25 ms·

Tables: Tracking work for teams

• bransonf 6y ago
  Just me or is that literally Airtable’s exact UI? Sidebar on right, tabs top left...
  • mlobl 6y ago
    I've only heard of Airtable, and that was what popped into my mind too
  • edoceo 6y ago
    I <3 airtable. This is a low energy clone. Sad.
• wrren 6y ago
  I'd be extremely wary of adopting any new Google product given their tendency to abandon things that don't achieve immediate success.
  • 0xfaded 6y ago
    This comment seems to top any HN post regarding a google product launch so reliably that perhaps there should be a bot which automatically pins it to the top.
    • dragonwriter 6y ago
      A more useful bot would be one that finds and deletes that inevitably-posted noise.
      • TeMPOraL 6y ago
        It's not noise, it's a valid market signal. So I'll side with automatically appending one such comment in every Google thread until their behavior visibly changes.
        • dragonwriter 6y ago
          > It's not noise In terms of HN’s overt purpose, it is. > it's a valid market signal Every expression of anyone's reaction to a brand is “valid market signal” on the level that that is true of this, but that doesn't stop most of that from being noise in an HN comment thread. > So I'll side with automatically appending one such comment in every Google thread until their behavior visibly changes. Such an automated comment would still be noise, but would have less of excuse of being a valid market signal than comments posted organically, even if that was an excuse (which it's not.)
          • jfoster 6y ago
            If HN is interested in the success/failure of products & services, product-market fit and such, then what Google have done to themselves is a fascinating phenomenon. In the past, many companies have had "not great" reputations for supporting products, but surely Google have taken it to level not seen before. The fact that pretty much all of their products live in the cloud rather than being software that can continue to be used beyond the support period (ala Win98) has probably contributed a lot to that. I think the way that potential customers react to that reputation is very interesting. We're at the point now where Google have clearly acquired this reputation and it's very likely to affect the adoption of anything they try to launch. The next phase will be Google recognising that and trying to correct it somehow. I'm keen to follow along and see how that goes.
            • dragonwriter 6y ago
              > If HN is interested in the success/failure of products & services, product-market fit and such, then what Google have done to themselves is a fascinating phenomenon. Sure, that's a reason discussion of the phenomenon is appropriate for HN, just as discussion of AI-driven automated spamming of message boards as a marketing technique might be. (Though, even then, not an appropriate thing to derail every thread in which a Google product is the subject into.) OTOH, that doesn't make the phenomenon itself appropriate for HN, in any place.
              • 6y ago
  • whoisjuan 6y ago
    This one in particular feels dead already... "An experimental product from Area 120 at Google"... yeah bro, you won't be around in a year.
  • forgotmypw17 6y ago
    I've been in this camp since Google Reader was Plus'd, then sunset, and then Plus itself was sunset.
• easton 6y ago
  This isn't part of GSuite and therefore isn't subject to the same SLA. I wonder if the pricing will stick like this forever or if it will eventually be bundled, since Microsoft already includes something like this in 365 (and many companies probably already pay someone else for this type of functionality, like Airtable). I'd be a little scared of paying for something in the Google incubator, knowing how they cull stuff that isn't popular. But maybe it'll be successful and go into the bundle.
  • stephanerangaya 6y ago
    Good point, yeah
  • ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    "The Google incubator" is particularly accurate here, if you look at the tags on the blog: "Area 120". This is an app developed by one of their "let these people write random stuff" groups: https://area120.google.com/ https://area120.google.com/ To my knowledge, nothing majorly successful or long-term supported has ever come out of Area 120.
    • throwaways885 6y ago
      Area 120 is definitely not a bunch of random people coming together. The projects there are fully funded and do have corporate backing. They launch separate from the rest of Google, with the positive end result being absorbed by another team into a fully supported product.
      • baskire 6y ago
        Name one project that’s lived long term that came out of a120? By lived I do mean no changes to end user for the absorption into another team.
        • surajrmal 6y ago
          Perhaps not a perfect example but Reply by Google seemingly got integrated into Android itself. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reply_(Google) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reply_(Google)
• invalidusernam3 6y ago
  Looks cool, but at the rate Google creates and kills projects I would avoid this
  • vnchr 6y ago
    Get ready to Google Wave goodbye
    • mattkevan 6y ago
      Time for it to face the Google Music.
• thecrumb 6y ago
  Google 'beta'. Release product you will fall in love with it. Abandon in x years later. No thanks.
• topbanana 6y ago
  I remember the day when I'd be excited about any new Google beta. Frankly, I'm not even going to look at this one
  • Kapura 6y ago
    This is what I feel now. A google product launch is just another opportunity for them to hurt me. I have friends who still pour one out for Inbox.
• mikeabraham 6y ago
  Is it April 1st?
• kennyadam 6y ago
  You know Google has a serious credibility problem when half or more of the comments on tech sites covering product launches are questioning when Google will decide to randomly pull the plug.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • atarian 6y ago
    The opposite end of this spectrum is a company supporting far too many different properties like Yahoo did. How do you strike the right balance?
    • Guest42 6y ago
      They can sunset things better that way customers have clearer paths forward.
    • ashtonkem 6y ago
      A good argument for being careful adding new products.
    • puranjay 6y ago
      Google has more resources than Yahoo ever did
    • johnwheeler 6y ago
      They should release the financials of the app and let companies bid to acquire the app and its userbase. Smaller companies get a shot at growing the business, users stay happy(er than they would otherwise) and google gets a shot at acquiring the original idea back should it succeed under the hands of people who give a damn. Unfortunately, such a program would likely be sunset after a year.
      • ebiester 6y ago
        More importantly, this is all released on Google's internal infrastructure. Any such work would require moving to the external infrastructure, and the cost of it likely wouldn't make sense. The real issue is this: Why am I paying 10 dollars/user/month for this when G suite Business is 12? I could see using this for the organization, but not at that cost.
• moneywoes 6y ago
  How long till this is abandoned?
