11 ms·

Not a Google fanboy by any means, but couldn't this be read with the opposite conclusion as well - that the average time that Google keeps marginal products ali

Not a Google fanboy by any means, but couldn't this be read with the opposite conclusion as well - that the average time that Google keeps marginal products alive is 4 years? Of course it's possible that everyone has some personal favourites amongst those 164, but if an idea really has legs what's to stop people from exhuming it from the Google graveyard?

throwawaytoday5 7y ago
4 years for a product is abysmal from one of the richest companies in the world. This is Google not some garage shop with 2 employees.
- cookie_monsta 7y ago
  I have no idea what the metrics are, but to continue my devil's advocacy, would the counterpoint here be "average lifespan of a marginal product that doesn't get acquired by $BIG_COMPANY"?
underwater 7y ago
It's probably more like a year with actual support and updates, two years where it's left to whither and slowly die, and then a year of notice before sunsetting it.
- Pxtl 7y ago
  Yeah. By that logic MS has eternal support for everything, because MS has a legendary hardcore approach to backwards compatibility that they will release a product, push it hard, and then abandon development on it... but still have it "officially supported" for a decade while it bitrots into a nightmare... but never tell their users "stop using this, it's deprecated". As much as I hate Google sunsetting products, I hate even more the companies that keep their zombies shuffling along in a state of undeath forever.
  - daxfohl 7y ago
    Or worse when an old product kinda pseudo gets merged into a new product, in a way that makes both of them worse. Better just to cancel the old one and move on.
  - wvenable 7y ago
    That makes no sense. Nobody is forcing you to use an abandoned product. So you're obviously better off with the Microsoft model than the Google one. A good example is VB6, the runtime is still supported in Windows 10 -- and necessary for one our largest vendor products to run -- yet the VB6 IDE only runs in XP. Our business would have been really screwed if they just dropped support for it. We are, of course, working to move to a different product and have the luxury of time to do that.
visarga 7y ago
> but couldn't this be read with the opposite conclusion as well - that the average time that Google keeps marginal products alive is 4 years Averages are misleading when the distribution is bi-or-multimodal.
- cookie_monsta 7y ago
  So are you saying that it couldn't be read like that?
  - KMnO4 7y ago
    Think about how many Google products have lasted much longer than four year: Search, Maps, Gmail, Drive, AdWords, etc. This skews the average. What would be more helpful is a median, or percentiles (eg 75% of Google products only last X years, 25% last Y months). I imagine that would be much more representative of Google’s fail-fast experimentations.
    - cookie_monsta 7y ago
      FTA: The average lifespan of a discontinued Google product is 4 years and 1 month. "Living" products aren't skewing anything
kedean 7y ago
Id be interested in seeing the median lifespan. I feel like it's possible there are long lived products bringing the average way up, although I could be wrong without diving in further.

throwawaytoday5 7y ago

4 years for a product is abysmal from one of the richest companies in the world. This is Google not some garage shop with 2 employees.

cookie_monsta 7y ago
I have no idea what the metrics are, but to continue my devil's advocacy, would the counterpoint here be "average lifespan of a marginal product that doesn't get acquired by $BIG_COMPANY"?

underwater 7y ago

It's probably more like a year with actual support and updates, two years where it's left to whither and slowly die, and then a year of notice before sunsetting it.

Pxtl 7y ago
Yeah. By that logic MS has eternal support for everything, because MS has a legendary hardcore approach to backwards compatibility that they will release a product, push it hard, and then abandon development on it... but still have it "officially supported" for a decade while it bitrots into a nightmare... but never tell their users "stop using this, it's deprecated". As much as I hate Google sunsetting products, I hate even more the companies that keep their zombies shuffling along in a state of undeath forever.
- daxfohl 7y ago
  Or worse when an old product kinda pseudo gets merged into a new product, in a way that makes both of them worse. Better just to cancel the old one and move on.
- wvenable 7y ago
  That makes no sense. Nobody is forcing you to use an abandoned product. So you're obviously better off with the Microsoft model than the Google one. A good example is VB6, the runtime is still supported in Windows 10 -- and necessary for one our largest vendor products to run -- yet the VB6 IDE only runs in XP. Our business would have been really screwed if they just dropped support for it. We are, of course, working to move to a different product and have the luxury of time to do that.

visarga 7y ago

> but couldn't this be read with the opposite conclusion as well - that the average time that Google keeps marginal products alive is 4 years Averages are misleading when the distribution is bi-or-multimodal.

cookie_monsta 7y ago
So are you saying that it couldn't be read like that?
- KMnO4 7y ago
  Think about how many Google products have lasted much longer than four year: Search, Maps, Gmail, Drive, AdWords, etc. This skews the average. What would be more helpful is a median, or percentiles (eg 75% of Google products only last X years, 25% last Y months). I imagine that would be much more representative of Google’s fail-fast experimentations.
  - cookie_monsta 7y ago
    FTA: The average lifespan of a discontinued Google product is 4 years and 1 month. "Living" products aren't skewing anything

kedean 7y ago

Id be interested in seeing the median lifespan. I feel like it's possible there are long lived products bringing the average way up, although I could be wrong without diving in further.