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I have (for this reason and many others) quit actively using Google products quite a long time ago. I only use Gmail out of inertia (through imap though) and Yo

I have (for this reason and many others) quit actively using Google products quite a long time ago. I only use Gmail out of inertia (through imap though) and YouTube in anonymous browsers. I almost never use their search or maps. Does this behavior of constantly killing products not cause other users to avoid their offerings?

notsureaboutpg 6y ago
Honestly, no. I like having access to these experiments. This site is literally a free 3d-object hosting website. I pay nothing, so why should I expect stability, lifetime access, etc. etc. all of which cost money? Google couldn't monetize this, but maybe someone else can. Google was the first to do an office suite in the cloud. Now there is Notion, Airtable, etc. all of which exist because Google was willing to put its experiments online. And yes, they mine and scrape all the data from these experiments to fuel their other paid services and ad engine, I know, but still I prefer access to these experiments. They're often ahead of the curve, and no other company is going to be able to offer all these things. I'm not a Google fanboy at all, but I don't mind if they shut down free "products" like this if the tradeoff is that we get to see and use new, innovative products earlier. We all benefit from seeing what's possible. Applies to lots of products: Stadia, Drive, Maps, etc,
- mehlmao 6y ago
  It's hard for anyone to monetize (or even launch) a product when one of the largest companies in the world is providing that product for free, even if they're doing a half-assed job.
- thisiscorrect 6y ago
  I don't think Google mines data from their office suite to fuel ads. Do you have evidence of this?
- jakelazaroff 6y ago
  > Google was the first to do an office suite in the cloud. The were the first to get big, maybe, but not the first period. The Google Docs word processor was built from the ashes of Writely, which they acquired back when Ajax was a new buzzword.
christophilus 6y ago
This is a secondary reason for me. The main reason is that I don’t want an arbitrary Google ban to ruin my life.
- pmontra 6y ago
  We don't have to login to use Search, Maps and YouTube. I don't. I miss the kind of bookmarks each app support but I don't really care. I don't use GMail. I'm logged in into the Play Store. Probably I'm not using anything else.
Bedon292 6y ago
Some offerings like GMail, Search, and YouTube are viewed as safe. Others I think are likely avoided more. And probably end up a self fulfilling prophecy. No one uses it because it will be killed, so its killed because no one uses it. It is certainly a hinderance to the adoption of their cloud services. They have not yet shown they are in it for the long haul.
- koolba 6y ago
  YouTube is safe in so much as the service will continue to operate. That's no guarantee that your videos will continue to be hosted. And Gmail is best used with your own domain (@example.com, not @gmail.com). That way when they do kick you off you can use your offline back of messages and repoint some MX records.
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    They are rather unavoidable, many videos are only available on YouTube. And if my email address was on my own domain it wouldn’t be on gmail, of course. It’s not as if my use case is rocket science, just sending, receiving and storing mail. It’s a legacy application from when gmail was special.
KingFelix 6y ago
Its pretty wild how many things get shut down. I was on a drive this weekend and went to pop on my Google music where I uploaded 10 gigs of music. I was met with a message that said Google music shutdown, but you can move your music to Youtube!
- jasonv 6y ago
  They've been sending out lots of messages about this... do you not actually use Play music that much?
colechristensen 6y ago
The only thing I would miss is gmail. If maps went away it would only take a moment to switch to another service, the same for youtube, search, etc. I wouldn’t put a big effort into something that relied on a niche google product, but it’s not like maps dispersing would be anything but a momentary inconvenience. I don’t seek to “punish” by not using its products.
- sentientslug 6y ago
  What viable alternative for YouTube is there?
  - colechristensen 6y ago
    I’m sure if youtube disappeared one day, the next day most people would be aware of a few alternatives. This is a much harder question for a content producer than a consumer. How much effort would it really be for one of the large pornography companies to make a general purpose youtube clone? I bet a viable MVP would only take a few days if they were properly motivated.
- decafninja 6y ago
  What alternatives are there to Google Maps? I haven't found anything that comes close to it in utility. Plus many third party apps/services rely on Google Maps under the hood too. I like to use Apple Maps via CarPlay when navigating because the visuals and UX seem nicer, but push comes to shove, if I'm trying to navigate to somewhere new, hard to find, or worried about traffic, I find Google Maps is still the superior product by far.
  - colechristensen 6y ago
    If google maps went away: go to app store, search maps, pick one. There are at least a few. It’s a map, it doesn’t have to be perfect to get the job done.
    - decafninja 6y ago
throwaway667555 6y ago
Did you know what poly was before clicking? Did you know Google has hundreds of branded product offerings, so say 12 closures per year is something like 2%, i.e. a 25 year median horizon (=1/.02/2)? https://developers.google.com/products https://developers.google.com/products What period of support would satisfy you? For a "fast fashion/art" vignette like Poly? Isn't it fun to have ephemeral experiences? You can choose to embrace that aspect of life rather than chastise it, it's all your choice. Yes a person has to be pretty savvy to avoid building their business on an unstable a Google product, but all fundamental business choices need to be savvy. Let's experiment, move fast, break things, and try out the unstable Google offerings and see how it goes. Or let's do the sure choice and pick only Google Cloud products 8+ years mature. There's an appetite and big market for both which Google can fill, and the mature senior developer can well care for him- or herself. I'd rather the megacorp allocate our capital towards experiments than not. I'd rather the megacorp keep some of its founding character than do the soulless bluechip strategy of having 50% of its operating budget be selling & marketing expenses for stale maintenance-mode products (not exaggerating, look at some public company financials like Salesforce, which actually I admire lately for their innovation by acquisition). I like variety. I like fewer restrictions and fewer flavor-of-the-decade norms on self-expression. These are popular values, and I thank Google for materializing them for its employees and consumers.
jan_g 6y ago
Not really. The Google products I actively use are among those most stable and lasting in the web/apps industry: search, mail, maps, video streaming. I could also count here productivity tools like docs, drive, calendar, keep and so on. I'm much more worried about account bans that seem to be happening to random people. But still not worried enough, it seems, to migrate my stuff and workflow(s) elsewhere.