• flixic 6y ago
  They could have launched yesterday, on a Monday(.com).
  • zerkten 6y ago
    When you were a SaaS startup in the 2000s no one took you seriously. Now, the big players have a better chance of responding in a timely fashion. It's going to be harder for these types of apps to get traction in less tech-centric markets. This is especially the case if the "it's part of the suite you own" argument starts to come up more frequently.
• Just1689 6y ago
  What a useful app. Reminds me of Airtable in some ways. I enjoy a good flexible table app any day. We're all tired of the obligatory "I wonder how long before Google deprecates this...;)" but I wonder if Google would get better adoption if they explicitly published what would be needed for them not to drop the product... 1M monthly users? 3M? ...xM? or that when a project actually reaches that point.
  • ashtonkem 6y ago
    The only way to rebuild credibility is to do the right thing repeatedly for a long period of time. Google saying “if we get X users we won’t cancel it” both sounds like a hostage note, and doesn’t matter because we fundamentally don’t trust Google. Without that trust, it doesn’t matter why they say, since it won’t be believed.
    • hackmiester 6y ago
      If they say they need X users to not cancel something, that does nothing for me, even if I trust them. I will not sign up until it already hits that point, because before then, it's practically guaranteed to be canceled. And I bet at least X users would share my opinion.
    • andrewprock 6y ago
      If they could just commit to maintaining Hangouts, they would go a long way to rebuilding trust. I know many school aged kids who joined Hangouts (though Google classroom IIRC) as a painless way to collaborate with classmates and friends. It's literally a gold mine for "next generation" social networking, but the fact that they are killing Hangouts means those kids are all finding their way to other feature rich platforms, like Discord.
  • onion2k 6y ago
    I wonder if Google would get better adoption if they explicitly published what would be needed for them not to drop the product.. Feedly picked up 3 million new users in the two weeks following Google shutting down Reader. Based on that alone I would never trust Google not to shut down a product that seems popular and well-used. Literally the only thing that would change my perception of Google's short-termism would be if they don't shut down any products in the next 10 years.
• brainless 6y ago
  It seems like some folks at Google just woke up to Airtable and launched a counter MVP. I do not really expect more from Google any more. When there are tough competitors, why would people use something else which does not even look quite finished? Google has reach (read search monopoly), so I guess that is an angle.
  • arkitaip 6y ago
    Google should be inspired by their more nimble competitors! Their main problem is not offering Tables as part of G Suite where it would boost their offerings in the office productivity space and deliver a more complete and coherent strategy. That is, if they are really commit to Tables and are ready to offer proper corporate support and maintenance...
  • fourstar 6y ago
    This. I love the preamble about the author being in tech for awhile and 10 years at Goog as if that gives any credibility to a blatant rip off.
• arkitaip 6y ago
  Interesting that they would launch this as a totally separate product and not as a part of G Suite. Do you think they want to create some distance between them and the rest of Google because ofd Google's reputation of shutting down products? Or maybe they want to launch a product outside the usual bureaucracy?
  • ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    "At Area 120, we work on 20% projects 100% of the time." It literally just has no backing by Google's corporate or business goals.
    • lallysingh 6y ago
      To be fair, does that mean anything?
      • lern_too_spel 6y ago
        It means that the PM cares less about the users than the PM for a 100% time Google product cares the users, which is already very little.
    • arkitaip 6y ago
      Right but you can be sure that many people across several teams inside of Google have thought about creating a Airtable clone. Somehow Google greenlit this as a standalone product amongst many other options...
      • dragonwriter 6y ago
        > Somehow Google greenlit this as a standalone product amongst many other options... Even before the “internal incubator” that this came out of, Google hasn't been known for doing a single exclusive offering in a space, so this probably wasn't centrally green lot (because otherwise “internal incubator” makes little sense), and it's release wouldn't (even if it was) exclude another Google offering in the same space. The competitive process you imagine just doesn't seem likely to even approximate the truth.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• crearo 6y ago
  Apart from pulling the plug on products at random, why I'm sceptical is because this hasn't been introduced / used internally widely. Think of it like a product Google created, say Cloud, but doesn't use it itself. Oh wait. It doesn't.
• hiei 6y ago
  Back in the day I would definitely be one of those early Google adopters, just to try the product. I don't bother anymore
  • gogopuppygogo 6y ago
    Sam here. Now, I don’t try a Google product until some multi billion dollar startup that GV has invested into uses that product.
    • dannyw 6y ago
      You know what would help, Google? Slightly incentives early adopters somewhat, with perks in the same product if you sign up early enough. Google Apps (precursor to G Suite) effectively did that. Free plan was 100 users at first. Maybe even higher. Then it got reduced to 15 or something. Then 5. Then they removed the free plan, for new signups. I am pretty happy to be on a 100 user plan, I know I would easily pay $15-25/month for a few containersed Google accounts with my own domain names. But because I signed up early as a Google adopter, and I get a little discount in a way. That's cool, and made me happy to be an early adopter. You should try to do the same for new products. Maybe for the first adopters, offer them 10 paid seats for lifetime of their account, for free. The future revenue cost is small because early adopters are just viral advocates (you want them!); and the developer/techie market can set trends.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• mrspeaker 6y ago
  $10 a month! This does look really useful, and seems like a smart move: I like AirTable, but if they integrate this into gsuite then I'm way more likely to use it for random things. Interesting to see it being paid though! The free tier seems very limited for a google product: 1000 rows, 100 tables, 50 bot actions... paid version is $10 a month. 1000 rows won't be enough for anything serious - so they must be really betting on people paying. I guess that's also why it's not integrated directly with GSuite?
  • carliny 6y ago
    Hey there! I'm the Tables PM and your comment caught my eye. I really appreciate that feedback for us, and we're really hoping to make it as useful as possible for you and others! :) As prlambert@ mentioned in another comment, we're kinda like a startup and if things go well, the goal is graduate into larger parts of Google. A point of clarification on the free tier: we're offering 1000 rows per table--an individual tab within a workspace--which we hope offers a lot of flexibility in mixing and matching data in a workspace to track your work together. If there's particular use cases you have that involve over a 1000 rows, we'd love to hear more about it. Thanks for taking a look at the product!
