7 ms·

Google quit. Google always quits. Google is terrible at products. It's simple. I enjoy reading a detailed analysis of a product's failure, but at the same time

Google quit. Google always quits. Google is terrible at products. It's simple. I enjoy reading a detailed analysis of a product's failure, but at the same time, lets remember that Google's leadership tends to fail the same way, over and over again. I assume that Google is trying to follow a "fail fast" philosophy, so if a product does not do well in a set time frame, it is shut down. That is a great strategy for conserving capital. But it does mean that Google won't get into some markets, because other players are simply more patient, and are willing to stay in longer and get through the rough phase.

spankalee 7y ago
Google made the right call with Wave, finally. The better call would have been to not release it.
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago
  > The better call would have been to not release it. Why's that? Wave wasn't a humiliating mess. It turned out not to really fit anywhere, but that's the kind of thing you learn by letting people try the product, no?
  - spankalee 7y ago
    Google dogfooded Wave before releasing it publicly.
    - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
      My question stands.
      - spankalee 7y ago
        > It turned out not to really fit anywhere, but that's the kind of thing you learn by letting people try the product, no? Google let people try it before releasing it publicly.
        MaxBarraclough 7y ago
        I still don't see why Google shouldn't have released it. I already pointed out that Wave's problem was that it never found its place, despite a solid implementation, which is just the sort of issue that makes itself clear after being released to the public.
mav3rick 7y ago
Yes, Gmail FAILED Android FAILED Chrome FAILED. Let's not forget the elephant in the room SEARCH also FAILED. Also saving capital but a 10yr bet on self driving cars.
- maxlamb 7y ago
  To be fair, Gmail and Chrome are 16 years old, and Google acquired Android 15 years ago. Their main search algorithm of course was developed over 21 years ago. That doesn't leave a good track record for the last 15 years or so...
  - smeyer 7y ago
    There's nothing on par with the main search product, but here are some of their products that seem successful from the 2010s: Google Drive, Google Flights, Google Hangouts, Tensorflow, and Google Photos. This isn't an attempt to be an exhaustive list, but these are all products that a lot of people on this board probably use frequently and have stuck for years.
    - kajecounterhack 7y ago
      I wonder if anyone else was surprised by how useful Google Keep is, and how it doesn't seem to get any publicity (like people don't seem to know about it, but when I've introduced it to family members they've generally loved it). Also I really like my Google home, Pixel phone, and Nest cameras -- privacy concerns aside :grimace:
      - svachalek 7y ago
        Sadly, Keep fits the pattern of a good but not wildly successful product that will likely receive an "Update On" notice someday.
      - BrandoElFollito 7y ago
        I tried Keep, it is OK but the refusal to add an API is scary. It looks like it will not be a product integrated or supported like the others are.
quanticle 7y ago
I was thinking yesterday that, in this aspect, Google is very much like General Motors during the decline years of the '70s and '80s. General Motors also had a similar habit where they'd bring out a new model (which would of course have issues). Then, they'd devote an enormous amount of time and money iterating on the model. And finally, just as the model started to show signs of market success they'd cancel it, and go back step 1. Meanwhile, their competition from Japan was steadily iterating and perfecting a stable lineup of vehicles Sometimes I think that the only reason Google has maintained its level of success is that there is no Toyota or Honda equivalent for GM-Google.
- tehlike 7y ago
  There are multiple. Fb is one, slack and zoom is eating into enterprise communications etc... Plenty of competition where google couldn't take off. Disclaimer: former google employee
  - dx034 7y ago
    But Google still dominates Ad Space and Search (which is connected). And they still dominate search, growth rates for competitors don't really seem meaningful compared to Google's market volume. And unless governments step in, search market share will secure their dominance on the ads market. So unless someone manages to offer a superior (not just comparable) search experience, Google will continue to thrive despite all other products.
    - tehlike 7y ago
      True, search is google's moat. However, most people now go to amazon.com to find out what they want to buy. I still use G for comparison purposes, but it is becoming less and less. On the consumer side, user's time is now going into all sorts of apps from IG, FB, SNAP, Twitter, Games etc... The only thing that google has some handle on is Games through play store and display network. I guess play store is another big money maker for google. Google has a really good product line up - don't get me wrong, i love photos, docs, gmail, search, android, hangouts. But we seemed to have been missing something there with widespread adoption and monetization. Disclaimer: Former Google, current FB employee.