notsureaboutpg 6y ago

Honestly, no. I like having access to these experiments. This site is literally a free 3d-object hosting website. I pay nothing, so why should I expect stability, lifetime access, etc. etc. all of which cost money? Google couldn't monetize this, but maybe someone else can. Google was the first to do an office suite in the cloud. Now there is Notion, Airtable, etc. all of which exist because Google was willing to put its experiments online. And yes, they mine and scrape all the data from these experiments to fuel their other paid services and ad engine, I know, but still I prefer access to these experiments. They're often ahead of the curve, and no other company is going to be able to offer all these things. I'm not a Google fanboy at all, but I don't mind if they shut down free "products" like this if the tradeoff is that we get to see and use new, innovative products earlier. We all benefit from seeing what's possible. Applies to lots of products: Stadia, Drive, Maps, etc,

mehlmao 6y ago
It's hard for anyone to monetize (or even launch) a product when one of the largest companies in the world is providing that product for free, even if they're doing a half-assed job.
thisiscorrect 6y ago
I don't think Google mines data from their office suite to fuel ads. Do you have evidence of this?
jakelazaroff 6y ago
> Google was the first to do an office suite in the cloud. The were the first to get big, maybe, but not the first period. The Google Docs word processor was built from the ashes of Writely, which they acquired back when Ajax was a new buzzword.

christophilus 6y ago

This is a secondary reason for me. The main reason is that I don’t want an arbitrary Google ban to ruin my life.

pmontra 6y ago
We don't have to login to use Search, Maps and YouTube. I don't. I miss the kind of bookmarks each app support but I don't really care. I don't use GMail. I'm logged in into the Play Store. Probably I'm not using anything else.