    • UrSuchAGenius 6y ago
      Could you enable it for Mexico? Don't see the point in limiting the product. I need something just like this.
      • carliny 6y ago
        Hey there! I'll point you to a similar comment and response I gave for a fellow non-American who asked the same question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24556244 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24556244. tl;dr is we'd love to and we're working on it! I'm glad to hear you're interested in Tables, we'll try to get it to you as soon as we can.
    • panchicore3 6y ago
      Cool. I would migrate my personal bookmarks to Table, and you how it can grow through the time, actually I have 6k records. Another real use case is tracking compliance recommendations for simple teams operating in 300 locations around the world, I would assign 200 tasks per office that staff must follow up each 6 months for 4 periods, just need to use a couple of process flow triggers in order to make it operative. To me this kind of tools like Table, Airtable, MS Lists, are way more than project management, may fit any low-no-code mvp where you just need to crud, use fast filters, identify records visually easy, automate approval mechanism and archive records when completed for future audits. IMO there are more hacker user cases where you just need to store gathered/enritched information that you want to access human friendly (even from an app) without having to build a frontend client, 100k free records would be acceptable if Google decides to go very generous with the ordinary Maker, anyways how much cost store 1000 records? This is something you can measure in money at Google? Congrats, I hope this product comes to life and be the next must-have tool, I think they will be super cheap in the future anyways because lack of unfair advantage, it's a platform that just need to be ready to be integrable with all existing apis and that have the ability to execute lambdas. But has to be secured otherwise not recommended to be used with sensitive info, I would trust in Google since I use Gmail for my personal things. I wouldn't surprise when Soho comes with something similar.
• ashtonkem 6y ago
  For how long? AirTable is a core part of some professional workflows, I wouldn’t trust that with Google.
• baskire 6y ago
  > That's why we built Tables...as part of Area 120...for experimental projects. Yeah I’m going to pass. This will just be deprecated in the near future.
• SteveNuts 6y ago
  Absolutely no way I'll be touching this. The second we have it integrated Google will deprecate it.
• burtonator 6y ago
  PRESS RELEASE Sept 22, 2021. Google Announces that Google Tables will be sunset and all users will have to migrate away by Sept 23, 2021. "Google Tables was a great experiment but we're migrating to Google Tracker - a better version of Google Tables designed for power users." said Dep Re. Kated, VP of Engineering at Google. Google Tables has no migration tool or system for users to export their data angering some users. There's no support available for people wanting to get their data off the platform and many users are upset. "There's no support number? I can't even pay if I wanted to!" said Alice Bob Carol, a huge fan of Google Tables that is upset it's going away. When I tried to login it told me that "suspicious behavior was detected" and locked my account. Now I can't get access to my data and there's no one I can even contact! (this was a parody but I'm calling it now - Google products are already dead when they're launched)
  • tyingq 6y ago
    Yeah, they killed App Maker: "The App Maker editor and user apps will be shut down on January 19, 2021. New application creation is disabled.". And it's somewhat in the same space as Tables.
  • kgersen 6y ago
    That was funny 10 years ago, may be.
    • JeremyBanks 6y ago
      Now it's turned from a comic truth to a tragic truth?
    • buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
      What's funny is people acting like this is a joke. It isn't. Adding this to your workflow is asking for a headache in a few years when this gets shut down. Google currently has 5 products that are shutting down between now and the end of 2021. https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
  • SteveNuts 6y ago
    Seriously, we're an enterprise G-suite customer and Google really does move too fast for us. It pisses off our executives when things change/get removed. We'll be migrating to O365, despite all its flaws and uptime problems.
• foxdev 6y ago
  This looks promising! I'll try it in five years, or when Google commits to keeping it alive long enough for it to have a chance.
• martin_a 6y ago
  Any bets on when this will be killed by Google? Maybe that's a concept for a startup. Betting on when Google dismisses new products. edit: mandatory link to https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
• polskibus 6y ago
  Someone could use Auto ML to build a model that predicts from launch description how soon a Google project will be abandoned?
• agentdrtran 6y ago
  what if Airtable, but dead in a year?
• ScoutOrgo 6y ago
  Tangentially related, but google nixed android chrome's "home"/"duet" feature which allowed having the url bar at the bottom of the screen and made navigating on a phone/tablet _much_ easier. I'm somewhat baffled how they can work on a tablet and be so unaware of what a good UI looks like.
  • squaresmile 6y ago
    I can't believe after years of fiddling with a bottom bar (Home/Duplex/Duet), they couldn't figure it out and just scrapped the whole thing. The killedbygoogle meme is probably exaggerated a bit but I feel like this whole saga just screams a lack of direction. Also, like all google's mobile apps, the iOS version is just straight up better: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/google-chrome/id535886823 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/google-chrome/id535886823 Looks like there's a new flag chrome://flags#enable-conditional-tabstrip [0]. Here we go again. [0] https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/07/15/chrome-84/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/07/15/chrome-84/
• virgilp 6y ago
  What surprises me, more than the ton of comments about Google's credibility, is that I suspect nobody even tried to get more than a superficial understanding of what the product is supposed to do and what differentiates it. Surely I can't be the first one to notice that you can't even find out what this product does? The value proposition is a series of images, but you can't look at any one image & absorb the details, because it auto-scrolls to the next image & there's no way to stop this behavior.
  • Navarr 6y ago
    Once you've signed in, they offer this video: https://youtu.be/tedTuOvS8Dw https://youtu.be/tedTuOvS8Dw
    • virgilp 6y ago
      Only if you're from US, I guess :|
    • jfoster 6y ago
      Sounds like spreadsheets where the data is more structured. Seems like a cool idea that could become a successor of spreadsheets. Even more convinced that Google will abandon it, though.
