58 ms·

Google support forums are terrible. Every time there is a missing feature (I usually find it in Google Spreadsheet) or a bug, the corresponding entry in the sup

Google support forums are terrible. Every time there is a missing feature (I usually find it in Google Spreadsheet) or a bug, the corresponding entry in the support forum would be answered with some pretext of why said feature will never be supported.

jimmytidey 6y ago
Isn't being strict about what features you add the core of good product management? (Doesn't apply to bugs I guess.) Explaining it to users is a nice bonus.
- dsr_ 6y ago
  No. The core of good product management is making decisions that make your product so attractive to users that they get their friends and coworkers to use it, too. Sometimes that means minimalism. Sometimes it means that you have ease of use. Sometimes you realize that your users are actually not your customers, and you need to make the product attractive to the customers, not the users. That way lies madness and enterprise sales.
  - baddox 6y ago
    If a bunch of people are asking for a bunch of features it sounds like they have made their product attractive to users.
    - mc32 6y ago
      Not necessarily. There was a time there were few players in the SaaS office collaboration suites, so the default was google apps. Now that other alternatives exist people might be asking for some of the features offered by others.
- II2II 6y ago
  Not really. There may be conflicting demands from customers that have to be dealt with, and conflicts between those customers and the realities of software development, but you generally need to offer the features that customers need to get their job done. In particularly bad cases, the failure to deliver may effectively dictate corporate and government policies. (Yes, I have lived through that.) At a less dire level, it also affects the ability to acquire and retain customers. If a product does not offer the features a person needs or fails to reflect how they use it, the product becomes more trouble than it is worth. Compare Google's and Microsoft's office productivity applications. There are many things that you simply cannot do with Google's product that are addressed by Microsoft's product, or even in the often criticized LibreOffice.
BbzzbB 6y ago
This is off topic but it reminds me, every time I look for some Windows 10 problem, it mostly leads to some Microsoft forum (answers.microsoft.com). In there however, the questions systematically get answered by a billion "MSFT specialist consultants #not working for MSFT", and it always weirds me out. Are these people there for self promotion, for the thrill of it or is it MSFT that has some reward system for third parties to participate? I know helpful strangers is nothing new to the internet, I guess I'm just weirded out because there's never an official answer on MSFT's official forum and these sorts of questions are not really the sort of "playful" puzzles one might encounter helping strangers on SO/Reddit/Discord.
- cbo100 6y ago
  It's the same on the Apple discussion boards. You won't ever get an official answer, only a guess of an answer from somebody with no more knowledge than yourself. HP is the same, but occasionally you will get an employee answer, but it will be just as useless. My assumption is all the big tech companies don't want to give support away for free when you should be paying for a support contract for it. And yes, there is for some unknown reason, a legion of people who will give this fake support for free for internet points.
  - newsbinator 6y ago
    And the guess of an answer they give is always the same: 1. A word-for-word copy of generic support steps (e.g. try restarting, try clearing your cache, log out of iCloud and back in again, etc) 2. Have you reset your PRAM? 3. Wow you have? Then you'll need to reset your NVRAM.
    - luckman212 6y ago
      And don't forget the mandatory "reset your SMC"
  - treeman79 6y ago
    Real answer they don’t want to give. “Look we got one guy keeping the system alive, we’re not paying for another one.”
neurostimulant 6y ago
Are the people that answering questions on that support forum actually google employees? I got this impression that google employees never post on that forum and the people that answer are just unpaid forum members which somehow take it upon themselves to post answers.
- nmstoker 6y ago
  I bet you're right. Reminds me a little of the scenario where people bizarrely ask a forum if they can bring their dog to a hotel, some random person says "yes" and then you wonder if the hotel declined to accept the dog if the owner would say "well Bob off the internet said it would be fine"
  - chris_wot 6y ago
    The difference is that the hotel didn't create, own or manage the forum.
  - floren 6y ago
    I like reading Q&A on Amazon listings, because lots of people answer "I have no idea" or similar. I've only received a few of the email prompts for these things, but as I recall they almost make it sound like some potential shopper has decided to ask YOU, specifically YOU, about a particular product feature.
    - foobiekr 6y ago
      The amazon ones are truly amazing. I have wondered for years who is answering those. I had thought that questions were routed to previous buyers somehow, but that's never happened for me...
      - JeanSebTr 6y ago
        I've received a few email notifications for amazon products. They seems to be sent for new questions when you previously purchased the product (not necessarily received it yet).
mlthoughts2018 6y ago
Google products are more likely to be suddenly deprecated with no offboarding plan than to care what features an overwhelming majority of customers want. Most Google products exist solely for the benefit of the Google engineers who use them for resume padding & career growth. They lose money for Google the company and they infuriate loyal customers up until they are capriciously surprise decommissioned.