Bedon292 6y ago

Some offerings like GMail, Search, and YouTube are viewed as safe. Others I think are likely avoided more. And probably end up a self fulfilling prophecy. No one uses it because it will be killed, so its killed because no one uses it. It is certainly a hinderance to the adoption of their cloud services. They have not yet shown they are in it for the long haul.

koolba 6y ago
YouTube is safe in so much as the service will continue to operate. That's no guarantee that your videos will continue to be hosted. And Gmail is best used with your own domain (@example.com, not @gmail.com). That way when they do kick you off you can use your offline back of messages and repoint some MX records.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  They are rather unavoidable, many videos are only available on YouTube. And if my email address was on my own domain it wouldn’t be on gmail, of course. It’s not as if my use case is rocket science, just sending, receiving and storing mail. It’s a legacy application from when gmail was special.

KingFelix 6y ago

Its pretty wild how many things get shut down. I was on a drive this weekend and went to pop on my Google music where I uploaded 10 gigs of music. I was met with a message that said Google music shutdown, but you can move your music to Youtube!

jasonv 6y ago
They've been sending out lots of messages about this... do you not actually use Play music that much?

colechristensen 6y ago

The only thing I would miss is gmail. If maps went away it would only take a moment to switch to another service, the same for youtube, search, etc. I wouldn’t put a big effort into something that relied on a niche google product, but it’s not like maps dispersing would be anything but a momentary inconvenience. I don’t seek to “punish” by not using its products.

sentientslug 6y ago
What viable alternative for YouTube is there?
- colechristensen 6y ago
  I’m sure if youtube disappeared one day, the next day most people would be aware of a few alternatives. This is a much harder question for a content producer than a consumer. How much effort would it really be for one of the large pornography companies to make a general purpose youtube clone? I bet a viable MVP would only take a few days if they were properly motivated.
decafninja 6y ago
What alternatives are there to Google Maps? I haven't found anything that comes close to it in utility. Plus many third party apps/services rely on Google Maps under the hood too. I like to use Apple Maps via CarPlay when navigating because the visuals and UX seem nicer, but push comes to shove, if I'm trying to navigate to somewhere new, hard to find, or worried about traffic, I find Google Maps is still the superior product by far.
- colechristensen 6y ago
  If google maps went away: go to app store, search maps, pick one. There are at least a few. It’s a map, it doesn’t have to be perfect to get the job done.
  - decafninja 6y ago

throwaway667555 6y ago

Did you know what poly was before clicking? Did you know Google has hundreds of branded product offerings, so say 12 closures per year is something like 2%, i.e. a 25 year median horizon (=1/.02/2)? https://developers.google.com/products https://developers.google.com/products What period of support would satisfy you? For a "fast fashion/art" vignette like Poly? Isn't it fun to have ephemeral experiences? You can choose to embrace that aspect of life rather than chastise it, it's all your choice. Yes a person has to be pretty savvy to avoid building their business on an unstable a Google product, but all fundamental business choices need to be savvy. Let's experiment, move fast, break things, and try out the unstable Google offerings and see how it goes. Or let's do the sure choice and pick only Google Cloud products 8+ years mature. There's an appetite and big market for both which Google can fill, and the mature senior developer can well care for him- or herself. I'd rather the megacorp allocate our capital towards experiments than not. I'd rather the megacorp keep some of its founding character than do the soulless bluechip strategy of having 50% of its operating budget be selling & marketing expenses for stale maintenance-mode products (not exaggerating, look at some public company financials like Salesforce, which actually I admire lately for their innovation by acquisition). I like variety. I like fewer restrictions and fewer flavor-of-the-decade norms on self-expression. These are popular values, and I thank Google for materializing them for its employees and consumers.

jan_g 6y ago

Not really. The Google products I actively use are among those most stable and lasting in the web/apps industry: search, mail, maps, video streaming. I could also count here productivity tools like docs, drive, calendar, keep and so on. I'm much more worried about account bans that seem to be happening to random people. But still not worried enough, it seems, to migrate my stuff and workflow(s) elsewhere.