  • OJFord 6y ago
    It sounds like Notion to me. https://notion.so https://notion.so
    • gowld 6y ago
      It cool to create a "Area 120" space for new ideas. But what's the point of funding underfunded clones of old ideas instead of aquiring them? What is the most successful or longest lived Area 120 product?
      • ma2rten 6y ago
        http://chasebase.com/ http://chasebase.com/ and https://grasshopper.app/ https://grasshopper.app/
• asciimov 6y ago
  The real question is can I import and export this to org-mode?
• ibdf 6y ago
  Yeah... nope. If this goes as other google products, it won't see any updates, it won't get any new features - they will wonder why no one is using it and then kill it.
• Bloggerzune 6y ago
  https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/07/hack-my-maths.html https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/07/hack-my-maths.html How to hack my maths this is going to be the first article of all the ones I've done on here and these are for actual. Natural quizzes not just for games, so the first thing you'll need is Firefox Programs. It's just Firefox, so the first thing that you want to do is you're going to click on the test you want to do so I'm only on practice here. Still, it works on homework two it's let's say I want to do this one click on it and try the homework or the worksheet and it should load up now what you're going to do is work out or work out one of them, so you want to find the easiest one and then yeah work it out so I'm going to do I don't.
• gowld 6y ago
  Why is an Issue Tracker tool named after a databse term? Area 120 is bizarre to me. It's an experimental startup incubator whatever, which is cool, but it runs under the Google brand so the effect is that it's a reputation-incinerator that highlights and deepens one of Google's worst attributes -- product support non-longevity. And they are trying to take money for it, with no promise of long-term support?
• wil421 6y ago
  How many work trackers do we need? At my last job we a number of them doing small pieces. ServiceNow for ticketing, bastardized JIRA for bug tracking and agile tracking, planview for tracking hours to projects/initiatives, and another 2 Visual Task Boards that my team didn’t have the displeasure of using thankfully. Sharepoint and Workday were mixed in for tracking edge case organizational stuff.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• unixhero 6y ago
  The following is a sarcastic joke. Probably prescient. --------------- NOTICE Tables will be sunset starting 1 november 2022. From that date and onwards Tables is read i ly and you may export your data. January 31 2023 Tables will be shutdown and your data abd instances will be unavailable from here on.
  • anticensor 6y ago
    Is it a joke or a real insider info?
    • unixhero 6y ago
      A joke, an attempt at humour. It is not insider information.
• tmd83 6y ago
  Does anyone feels looking at Google's products lately that there's something tremendously wrong with the organization. I'm not talking about just dropping features but just quality of implementation and missing things that people should get fed up and do something during development. Like hangout > chat, let's drop the existing feature of read receipt that is even more important in the remote/work world in a product geared toward business. Let's do an integration of task & files in chat in gmail but not what's suppose to be the primary app the standalone chat. Let's take 3 release to decide yes there is some usefulness to wireless scanning and we can put it as an advance option. It's not just dropping produces, it's actually degradation of function as if just to bump up the changelog size.
  • cptskippy 6y ago
    Google Maps use to be a hell of a tool for exploration, navigation and travel. We used it on a tablet as we drove across Scotland in 2013 and it was fantastic. It provided tons of data about your routes and allowed you to easily manage your trip. Since then they've gradually removed useful features, cluttered the UI with crap, and dumbed everything down to the point where it's almost useless. At one point they even removed the map scale, I think you have to enable an option buried in a menu to bring it back. It's gotten so incredibly slow and clumsy to use that it's not even worth it half the time. Google Photos is rapidly heading in that direction. They seem to be distancing you more and more from your photos and trying to throw their services in your face.
    • myth_drannon 6y ago
      Isn't that with all the products? New teams that own the legacy code base, new PMs that need to show they are doing something... That's how all software products rot. It's normal lifecycle of products that we need to accept.
      • siphor 6y ago
        it shouldn't have to be that way
• TheRealSteel 6y ago
  I find it impossible to scrounge the smallest modicum of interest when this will inevitably, invariably be "sunset" within 12 months with no migration path or support.
• dragonwriter 6y ago
  Apparently, “Area 120” is the Google Unit for products that launch without any textual explanation of what they are or how to use them, just low-information-density YouTube walkthroughs.
  • vyrotek 6y ago
    Interesting. This is the first time I've heard of Area 120. Looks like they have their own site. https://area120.google.com https://area120.google.com
  • runawaybottle 6y ago
    So basically, ‘where ideas go to die’.
  • allenu 6y ago
    It looks like an internal incubator (i.e. small startup-ish group). I would treat products from such teams with a grain of salt. I've had previous experience with such teams and projects at another large software company. I think such groups are a way for large, lumbering companies to test out new ideas in the market, with the full expectation that they will likely not be hugely successful. In the off-chance that they are, then the BigCo will put more resources into it. I think that's why you typically see very few marketing resources or support for such things. I suppose from that perspective, it really is a "startup", although they don't have the hunger that a real startup would, since if the projects fails, I doubt people would be out of jobs. If Google doesn't think it's worth putting the full G Suite backing behind this, then I wouldn't trust it beyond a fun thing to play with.
• troelsSteegin 6y ago
  What does this proof of concept prove? It looks to me like Tables = Sheets + some workflow automation (Bots) + some schema ("tasks") + some style sheet. Is this a stretch relative to what someone committed might do over GSuite today?
• lazharichir 6y ago
  Very curious on how this versatile project will turn out. Google, with all of its collaboration tools like Sheets and Docs, really sucks at "Teams" (task and project management, for instance). Probably because it's hard to fit all the use cases G Suite customers may have (tiny teams, giant enterprise, growing startups, etc). Yet, I've always wanted that with my small team working off G Suite mostly. Always having to use an external Project management is fine, but having it done from Google itself would be a great touch. A little like Microsoft Teams/Sharepoint. I hope that Table can bring us a little step closer.
