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A comment I don't see here yet is that this is to some extent a consequence of Google's business model. The assumption seems to be that a company should be wary

A comment I don't see here yet is that this is to some extent a consequence of Google's business model. The assumption seems to be that a company should be wary about doing what they're doing, because they'll lose business. But Google's not directly selling these services, in most cases. I assume they're happy with the way they do things, which is try a bunch of stuff in a slightly chaotic but fairly nimble way, be happy when some of it works well (Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs), and kill the rest. Frustrating for users, absolutely, but that's the company you're getting your free stuff from. It's pretty clear that this behavior isn't affecting their profits and maybe it's not even hurting their reputation, outside of circles like this one.

oblio 5y ago
> Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs All those were launched more than a decade ago, though.
- di4na 5y ago
  And not really iterated on... Maps got slightly better but Gmail and GDoc were uh... not really refactored into better stuff
  - esprehn 5y ago
    Maps was entirely rewritten to use WebGL and support 3D. Gmail had the entire backend rewritten to scale much larger, priority inbox and categories, rich content emails, auto suggest as you type. Docs was completely rewritten, and they're working on another rewrite using canvas. Spreadsheets was rewritten twice, and a huge number of excel features ported over. It's true they don't overhaul the whole product every year, or make major UI adjustments, but a fair bit has changed in those products.
    - JimDabell 5y ago
      > Maps was entirely rewritten > Gmail had the entire backend rewritten > Docs was completely rewritten > Spreadsheets was rewritten twice I think I’m starting to understand why these products very rarely receive new features, which I believe is the point di4na was making.
      - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
        All these products have improved incrementally, adding new features in an unobtrusive way. Which is from my perspective as a user how it should be done. I was just yesterday building spreadsheets and charting from hundreds of thousands of rows of data, something you couldn't do with sheets a few years ago, it just crumbled under the load. Usually when I look up a way to do something, Sheets and Excel are feature parity. That's a pretty big accomplishment. And I respect that they've kept the interface pretty consistent over the years in all these products, unlike in some others where I get constantly frustrated with superfluous changes or deprecations (I was a heavy Google Play Music user, sigh) Disclaimer: Work for Google, but not on these products or anything user facing.
        di4na 5y ago
        If the improvement is not felt by people that uses it everyday, i consider that a failure to improve... and as i was saying, i see the evolution of Maps. I do not see it as significant for gmail. The multiple inbox thingy for gmail may be great, but i still have a gmail that is sluggish af Same for gdoc. Parity with excel ? It is so sluggish and a pain to do anything with it that i now pay for excel...
        JimDabell 5y ago
        > All these products have improved incrementally, adding new features in an unobtrusive way. Sure, but there’s unobtrusive, and then there’s completely imperceptible. Where are these new features? I can’t think of anything that’s been added to Google Docs in years. I often get stuck trying to do something and search for “How to do X in Google Docs”, only to discover that they haven’t gotten around to implementing something super basic. Like placeholders in template documents. You can create a template document in Google Docs, but as far as I can tell, it’s just a normal document with a different way to make a copy of it. You can’t set up placeholders! Surely that’s the whole point of template documents‽ It feels like an intern had a passing interest in implementing templates then left before they finished. And then nobody was interested in working on it for years afterwards. Out of interest, I searched for a changelog and found this: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/9228272 https://support.google.com/docs/answer/9228272 Does this seem like anything other than a mothballed project to you? This is meant to be a flagship product from a giant company, and they were barely scraping together one tiny feature per month until September 2020, then lost interest and managed just one single new feature in the nine months since then. And you still can’t do super basic things with it. But hey, at least they found the time to completely rewrite the UI layer, right? You don’t see how this appears to be a team who feels zero market pressure treating it like a retirement hobby rather than a job, right?
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      the HN thread on the coming Docs rewrite https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27129858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27129858
  - ViViDboarder 5y ago
    I use Google Docs nearly daily for work and they have definitely gotten new features over the last few years. Mostly around better collaboration. A few notable ones: @mentioning prime in a doc, assigning actionable comments as action items, automated creation of action items in meeting notes.
pmontra 5y ago
This and also: I wonder if the messiness of these products derives from a messy company structure. Maybe different departments or teams competing against each other for money, career advancements, etc. all without a strong leadership that can cut bad ideas before they start to be developed. Does anybody have information to prove or disprove this conjecture?
- gary_0 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law
  - ideamotor 5y ago
    Interesting. Perhaps this is why large corps often can’t build cross-functional flat apps that effectively share data and make said company more efficient and profitable.
- thenoblesunfish 5y ago
  "Mess" (a term from the article, I realize) might be too perjorative of a term. Coordination, hierarchy, and lack of redundancy can also have downsides.
leokennis 5y ago
For consumers: sure. It's free, so expect nothing. But if I were an enterprise, I'd be super cautious to sign any contract with Google for any product. Who knows they'll cancel the product your business is built on, with 30 days warning. Can you imagine IBM / RedHat / Microsoft doing that? No. Can you imagine Google doing it?
- faho 5y ago
  IBM / Red Hat cut CentOS 8's lifecycle by 8 years, with one year warning. Of course that's the free version, but still.