flyinglizard 7y ago
My take is that they probably just don’t care enough. It’s like Intel and their forays into all kinds of adventures outside of processors. Eventually these things are so small compared to their dominance in the core market that as an organization they simply don’t care enough to make it work. It probably started as an initiative of someone high enough to get the resources, but the org never doubled down on it or change one inch of its roadmap to make it work. Google had the first mover in modern email and maps and had very easy onboarding for both from search. Google somehow made Android work (which seems like a miracle in retrospect) and also Chrome (some would say they had to make Chrome work), but that’s all I can think of (it’s still huge, obviously, but also narrow in scope for an organization with that magnitude of resources). As long as Google is filled with connected, talented, bored people it will keep pushing out all sorts of product experiments.
Groxx 7y ago
I'll agree with this. Wave launched with an incredibly broad set of things built-in... and then saw next to no changes whatsoever until its shutdown. Granted, they probably didn't see the usage they hoped for... but that's extremely common for a brand new thing. It takes a few iterations to get something that fits the market. It's part of what makes waterfall strategies so problematic: you have one shot, and it'll usually miss.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  It had been invite-only for most of its life and only opened to the general public for something like a month or less before its shutdown. It would have been dumb for Google to shut it down on "lack of usage" if their own artificial barriers were the reason for such. Lack of usage is getting a lot of blame in these threads, but let's not forget it was most likely a Google+ related strategic decision. Wave was built with an XMPP-like or email-like federation model in mind and was shutdown in basically the exact same cohort with XMPP-based Google Talk and RSS-based Google Reader. Google was strategically no longer interested in standards-based (or standards-aspiring perhaps in the case of Wave) social networks.
  - alangibson 7y ago
    This makes me wonder how much different things would be if Google had doubled downed on an Open Social (tm) model instead of trying to me-too Facebook et. al. by building a walled garden (more like a walled dirt lot I guess)
qwertox 7y ago
Google also doesn't live up to its standards, at least regarding Android apps. Take Google Photos, for example. I have a biking app which automatically makes photos when a geofence is entered, stores them into DCIM/biking. So per ride I get a set of about 20 photos. The first time a photo was made, Google Photos asked me if it should include that those photos in auto-upload. Yes, I wanted that. Now, after the bike ride, I have to start the Google Photos app, wait for some seconds until it detects the photos, then manually close it (swipe up), reopen it, wait a couple of seconds until it finds another new picture which it missed in the first pass, close it, reopen it, wait, close, reopen, wait. I need to do this about 5 times, because for some reason the app doesn't find all the photos in the directory at once. It's not only this biking app and not only with DCIM subfolders. Any added folder which receives photos, and most noticeable with apps which take a sequence of them automatically is affected. I don't get it how something as trivial as globbing a directory gets it past Google's testing standards.
- tehlike 7y ago
  There might be a weird setting that's not working properly. This is not happening to me.
- 0x006A 7y ago
  it might be that the biking app is not calling MediaScanner after taking the picture.
  - izacus 7y ago
    This does sound like the app doesn't register photos correctly in the MediaStore. Or perhaps the phone didn't start the maintenance window to start the uploads - Android (like iOS) doesn't continiously scan filesystems since that would destroy the battery.
  - qwertox 7y ago
    The biking app isn't calling MediaScanner at all. The thing is that once Google Photos is opened, it scans all the directories which it is supposed to watch. Then it also does find photos, you can see it getting populated with the new images one after another, but it always misses some. That's what I'm referring to. In this context, you can't blame any third party app.
dreamcompiler 7y ago
Sometimes they do the opposite, like trying to shove an obviously subpar product [Google+] down everybody's throat. Both approaches are bad strategies.
zelly 7y ago
Tech follows a power law. Putting more work into something doesn't necessarily make it better. It could just be a bad idea no matter what. So failing fast is a good thing.

spankalee 7y ago

Google made the right call with Wave, finally. The better call would have been to not release it.