• timmg 6y ago
  I'm the Tables TL. I'd be happy to answer questions!
  • generatorguy 6y ago
    What are your thoughts on the fact that 90% of the comments here are something to the effect of “there is no sense in personally investing in using Tables since google will shut it down in x years”?
    • timmg 6y ago
      I never expected that kind of response from HN ;) Just kidding. I do think it's a very fair concern for people to have. Google has that reputation. But honestly, many things on HN are from startups that may go away. And it isn't just Google. I was a huge fan of Apple's Aperture, for example, and they let that die on the vine. For us, we think there is a real need for this kind of product. And we hope the one we built works well for our users. The team is really invested in the product. We plan to do all we can to make it successful.
      • codingdave 6y ago
        > we think there is a real need for this kind of product. I believe the comments covered that as well - this feels like a new flavor matching existing products. With the lack of trust in Google to keep it alive, combined with the fact that it just doesn't look to be innovative... it simply does not sound compelling. If we got it wrong and there is more to it than "Google's attempt at AirTable", then perhaps the communication on what this product is supposed to be has missed the mark.
        • timmg 6y ago
          > If we got it wrong and there is more to it than "Google's attempt at AirTable", then perhaps the communication on what this product is supposed to be has missed the mark. You say Airtable. Others have said Monday.com. Others have said Asana and Notion, etc. The fact that there are a lot of products in this space -- in my opinion -- shows that there is a real need. It also shows that no one has quite got it right. Of course there are similarities between our product and others. "Tables of data" is not a new concept. "No-code" is not new. This launch is our first step. We expect to grow with our users. And we hope we can delight them.
• markstos 6y ago
  This product appears to have an identity crisis. Is it like Google Spreadsheets, Google Forms? Trello? All three with some AI sprinkled on top?
• partiallypro 6y ago
  So, is this integrating with GSuite? Also will it have integrations with Salesforce and Slack/Teams? Otherwise, it's probably DOA for most orgs. There isn't a single work tracking/time tracking/task management system on the planet that isn't terrible in some way or form. I still don't get why no one has figured it out.
• foobaw 6y ago
  I played around to see if this can actually replace Airtable. Because of its tight integration with Google apps (and how one day they could shutdown external Google Sheets API access), they probably have a decent advantage. Also free is good...Airtable pricing is not the most friendly/transparent for startups.
  • carliny 6y ago
    Hey there! Tables PM here; your comment caught my eye as it had an interesting point about the Sheets API access changes that are coming. We do offer an API and while Tables isn't intended as a replacement for Sheets in any way, we're hoping it might be useful for folks who do need a lightweight database for their work. :) I wanted to be fair and call out that Airtable also has a free tier (and API), and they offer a lot of great features and functionality as well that can be great for startups! At the end of the day, you should use what fits your needs best. I wanted to create Tables because our team didn't have a great work tracking tool that quite fit our needs, and it felt like we could help other Google apps users and businesses too (especially during this time of remote working with covid). I hope you'll get to make your work life simpler, no matter whichever tool you choose.
• drej 6y ago
  This looks very similar to Notion (https://www.notion.so/ https://www.notion.so/). The one big difference being that I believe Notion will outlive Tables - especially as Tables is already touted as an incubated project.
  • xmprt 6y ago
    Looks almost identical except that Notion doesn't support bot actions. Once Notion builds an API and has support for things like IFTTT then we'll see it become even more powerful than it is today. But I was surprised to find relatively basic features (like find/replace in page or a shortcut to find in table) missing so hopefully Notion's team will get around to implementing those soon.
• bryan0 6y ago
  We recently switch over a bunch of our internal doc systems (basecamp, trello, google docs, airtable) across many different teams all to Notion. I've been completely impressed with how great the software is. If anyone from the notion team sees this: kudos.
• bram2w 6y ago
  I see a lot of comments about people who are worried that Google might shutdown the service entirely and I agree with your concerns. The last months we have seen a lot of giants building their own database spreadsheet like hybrid, Google Tables, Microsoft Lists and Amazon Honeycode. Tools like these contain your most important data and you want to have freedom, security and independence as they can be an important part of your business. Because of these reasons I started Baserow (https://baserow.io https://baserow.io), which is an open source (https://gitlab.com/bramw/baserow https://gitlab.com/bramw/baserow) alternative to Airtable and the listed tools above. It is still in an early phase, but every week new features are implemented. Some unique points: - Unlimited rows. - Open source, released under the MIT license. - Uses popular frameworks like Django and Nuxt.js - Uses PostgreSQL as database backend. - It can be self hosted. - You can have many rows per table, 100k+. - Headless and API first. - Supports plugins.
  • datasert 6y ago
    Your website design looks very nice. What css/ui framework did you make use of it?
    • bram2w 6y ago
      Thanks! It does not use a css/ui framework. It is something I designed and build from scratch.
    • lioeters 6y ago
      I believe they didn't use any CSS framework, it's handrolled Sass styles (other than Normalize and Font Awesome). https://gitlab.com/bramw/baserow/-/tree/develop/web-frontend/modules/core/assets/scss https://gitlab.com/bramw/baserow/-/tree/develop/web-frontend... They do use Nuxt, a fullstack framework for Vue.js, which is style-agnostic. https://nuxtjs.org/ https://nuxtjs.org/
  • _mkef 6y ago
    Anyway to generate types ( like I define Box, I get a Box object ) for something like a node SDK. Strapi does this,
• mattkevan 6y ago
  Think Google's obsession with machine learning has got out of control. Looking at some of the other announcements on their blog, there's no way that an actual human either wrote those headlines or came up with the product ideas in the first place: * Fundo: a virtual experiences platform for creators * Shoploop: an entertaining new way to shop online * AdLingo Ads Builder turns an ad into a conversation * GameSnacks brings quick, casual games to any device Has anyone been round to their offices recently to see if they're okay?
