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> Free consumer products are not the same as paid enterprise services. They may have different revenue models, but there is little difference when it comes dow
by dwaite 7y ago
> Free consumer products are not the same as paid enterprise services.
They may have different revenue models, but there is little difference when it comes down to management killing services which aren't profitable.
If there is a difference, it is that Reader could be maintained at little cost, while GCE (when it gets the axe) could potentially be costing google hundreds of millions per year to keep running.
There have been plenty of other cases where google has burned bridges with the technical crowd which they should have embraced as champions for selling services. Killing off XMPP support was another prime one for me, and absolutely affected paid enterprise customers as well.
- Lammy 7y agoTo be fair, the switch to mobile-first did more to kill XMPP than Google did. It's a lot better now a decade later with all the XEPs, but now there's nobody there to talk to so it's too late.
- erik_seaberg 7y agoReader could only be maintained at little cost if its dependencies were stable. But stable infra doesn't get you promoted, so every service needs to be staffed indefinitely (to keep it on the upgrade treadmill) or killed gracefully before prod explodes.
- hvis 7y agoThese same arguments can be applied to GCEx 100x more. So the point stands.