jimmytidey 6y ago

Isn't being strict about what features you add the core of good product management? (Doesn't apply to bugs I guess.) Explaining it to users is a nice bonus.

dsr_ 6y ago
No. The core of good product management is making decisions that make your product so attractive to users that they get their friends and coworkers to use it, too. Sometimes that means minimalism. Sometimes it means that you have ease of use. Sometimes you realize that your users are actually not your customers, and you need to make the product attractive to the customers, not the users. That way lies madness and enterprise sales.
- baddox 6y ago
  If a bunch of people are asking for a bunch of features it sounds like they have made their product attractive to users.
  - mc32 6y ago
    Not necessarily. There was a time there were few players in the SaaS office collaboration suites, so the default was google apps. Now that other alternatives exist people might be asking for some of the features offered by others.
II2II 6y ago
Not really. There may be conflicting demands from customers that have to be dealt with, and conflicts between those customers and the realities of software development, but you generally need to offer the features that customers need to get their job done. In particularly bad cases, the failure to deliver may effectively dictate corporate and government policies. (Yes, I have lived through that.) At a less dire level, it also affects the ability to acquire and retain customers. If a product does not offer the features a person needs or fails to reflect how they use it, the product becomes more trouble than it is worth. Compare Google's and Microsoft's office productivity applications. There are many things that you simply cannot do with Google's product that are addressed by Microsoft's product, or even in the often criticized LibreOffice.

BbzzbB 6y ago

This is off topic but it reminds me, every time I look for some Windows 10 problem, it mostly leads to some Microsoft forum (answers.microsoft.com). In there however, the questions systematically get answered by a billion "MSFT specialist consultants #not working for MSFT", and it always weirds me out. Are these people there for self promotion, for the thrill of it or is it MSFT that has some reward system for third parties to participate? I know helpful strangers is nothing new to the internet, I guess I'm just weirded out because there's never an official answer on MSFT's official forum and these sorts of questions are not really the sort of "playful" puzzles one might encounter helping strangers on SO/Reddit/Discord.

cbo100 6y ago
It's the same on the Apple discussion boards. You won't ever get an official answer, only a guess of an answer from somebody with no more knowledge than yourself. HP is the same, but occasionally you will get an employee answer, but it will be just as useless. My assumption is all the big tech companies don't want to give support away for free when you should be paying for a support contract for it. And yes, there is for some unknown reason, a legion of people who will give this fake support for free for internet points.
- newsbinator 6y ago
  And the guess of an answer they give is always the same: 1. A word-for-word copy of generic support steps (e.g. try restarting, try clearing your cache, log out of iCloud and back in again, etc) 2. Have you reset your PRAM? 3. Wow you have? Then you'll need to reset your NVRAM.
  - luckman212 6y ago
    And don't forget the mandatory "reset your SMC"
- treeman79 6y ago
  Real answer they don’t want to give. “Look we got one guy keeping the system alive, we’re not paying for another one.”

neurostimulant 6y ago

Are the people that answering questions on that support forum actually google employees? I got this impression that google employees never post on that forum and the people that answer are just unpaid forum members which somehow take it upon themselves to post answers.

nmstoker 6y ago
I bet you're right. Reminds me a little of the scenario where people bizarrely ask a forum if they can bring their dog to a hotel, some random person says "yes" and then you wonder if the hotel declined to accept the dog if the owner would say "well Bob off the internet said it would be fine"
- chris_wot 6y ago
  The difference is that the hotel didn't create, own or manage the forum.
- floren 6y ago
  I like reading Q&A on Amazon listings, because lots of people answer "I have no idea" or similar. I've only received a few of the email prompts for these things, but as I recall they almost make it sound like some potential shopper has decided to ask YOU, specifically YOU, about a particular product feature.
  - foobiekr 6y ago
    The amazon ones are truly amazing. I have wondered for years who is answering those. I had thought that questions were routed to previous buyers somehow, but that's never happened for me...
    - JeanSebTr 6y ago
      I've received a few email notifications for amazon products. They seems to be sent for new questions when you previously purchased the product (not necessarily received it yet).

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

Google products are more likely to be suddenly deprecated with no offboarding plan than to care what features an overwhelming majority of customers want. Most Google products exist solely for the benefit of the Google engineers who use them for resume padding & career growth. They lose money for Google the company and they infuriate loyal customers up until they are capriciously surprise decommissioned.