  • antonvs 6y ago
    I doubt it's machine learning. GPT-3 could probably come up with more interesting sounding products than that.
• outside1234 6y ago
  Is it deprecated yet?
• jbm 6y ago
  I tried to give it a shot. Tables is, for reasons I cannot understand, geo-locked. > Tables is not yet available > The Tables beta is currently available in the U.S.
  • mellosouls 6y ago
    yes, annoying. possibly gdpr related?
    • jbm 6y ago
      I considered that but I'm in Canada. There is someone in every organization asking to minimize potential legal liability. It's a bit sad that the Chicken Littles have won again.
      • carliny 6y ago
        Hey jbm, Tables PM here, your comment definitely resonated with me. Fun fact: I'm Canadian! :P On your point though: as my own opinion, there's some very smart people here trying to make sure we're doing things in a safe way that protects both our users and our team, and so sometimes we're asked to start small. As a result, we're doing what we can to offer something useful for people and businesses during these covid times, while still respecting the boundaries that we've been given. I, like most PMs, hate red tape, but I also appreciate it for the dangers it protects us from. :) All that said, we're definitely hoping we can offer Tables to more people in the world, so stay tuned!
        • jbm 6y ago
          I would be very interested to hear more about why, specifically, Canadians (like you and me) are seen as potentially unsafe users. (Regardless of that, congratulations on your launch and good luck!)
          • carliny 6y ago
            Thanks! Very much appreciate the kind words. :) Yeah, to give you my perspective on this for a second: the reality is that the rules for how we work with and protect user data continues to evolve and become more nuanced with the different regulations from different countries. Not to mention, taking payments in different countries and currencies has a lot of implications! For every country we release to, there's a bunch of potentially new rules to follow, so it's a lot simpler and safer to do it with just one country first, get it right, and then expand after that. In my experience, there's no particular opinion that users from a particular country are "unsafe," but it's more about whether we have enough time and people to make sure we're doing things right by our users. Hope that gives you a little insight into this and how we think about it!
• athenot 6y ago
  This looks a lot like a SmartSheet clone. The other comments about viability and long term support of Google's experimental products are very valid. But if it can help light up a fire under SmartSheet to improve their interface, that's not a bad outcome.
  • xnx 6y ago
    Especially interesting since Google now owns smart sheet.
• samblr 6y ago
  Strangely, why does a company like Google, wakes up so late when Airtable hits Series-D and not Series-A/B/C ? Looks like its straight forward product for somebody who makes google spreadsheets.
  • ec109685 6y ago
    I wonder that too. Their gSuite products evolve soo slowly (when was the last time diagrams changed?). Ironically, unlike desktop software when you had to convince people to purchase a new copy each year, it seems like the Cloud distribution model allows google to basically put their products in maintenance mode indefinitely since people will still be paying for the subscription each month and switching cost is high.
    • danudey 6y ago
      I was reading a post-mortem of Google Wave, and the author stated that Wave's problem was one of incentives. At Google, they said, you get significant bonuses, promotions, and prestige for launching a brand new product, especially to large fanfare or hype. Conversely, you get little to no bonuses, promotions, or prestige for maintaining that product long-term. That means that Googlers have huge incentives to create and launch promising projects, and then immediately transfer off that project to some other new project to create and launch that, leaving some other team to maintain it, thanklessly. This means that, in the absence of top-down direction from the executive level, GSuite will remain effectively stagnant forever, with minimal, if any, improvements. In my experience managing IT for a small startup that used GSuite extensively, this was generally true; the service as a whole was "promising", but had huge gaps in functionality or integrations that would never be addressed (like being able to back up/export a user's data without having to log in as them and request a Takeout file). Another example is Google Inbox; again, a new-ish project, launched to much fanfare and rave reviews, but once it's launched, who cares? So it was "integrated into" regular Google Mail inbox, except it wasn't because the team doing the integration isn't going to get those huge bonuses for doing all that work so why bother? I'm not 100% sure that this is true; again, I "read it in a thing that someone said", for all the validity that has, but it would certainly explain why so many of Google's products feel 80-90% finished, and have for a decade or more. In this respect, I've effectively given up on Google ever improving anything, unless doing so will help stifle the competition's growth. Improve Android to counter iOS? Sure. Improve Google Docs to counter Microsoft Office? Nah, we're mostly dominant there already.
• alasdair_ 6y ago
  My gut reaction: it looks great! Also, there is no way I’d use it unless Google committed to not killing it off for at least five years. I don’t mind trying experimental personal tools, but I really don’t want to get a whole team of people reliant on this thing, just to see it get cancelled like the hundreds of other projects Google has killed over the years. A paid support option would be nice too - I think I saw something about a paid “support for ANY Google product” option earlier this year but I can’t find it just now.
  • xkcd-sucks 6y ago
    Is it even remotely possible that Google would sell discontinued products to other entities, e.g. raise money to buy Wave as a separate company or something like that?
    • jordanthoms 6y ago
      Google products are generally dependent on a whole lot of services which only exist within Google, so it'd probably have to be rebuilt after a sale.
    • dmoy 6y ago
      I would guess the monorepo makes this very difficult to do
    • ithkuil 6y ago
      Not as long as products are built on top of proprietary internal SDKs such as google3, borg etc. Google started to open source some of the internal projects (e.g. bazel), which, among other things, would make it easier to just donate / spin off a project they are no longer interested supporting.
      • alasdair_ 6y ago
        I worked at a Google spinoff a few years ago. It took a lot of work to move everything from internal Google infrastructure to external (Google Cloud) and it probably took a full year after the official date of us leaving Google to have everything fully migrated - there were lots of small things like seldom used config files or occasional scripts that still relied on Google’s internal stuff.