MaxBarraclough 7y ago
> The better call would have been to not release it. Why's that? Wave wasn't a humiliating mess. It turned out not to really fit anywhere, but that's the kind of thing you learn by letting people try the product, no?
- spankalee 7y ago
  Google dogfooded Wave before releasing it publicly.
  - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
    My question stands.
    - spankalee 7y ago
      > It turned out not to really fit anywhere, but that's the kind of thing you learn by letting people try the product, no? Google let people try it before releasing it publicly.
      - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
        I still don't see why Google shouldn't have released it. I already pointed out that Wave's problem was that it never found its place, despite a solid implementation, which is just the sort of issue that makes itself clear after being released to the public.

mav3rick 7y ago

Yes, Gmail FAILED Android FAILED Chrome FAILED. Let's not forget the elephant in the room SEARCH also FAILED. Also saving capital but a 10yr bet on self driving cars.

maxlamb 7y ago
To be fair, Gmail and Chrome are 16 years old, and Google acquired Android 15 years ago. Their main search algorithm of course was developed over 21 years ago. That doesn't leave a good track record for the last 15 years or so...
- smeyer 7y ago
  There's nothing on par with the main search product, but here are some of their products that seem successful from the 2010s: Google Drive, Google Flights, Google Hangouts, Tensorflow, and Google Photos. This isn't an attempt to be an exhaustive list, but these are all products that a lot of people on this board probably use frequently and have stuck for years.
  - kajecounterhack 7y ago
    I wonder if anyone else was surprised by how useful Google Keep is, and how it doesn't seem to get any publicity (like people don't seem to know about it, but when I've introduced it to family members they've generally loved it). Also I really like my Google home, Pixel phone, and Nest cameras -- privacy concerns aside :grimace:
    - svachalek 7y ago
      Sadly, Keep fits the pattern of a good but not wildly successful product that will likely receive an "Update On" notice someday.
    - BrandoElFollito 7y ago
      I tried Keep, it is OK but the refusal to add an API is scary. It looks like it will not be a product integrated or supported like the others are.

quanticle 7y ago

I was thinking yesterday that, in this aspect, Google is very much like General Motors during the decline years of the '70s and '80s. General Motors also had a similar habit where they'd bring out a new model (which would of course have issues). Then, they'd devote an enormous amount of time and money iterating on the model. And finally, just as the model started to show signs of market success they'd cancel it, and go back step 1. Meanwhile, their competition from Japan was steadily iterating and perfecting a stable lineup of vehicles Sometimes I think that the only reason Google has maintained its level of success is that there is no Toyota or Honda equivalent for GM-Google.

tehlike 7y ago
There are multiple. Fb is one, slack and zoom is eating into enterprise communications etc... Plenty of competition where google couldn't take off. Disclaimer: former google employee
- dx034 7y ago
  But Google still dominates Ad Space and Search (which is connected). And they still dominate search, growth rates for competitors don't really seem meaningful compared to Google's market volume. And unless governments step in, search market share will secure their dominance on the ads market. So unless someone manages to offer a superior (not just comparable) search experience, Google will continue to thrive despite all other products.
  - tehlike 7y ago
    True, search is google's moat. However, most people now go to amazon.com to find out what they want to buy. I still use G for comparison purposes, but it is becoming less and less. On the consumer side, user's time is now going into all sorts of apps from IG, FB, SNAP, Twitter, Games etc... The only thing that google has some handle on is Games through play store and display network. I guess play store is another big money maker for google. Google has a really good product line up - don't get me wrong, i love photos, docs, gmail, search, android, hangouts. But we seemed to have been missing something there with widespread adoption and monetization. Disclaimer: Former Google, current FB employee.

