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Now's the part where we all act outraged and link the "Killed by Google" website despite never hearing of let alone using this Beta app before.

by gundmc 7y ago

DevKoala 7y ago
It's worse this time. Google is failing silently.
- baron816 7y ago
  What do you mean? The link is a post to a warning about it shutting down. That’s not silent.
  - jeppebemad 7y ago
    I think he is - jokingly- saying that now we don’t even get to see the product before it fails.
BoorishBears 7y ago
The app has over 10 million installs on Android alone. Alphabet has 117 BILLION DOLLARS cash on hand. Why is it worth screwing over how ever few people were using this? Let's say a team to maintain an app like this cost 2 million dollars a year. For 1 ten thousandth of their cash of hand, they could fund this app for 5 times longer than Homo sapiens have walked on earth. 1.1 million years. Even if Google shuttering apps is just a meme, why is it even worth feeding the meme when you have such mind bending amounts of money and revenue? - Of course the answer people will reply with is "they have better things to do with the resources". That's the mentality that makes people not trust Google. When you have such mind bending amounts of money, something can be successful by the standards of mere mortals and an embarrassment to Alphabet. No one wants to rely on a company that sees your money as a joke and will gladly pull the rug under you. This app is a perfect example, what kind valuation do you think an app with 10 million installs for neighborhood engagement would see? We don't have DAUs, but you could literally value a listing with 10 million users in the millions.
- animalnewbie 7y ago
  Total cost of your extreme scenario- 2T usd. Tot cost of a more reasonable scenario- a single employee, total cost 500K per year. For 10 years this would be 5M. Which is indeed less than 1/ten thousand cash on hand.
  - UncleMeat 7y ago
    Why is that a reasonable scenario? Maintenance cost is not flat over time. What happens when a product is easy to maintain (one engineer) but suddenly critical infrastructure gets deprecated and now the transition is going to take five engineers? Do you allocate new resources to support products that already have so few users that they only justify maintenance mode?
- kumarm 7y ago
  The app never exited Beta. I would think Google realized there is no $ in being second social network in its category (after nextdoor) at Google Scale. I do think it make sense for Google to shutdown the app. Spinning it off as a startup, I doubt it is a viable option considering how tied they would be with other Google internal resources.
  - pmontra 7y ago
    Gmail has been in beta for five years, 2004 to 2009 https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-apps-is-out-of-beta-yes-really.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-apps-is-out-o... The point here is that very few people are using Neighbourly to make it interesting to Google. Btw, in these days I learned that Duo is still alive. I thought it was dismissed time ago. The page on Google Play says 1B+ installs and still I don't know anybody using it. I mean, nobody ever asked me to make a call using Duo. Everybody is using WhatsApp or Skype for that on mobile. So, to get to the point, very second (or probably, fourth, fifth, etc) in the rankings but not dismissed by Google. I think they value our as strategic. Neighbourly was not. They already have Maps.
    - 7y ago
EdwardDiego 7y ago
The same named but unrelated NZ website is doing well. The concept seems to be sound, perhaps it was the marketing, or lack thereof? https://www.neighbourly.co.nz https://www.neighbourly.co.nz I would also suggest that the people who like such a product (neighbourly.co.nz is popular with the Boomers) are not the people who like downloading apps that could be websites. So yeah, it didn't get as popular as Google would like, but then, how hard did they try?

Now's the part where we all act outraged and link the "Killed by Google" website despite never hearing of let alone using this Beta app before.

by gundmc 7y ago

Now's the part where we all act outraged and link the "Killed by Google" website despite never hearing of let alone using this Beta app before.

DevKoala 7y ago

It's worse this time. Google is failing silently.

baron816 7y ago
What do you mean? The link is a post to a warning about it shutting down. That’s not silent.
- jeppebemad 7y ago
  I think he is - jokingly- saying that now we don’t even get to see the product before it fails.

BoorishBears 7y ago

The app has over 10 million installs on Android alone. Alphabet has 117 BILLION DOLLARS cash on hand. Why is it worth screwing over how ever few people were using this? Let's say a team to maintain an app like this cost 2 million dollars a year. For 1 ten thousandth of their cash of hand, they could fund this app for 5 times longer than Homo sapiens have walked on earth. 1.1 million years. Even if Google shuttering apps is just a meme, why is it even worth feeding the meme when you have such mind bending amounts of money and revenue? - Of course the answer people will reply with is "they have better things to do with the resources". That's the mentality that makes people not trust Google. When you have such mind bending amounts of money, something can be successful by the standards of mere mortals and an embarrassment to Alphabet. No one wants to rely on a company that sees your money as a joke and will gladly pull the rug under you. This app is a perfect example, what kind valuation do you think an app with 10 million installs for neighborhood engagement would see? We don't have DAUs, but you could literally value a listing with 10 million users in the millions.

animalnewbie 7y ago
Total cost of your extreme scenario- 2T usd. Tot cost of a more reasonable scenario- a single employee, total cost 500K per year. For 10 years this would be 5M. Which is indeed less than 1/ten thousand cash on hand.
- UncleMeat 7y ago
  Why is that a reasonable scenario? Maintenance cost is not flat over time. What happens when a product is easy to maintain (one engineer) but suddenly critical infrastructure gets deprecated and now the transition is going to take five engineers? Do you allocate new resources to support products that already have so few users that they only justify maintenance mode?
kumarm 7y ago
The app never exited Beta. I would think Google realized there is no $ in being second social network in its category (after nextdoor) at Google Scale. I do think it make sense for Google to shutdown the app. Spinning it off as a startup, I doubt it is a viable option considering how tied they would be with other Google internal resources.
- pmontra 7y ago
  Gmail has been in beta for five years, 2004 to 2009 https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-apps-is-out-of-beta-yes-really.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-apps-is-out-o... The point here is that very few people are using Neighbourly to make it interesting to Google. Btw, in these days I learned that Duo is still alive. I thought it was dismissed time ago. The page on Google Play says 1B+ installs and still I don't know anybody using it. I mean, nobody ever asked me to make a call using Duo. Everybody is using WhatsApp or Skype for that on mobile. So, to get to the point, very second (or probably, fourth, fifth, etc) in the rankings but not dismissed by Google. I think they value our as strategic. Neighbourly was not. They already have Maps.
  - 7y ago

EdwardDiego 7y ago

The same named but unrelated NZ website is doing well. The concept seems to be sound, perhaps it was the marketing, or lack thereof? https://www.neighbourly.co.nz https://www.neighbourly.co.nz I would also suggest that the people who like such a product (neighbourly.co.nz is popular with the Boomers) are not the people who like downloading apps that could be websites. So yeah, it didn't get as popular as Google would like, but then, how hard did they try?