• plessthanpt05 6y ago
  Reminds me of the Pied Piper ad from Silicon Valley: https://youtu.be/dWOGbu5BcT0 https://youtu.be/dWOGbu5BcT0
• ErrantX 6y ago
  Like, why? I wonder sometimes why large corporations bother with stuff like this. OK I understand Gmail was a fantastic unicorn for Google and so might this be - but given that why risk using it? I have a wider question too; large organisations spend millions building internal tools like this (and for a plethora of other things technical and project related). None of which are market leading and all of which progress steadily to abondonware... It feels like once a corporation has gotten to that point its just too large and lost its core focus. I've seen (recently) pivots from poor UI's and interfaces to integrating one great SAAS tool with another great SAAS tool - because both the SAAS figured out all that stuff ages ago for you... at 10% of the cost.
  • user_501238901 6y ago
    Diversifying. Simplified: If you spend $1 million each on ten projects, each of which have a 90% chance to fail and 10% chance to bring in $100m in profits, then it is absolutely worth it
    • ErrantX 6y ago
      Which makes somewhat sense for Google (I mean, Gmail is the titular example right?). But Gmail is 16 years old, Gsuite is 14. Where is the next unicorn vs. the much more than twenty failed products to offset this? And more to the point; are these projects "failing" because savvy companies are working out that the play is short term seeking either high growth or death... EDIT: 205 https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/
• _1tan 6y ago
  Any idea when or if this will be available outside the US?
• crazygringo 6y ago
  As a product, this looks super-cool. However, I've got to be honest: while I'd play around with it while it's part of Area 120, there's no way I'd use it in a business until it officially became part of G Suite, as a core service. If Keep and Tasks are core services, then this needs to be too. That becomes a guarantee that it'll stick around basically forever. So it's very exciting to see Google launch something like this -- but I hope they can align their internal politics and business goals here. (Also, separate nitpick, but they're launching this as "beta", but with a paid plan. Since when is beta software charged for? What does "beta" even mean anymore then?)
  • msapaydin 6y ago
    openai gpt-3 beta private api is also becoming not free soon.
    • kevas 6y ago
      Uhhh what?
  • pdx_flyer 6y ago
    Exactly. Until it's part of the suite it doesn't have Google's full backing and no guarantee that they won't kill it. I use Keep to share lists with my spouse but even that I don't put anything important into because it could go away as quickly as it showed up.
    • crazygringo 6y ago
      You don't need to worry about Keep. It's part of G Suite core services, which means corporations have long-term contracts with Google that basically guarantees it stays around. Not to mention that Keep is deeply integrated with Gmail, Cal, Docs, etc. No matter how lightweight of a tool it may seem, Keep isn't going away. G Suite is very conservative and careful with changes they make around their core services.
      • loteck 6y ago
• nojito 6y ago
  Seems like a great start, but it kind pales in comparison to Microsoft Lists + Power Automate.
• fmakunbound 6y ago
  I'm afraid, there's no way I'm going invest time into that tool knowing that's it's likely going to be cancelled in a year or two.
• dgellow 6y ago
  My bet is on 3 years, then it will be removed. Sorry for the people working on it, I wish you all the best.
• mdoms 6y ago
  Folks I'm just getting word that they're cancelling this product.
  • desireco42 6y ago
    Funny. They totally deserve this btw. They will need to provide additional assurances for products. I agree we could use more assurances on product life. It is good product that can grow if it garners sufficient interest. I hope it does.
• haltingproblem 6y ago
  So much Google Hubris here. A day late and a dollar short with a heavy ladling of google self-importance. Why do I care it is from Area 120? Why even share that branding - it just adds to the confusion. Is this an internal startup? Will it disappear? Stick around? I already pay for Gsuite, now I should pay for this? Does it work in my gsuite org? Why would I not just go with Airtable at that pricing. How long will it stick around? Why is the feature list so much smaller compared to Airtable? What is their product road map? Why as a business user should I invest in this? Come on Google, play for keeps, don't just dabble.
  • atonse 6y ago
    I agree about the pricing. The killer app would've been to just bundle it in with GSuite. That, and given Google's habit of cancelling novel projects, I just wouldn't trust this over a third party service.
  • yowlingcat 6y ago
    You're not wrong. I can't think of a better exposition of what makes people nervous about GCP just from a reputation perspective.
• human_error 6y ago
  "At Area 120, we work on 20% projects 100% of the time." So this is some people's pet project that has no backing from Google. Given Google kills products (whose full time jobs) at any time, I wouldn't be surprised Google kills Tables before I finish this sentence.
• ohazi 6y ago
  What's the difference between Google X and Area 120? Hard technology vs. apps/services?
  • pawelk 6y ago
    Aside from the bar being set at completely different levels ("making the world a better place" vs building fancy web apps) I guess graduating from X means being spun off as an Alphabet subsidiary, while successful Area 120 projects may see closer integration with Google's core products.
• bigbossman 6y ago
  Meta-comment: it's hilarious how every other comment is about how Google is going to kill this project. Next time a VC asks you "what are you going to do if Google builds X too?" send them a link to this discussion!
  • akerro 6y ago
    I think it nicely shows lack of trust in Google and their new products.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • dreamcompiler 6y ago
    "ODG I hope they do. That means in two years' time we'll have the market to ourselves."
  • dvtrn 6y ago
    “what are you going to do if Google builds X too?” “Wait.”
  • jhayward 6y ago
    The correct answer to that is "build a frictionless transition feature so that when they cancel the product we can pick up all their paying customers with no acquisition costs." Also, "send them flowers every product birthday to thank them for validating the product and growing my future customer base."
• adrianmonk 6y ago
  Dear crazy person who designed this web page: https://tables.area120.google.com/u/0/about#/ https://tables.area120.google.com/u/0/about#/ I am trying to read the screenshots! Quit advancing the slide show to the next screenshot after 5 seconds. I have clicked on "Project & task management" so that I can read that screenshot. That was your (missed) cue to pause the cycling of the slides. I get that you want to tease the reader by offering several different interesting images that they'll see without scrolling, but maybe after you've captured their interest, it would be nice if they could move to the next step and actually look at the images.