flyinglizard 7y ago

My take is that they probably just don’t care enough. It’s like Intel and their forays into all kinds of adventures outside of processors. Eventually these things are so small compared to their dominance in the core market that as an organization they simply don’t care enough to make it work. It probably started as an initiative of someone high enough to get the resources, but the org never doubled down on it or change one inch of its roadmap to make it work. Google had the first mover in modern email and maps and had very easy onboarding for both from search. Google somehow made Android work (which seems like a miracle in retrospect) and also Chrome (some would say they had to make Chrome work), but that’s all I can think of (it’s still huge, obviously, but also narrow in scope for an organization with that magnitude of resources). As long as Google is filled with connected, talented, bored people it will keep pushing out all sorts of product experiments.

Groxx 7y ago

I'll agree with this. Wave launched with an incredibly broad set of things built-in... and then saw next to no changes whatsoever until its shutdown. Granted, they probably didn't see the usage they hoped for... but that's extremely common for a brand new thing. It takes a few iterations to get something that fits the market. It's part of what makes waterfall strategies so problematic: you have one shot, and it'll usually miss.

WorldMaker 7y ago
It had been invite-only for most of its life and only opened to the general public for something like a month or less before its shutdown. It would have been dumb for Google to shut it down on "lack of usage" if their own artificial barriers were the reason for such. Lack of usage is getting a lot of blame in these threads, but let's not forget it was most likely a Google+ related strategic decision. Wave was built with an XMPP-like or email-like federation model in mind and was shutdown in basically the exact same cohort with XMPP-based Google Talk and RSS-based Google Reader. Google was strategically no longer interested in standards-based (or standards-aspiring perhaps in the case of Wave) social networks.
- alangibson 7y ago
  This makes me wonder how much different things would be if Google had doubled downed on an Open Social (tm) model instead of trying to me-too Facebook et. al. by building a walled garden (more like a walled dirt lot I guess)

qwertox 7y ago

Google also doesn't live up to its standards, at least regarding Android apps. Take Google Photos, for example. I have a biking app which automatically makes photos when a geofence is entered, stores them into DCIM/biking. So per ride I get a set of about 20 photos. The first time a photo was made, Google Photos asked me if it should include that those photos in auto-upload. Yes, I wanted that. Now, after the bike ride, I have to start the Google Photos app, wait for some seconds until it detects the photos, then manually close it (swipe up), reopen it, wait a couple of seconds until it finds another new picture which it missed in the first pass, close it, reopen it, wait, close, reopen, wait. I need to do this about 5 times, because for some reason the app doesn't find all the photos in the directory at once. It's not only this biking app and not only with DCIM subfolders. Any added folder which receives photos, and most noticeable with apps which take a sequence of them automatically is affected. I don't get it how something as trivial as globbing a directory gets it past Google's testing standards.

tehlike 7y ago
There might be a weird setting that's not working properly. This is not happening to me.
0x006A 7y ago
it might be that the biking app is not calling MediaScanner after taking the picture.
- izacus 7y ago
  This does sound like the app doesn't register photos correctly in the MediaStore. Or perhaps the phone didn't start the maintenance window to start the uploads - Android (like iOS) doesn't continiously scan filesystems since that would destroy the battery.
- qwertox 7y ago
  The biking app isn't calling MediaScanner at all. The thing is that once Google Photos is opened, it scans all the directories which it is supposed to watch. Then it also does find photos, you can see it getting populated with the new images one after another, but it always misses some. That's what I'm referring to. In this context, you can't blame any third party app.

dreamcompiler 7y ago

Sometimes they do the opposite, like trying to shove an obviously subpar product [Google+] down everybody's throat. Both approaches are bad strategies.

zelly 7y ago

Tech follows a power law. Putting more work into something doesn't necessarily make it better. It could just be a bad idea no matter what. So failing fast is a good thing.