oblio 5y ago

> Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs All those were launched more than a decade ago, though.

di4na 5y ago
And not really iterated on... Maps got slightly better but Gmail and GDoc were uh... not really refactored into better stuff
- esprehn 5y ago
  Maps was entirely rewritten to use WebGL and support 3D. Gmail had the entire backend rewritten to scale much larger, priority inbox and categories, rich content emails, auto suggest as you type. Docs was completely rewritten, and they're working on another rewrite using canvas. Spreadsheets was rewritten twice, and a huge number of excel features ported over. It's true they don't overhaul the whole product every year, or make major UI adjustments, but a fair bit has changed in those products.
  - JimDabell 5y ago
    > Maps was entirely rewritten > Gmail had the entire backend rewritten > Docs was completely rewritten > Spreadsheets was rewritten twice I think I’m starting to understand why these products very rarely receive new features, which I believe is the point di4na was making.
    - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
      All these products have improved incrementally, adding new features in an unobtrusive way. Which is from my perspective as a user how it should be done. I was just yesterday building spreadsheets and charting from hundreds of thousands of rows of data, something you couldn't do with sheets a few years ago, it just crumbled under the load. Usually when I look up a way to do something, Sheets and Excel are feature parity. That's a pretty big accomplishment. And I respect that they've kept the interface pretty consistent over the years in all these products, unlike in some others where I get constantly frustrated with superfluous changes or deprecations (I was a heavy Google Play Music user, sigh) Disclaimer: Work for Google, but not on these products or anything user facing.
      - di4na 5y ago
        If the improvement is not felt by people that uses it everyday, i consider that a failure to improve... and as i was saying, i see the evolution of Maps. I do not see it as significant for gmail. The multiple inbox thingy for gmail may be great, but i still have a gmail that is sluggish af Same for gdoc. Parity with excel ? It is so sluggish and a pain to do anything with it that i now pay for excel...
      - JimDabell 5y ago
        > All these products have improved incrementally, adding new features in an unobtrusive way. Sure, but there’s unobtrusive, and then there’s completely imperceptible. Where are these new features? I can’t think of anything that’s been added to Google Docs in years. I often get stuck trying to do something and search for “How to do X in Google Docs”, only to discover that they haven’t gotten around to implementing something super basic. Like placeholders in template documents. You can create a template document in Google Docs, but as far as I can tell, it’s just a normal document with a different way to make a copy of it. You can’t set up placeholders! Surely that’s the whole point of template documents‽ It feels like an intern had a passing interest in implementing templates then left before they finished. And then nobody was interested in working on it for years afterwards. Out of interest, I searched for a changelog and found this: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/9228272 https://support.google.com/docs/answer/9228272 Does this seem like anything other than a mothballed project to you? This is meant to be a flagship product from a giant company, and they were barely scraping together one tiny feature per month until September 2020, then lost interest and managed just one single new feature in the nine months since then. And you still can’t do super basic things with it. But hey, at least they found the time to completely rewrite the UI layer, right? You don’t see how this appears to be a team who feels zero market pressure treating it like a retirement hobby rather than a job, right?
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    the HN thread on the coming Docs rewrite https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27129858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27129858
- ViViDboarder 5y ago
  I use Google Docs nearly daily for work and they have definitely gotten new features over the last few years. Mostly around better collaboration. A few notable ones: @mentioning prime in a doc, assigning actionable comments as action items, automated creation of action items in meeting notes.

pmontra 5y ago

This and also: I wonder if the messiness of these products derives from a messy company structure. Maybe different departments or teams competing against each other for money, career advancements, etc. all without a strong leadership that can cut bad ideas before they start to be developed. Does anybody have information to prove or disprove this conjecture?

gary_0 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law
- ideamotor 5y ago
  Interesting. Perhaps this is why large corps often can’t build cross-functional flat apps that effectively share data and make said company more efficient and profitable.
thenoblesunfish 5y ago
"Mess" (a term from the article, I realize) might be too perjorative of a term. Coordination, hierarchy, and lack of redundancy can also have downsides.

leokennis 5y ago

For consumers: sure. It's free, so expect nothing. But if I were an enterprise, I'd be super cautious to sign any contract with Google for any product. Who knows they'll cancel the product your business is built on, with 30 days warning. Can you imagine IBM / RedHat / Microsoft doing that? No. Can you imagine Google doing it?

faho 5y ago
IBM / Red Hat cut CentOS 8's lifecycle by 8 years, with one year warning. Of course that's the free version, but still.