  • Lightbody 6y ago
    They should have consulted this :) http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/ http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/
    • pier25 6y ago
      Carousels are the worst. If you have content that you can afford to hide, you can't afford to put it in a premium place and compete with critical content.
• claytongulick 6y ago
  To be honest, this appears to be vastly inferior to Wrike, for example. Google is entering a crowded market, with a so-so offering, with zero guarantee that it won't be cancelled in a year (judging by history, it most likely will). I'm sorry, I used to get really excited about new offerings from Google, and would jump on the bandwagon. I'm a lot more cautious now. I can't see a reason to use this tool as part of any business I'm involved with. The risk is high, the reward is low, and the features aren't competitive with others in the space. IMHO, this should have been open sourced as a good-will project, I'd definitely be interested then. Even an open-core type model would attract me.
• sjg007 6y ago
  Looking at 120 projects has anyone used or been interviewed on the https://byteboard.dev/ https://byteboard.dev/ platform? It sounds interesting and I was wondering what people thought about it and how it works out in practice.
  • skaur 6y ago
    hello! I'm the GM on Byteboard. You can check out some candidate's take on the interview here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sargunkaur_diversityintech-hirebetterwithbyteboard-hiring-activity-6709924393465839616-FC9E https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sargunkaur_diversityintech-hi.... We've been actively working with many different companies (Betterment, Lyft, Figma, Dropbox) who have used Byteboard to ensure a more practical interview that is more relevant to the job. We have a candidate NPS of 4.1 / 5 which we are really proud of. :) You can also check our twitter https://twitter.com/BrentA1283/status/1301918622873460737 https://twitter.com/BrentA1283/status/1301918622873460737 to hear more from candidates who have tweeted at us about their experience!
    • sjg007 6y ago
      Thanks for your reply. Does Google use your platform? It seems quite progressive in this space.
• sixdimensional 6y ago
  Just to be fair, Microsoft also recently re-launched a tuned-up version of Sharepoint Lists, now just called "Lists" [1] which is in the same space. It took something like AirTable to wake the sleeping giants, that people wanted a low-code tabular data editor and storage engine, that wasn't really a spreadsheet. You know.. like FileMaker or MS Access. I guess this goes to show something - I have thought for many, many, many years of building such an application in the cloud (having built "application generator" type applications in the past) - but, it may not have mattered if I had - because the big players might just come in and clone/copy it. It will be interesting to see how companies like AirTable can compete (and really hope they can). I think we are crawling towards a future of low/no-code - or the dream of the world of 4GL [2] (or perhaps even beyond that) is coming closer and closer. Regarding 4GL, "those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it". Not saying it's a bad thing to be revisiting this, but it has been low-hanging fruit for so long now, you wonder why it took so long for the big companies to engage with it seriously. [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-lists https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-list... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_programming_...
  • bachmeier 6y ago
    > It took something like AirTable to wake the sleeping giants My employer gives me Lists as part of Office 365. It's one of those things that sounds good as long as you're reading about it and not using it. It's just not a competitor to AirTable. Not that I use AT either, because I'm not going to pay that much for what I'd use it, but Lists is pretty bad. The look and feel makes me think Lists is a Perl CGI app from 2001.
    • sixdimensional 6y ago
      LOL. Well, Microsoft's "Lists" are Sharepoint Lists underneath. Sharepoint Lists are pretty old, so your comment about Perl/CGI.. well, you're not far off! I have it too at my workplace, and other than a coat of paint on Sharepoint Lists, I concur, it is not amazing. I guess I brought it up because it shows Microsoft being driven to do something, but much like Google, falling short of the target. Still, before AirTable and similar things, the giants were generally ignoring this area.
• janlukacs 6y ago
  A couple of years ago Asana stole our slogan, now Google. For the record, https://www.paymoapp.com https://www.paymoapp.com (work management) was the first to use Work better, together. Really annoying that they don't do at least a bit of research.
  • wavepruner 6y ago
    This is a basic combinations of words from the English language. You do not own it.
    • janlukacs 6y ago
      Are you serious? Is "Just do it" a combination of words in English? We don't own it because we're a small startup.
  • daltonlp 6y ago
    Are you sure? It looks you started using to this slogan in 2019. Prior to that, it was "Work Happy": https://web.archive.org/web/20181116030147/https://www.paymoapp.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20181116030147/https://www.paymo... But there was at least one other business using "Work better together" in 2017: https://web.archive.org/web/20170515171057/https://projectinsight.net/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170515171057/https://projectin...
    • janlukacs 6y ago
      You are right, we started using it in 2019. From what I know none of the apps in our space had this slogan when we decided to use it and we did quite a lot of research, but to be fair I did not know about the existence of Project Insight in 2017.
• Tokkemon 6y ago
  Why can't I just use Jira?
• Hnrobert42 6y ago
  For the love of god, can we please stop naming things generic nouns that are impossible to find in a web search. Tables. Photos. Lists.
• noisy_boy 6y ago
  The carousell of screenshots is metaphor for the product itself i.e. once you start paying attention to the product, just like the screenshots, it'll disappear
• UrSuchAGenius 6y ago
  Why is it not available outside the US? I want to try it.
• tristor 6y ago
  I tried this out, and it reminds me a lot of AirTable. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. The easy import from Google Sheets made trying it to out in something that would be a meaningful context pretty painless. Here's the deal though: I can't see myself investing my time/energy in using this seriously if it's not part of GSuite. I don't see my company paying this pricing for this, and I don't see this as having the longevity enough to integrate into business processes unless it's part of GSuite. What I see so far seems decent, but to make this something I'm actually going to rely on and build on, it needs better placement in Google's portfolio.
• k4ch0w 6y ago
  Interesting, but it seems a bit behind compared to the market. I'd much use ClickUp as the UI is much more appealing. Notion/Airtable too. Feels a bit like Chat vs. Slack. I'd rather use Slack any day of the week because rather than just one Google team the entire company is working on improvements and will do better over time. Not trying to s* all over Google, but there are better options for that price point.