probably "optimal" about 2 or 3 years ago, but since then there has been so much organizational pressure to do something new and add features than each successive version gets worse overall with feature bloat. Yes, some of those new features are useful, but overall I have less and less screen real estate taken up by the actual map and more and more taken up by shit I usually don't care about.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    Agreed entirely. I struggle at times to figure out how to get directions between two places in the new Maps UI in a way I never used to. Same thing with Gmail - what was once zippy and performant-feeling now feels like swimming through molasses.
juped 7y ago
Has a Google product ever been good? - Search (was once good, now just "marginally better than Bing") - Reader (was good, the highest profile victim of Google Death Syndrome)
- steelframe 7y ago
  > Has a Google product ever been good? Uhhh... Maps? Mail? Pixel 2 and 3? Fi? Sheets? Sure, their Cloud doesn't sell as much as Amazon's, but it's been praised as being a much more coherent product. Not sure how anyone could argue that Google hasn't gotten it right several times.
  - juped 7y ago
    Maps, thanks. Still pretty good. I agree with none of the others.
    - vonmoltke 7y ago
      I'm just one anecdote, but I love FI and my Pixel 3.
  - afishisafish 7y ago
    G-suite (Docs, Drive, ...)
- ben_jones 7y ago
  Some of the Google Cloud Products are quite good in my opinion. Spanner, BigQuery, GKE. They have pretty high price points, but that's what you get to have with a good product. With GCP Google gets to show off what it is actually top of the world at, with these one-off consumer products Google Employees are just being naive to what their strengths really are.
  - juped 7y ago
    I can believe this (I only use AWS so I don't know firsthand).
ogre_codes 7y ago
Google has a few products which were stellar and singularly awesome at the time of launch: Search, Maps, and Gmail. In the years since I'm not even sure I love those products anymore. Search has nearly become pay-to-play, a model which the original search killed. Maps is not nearly as stand-out as it used to be (mostly because products like Apple Maps have improved massively over the years). And Gmail is a bit of a mess and it's gotten pretty damned creepy having Google shuffling through mail. They've also acquired Google Docs, YouTube, and Android which are arguably their most appealing current offerings. But those products are themselves giant question marks. YouTube and Android in particular seem plagued with privacy and ethical flaws. Probably the most compelling product to come out of Google in a long time is the Chromebook. Given their history, a lot of people are rightfully suspicious of Google's intentions with the Chromebook and privacy aspects around it. I tend to eye Google's offerings the same way I looked at MSFTs 15-20 years ago.
- hyperdimension 7y ago
  Maps was an acquisition, too. "Skyhook" or "Keyhole" come to mind as to the original name, but I'm not sure which.
  - abtinf 7y ago
    Keyhole became Google Earth.
- pavel_lishin 7y ago
  > YouTube and Android in particular seem plagued with privacy and ethical flaws. Ethical and privacy issues aside, they're also fucking riddled with UX nightmares.

perlgeek 7y ago

I think good had (and maybe still) good product teams. For example I'm regularly amazed at small features in Maps that make my life easier. What's missing is the company-level portfolio management.

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
> For example I'm regularly amazed at small features in Maps that make my life easier. While I generally agree that Maps is a great and amazing product, I really feel that it is now suffering "peak product" syndrome like MS Word circa late 90s/early 00s. That is, I think Maps was probably "optimal" about 2 or 3 years ago, but since then there has been so much organizational pressure to do something new and add features than each successive version gets worse overall with feature bloat. Yes, some of those new features are useful, but overall I have less and less screen real estate taken up by the actual map and more and more taken up by shit I usually don't care about.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Agreed entirely. I struggle at times to figure out how to get directions between two places in the new Maps UI in a way I never used to. Same thing with Gmail - what was once zippy and performant-feeling now feels like swimming through molasses.

juped 7y ago

Has a Google product ever been good? - Search (was once good, now just "marginally better than Bing") - Reader (was good, the highest profile victim of Google Death Syndrome)

steelframe 7y ago
> Has a Google product ever been good? Uhhh... Maps? Mail? Pixel 2 and 3? Fi? Sheets? Sure, their Cloud doesn't sell as much as Amazon's, but it's been praised as being a much more coherent product. Not sure how anyone could argue that Google hasn't gotten it right several times.
- juped 7y ago
  Maps, thanks. Still pretty good. I agree with none of the others.
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    I'm just one anecdote, but I love FI and my Pixel 3.
- afishisafish 7y ago
  G-suite (Docs, Drive, ...)
ben_jones 7y ago
Some of the Google Cloud Products are quite good in my opinion. Spanner, BigQuery, GKE. They have pretty high price points, but that's what you get to have with a good product. With GCP Google gets to show off what it is actually top of the world at, with these one-off consumer products Google Employees are just being naive to what their strengths really are.
- juped 7y ago
  I can believe this (I only use AWS so I don't know firsthand).

ogre_codes 7y ago

Google has a few products which were stellar and singularly awesome at the time of launch: Search, Maps, and Gmail. In the years since I'm not even sure I love those products anymore. Search has nearly become pay-to-play, a model which the original search killed. Maps is not nearly as stand-out as it used to be (mostly because products like Apple Maps have improved massively over the years). And Gmail is a bit of a mess and it's gotten pretty damned creepy having Google shuffling through mail. They've also acquired Google Docs, YouTube, and Android which are arguably their most appealing current offerings. But those products are themselves giant question marks. YouTube and Android in particular seem plagued with privacy and ethical flaws. Probably the most compelling product to come out of Google in a long time is the Chromebook. Given their history, a lot of people are rightfully suspicious of Google's intentions with the Chromebook and privacy aspects around it. I tend to eye Google's offerings the same way I looked at MSFTs 15-20 years ago.

hyperdimension 7y ago
Maps was an acquisition, too. "Skyhook" or "Keyhole" come to mind as to the original name, but I'm not sure which.
- abtinf 7y ago
  Keyhole became Google Earth.
pavel_lishin 7y ago
> YouTube and Android in particular seem plagued with privacy and ethical flaws. Ethical and privacy issues aside, they're also fucking riddled with UX nightmares.