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Google is really on a killing spree lately. Can any insiders give us insight into whether the people at the top of Google are aware that they have a strong repu

Google is really on a killing spree lately. Can any insiders give us insight into whether the people at the top of Google are aware that they have a strong reputation in the community for killing things off?

withinboredom 5y ago
not an insider but I don't think they really care.
- dylan604 5y ago
  also not an insider, but it's obvious that Google is running out of runway and needs to start making money on its products lest it should shutter its doors. /s
aingisni_del 5y ago
Do you really think they care about that reputation? It's simply binary: Product makes money, product does not make money. Did you think Google was giving away free stuff for "the community"?
- SteveNuts 5y ago
  I'm not necessarily just talking about this particular instance, just in general that's definitely been the overall theme of the discussion when things like this happen. We're a paying G-suite customer so we're not affected, but we HAVE been affected by features that users adopt as part of their workflow and productivity that Google decides to axe on a whim. It makes us as an IT organization look stupid when our users come asking us where the feature they rely on went. I just want to know if leadership at Google has any inkling that this is their reputation or not.
- evilduck 5y ago
  Loss leaders are a thing. I've had a free GSuite account on my personal domain which effectively acted as free job training and contributed to choosing them as an email provider for two companies I've worked for and clearly contributed to vastly more revenue than it would cost to host my personal GSuite account for my next 10 lifetimes. Over the last decade I've slowly but surely stopped recommending Google for anything they offer. It's been a slow attrition but I've wound up at zero. They've very effectively taken a good chunk of their best evangelists and turned them into detractors. I have no idea if they've done the math and decided that was worth it, but I sure hope they have and it's not just total incompetence from one of the biggest players in the industry.
  - daveloyall 5y ago
    Exactly. As an early adopter, I brought who knows how many souls to gmail. I set up a couple small companies on Google Apps, or whatever they want to call it this year. (Mine is called GAFYD...) When Google gave me a free HTC Magic handset in San Francisco, I showed it to everyone. I performed tricks with it. I made people want one. To this day, three members of my immediate family use newer models of my old Pixel phone. I told a man with a lot of CPU heavy jobs that GCE exists. I'm talking about "influence" a lot.. but let's be clear, that's not all. Google knows me--or at least it had the opportunity to. Somewhere between all those referrals and the emails in my mbox files at gmail and GAFYD which pre-date the launch of those services by a decade or my bug reports, or working in one of their datacenters for a while, they should know that I helped them be what they are today. Maybe they do. Maybe this kind of treatment is what I deserve. (to reiterate what others have posted, it isn't about the money. It's about the major unplanned migration. Which they still have not notified me about.)
- throwoutway 5y ago
  Haha! Just yesterday, that is exactly what Google was promoting as their first defense against antitrust regulation. That “these free services provide thousands of dollars a year in value to the average American”. So if they’re going to kill the free stuff, then they have no ground to stand on. https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/the-harmful-consequences-of-congresss-anti-tech-bills/ https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/the-h...
joemi 5y ago
I wouldn't really rank this one under "lately" since it's been a legacy version for a decade. The writing was on the wall for this a long time ago.
- rc_mob 5y ago
  I apologize for believing them when they said it would be free forever. My bad.
karmasimida 5y ago
Frankly speaking, most people out of HN don't care. Not this is a good or bad thing, but this news make no sense to 99.9% of their customers.

withinboredom 5y ago

not an insider but I don't think they really care.

dylan604 5y ago
also not an insider, but it's obvious that Google is running out of runway and needs to start making money on its products lest it should shutter its doors. /s

aingisni_del 5y ago

Do you really think they care about that reputation? It's simply binary: Product makes money, product does not make money. Did you think Google was giving away free stuff for "the community"?

SteveNuts 5y ago
I'm not necessarily just talking about this particular instance, just in general that's definitely been the overall theme of the discussion when things like this happen. We're a paying G-suite customer so we're not affected, but we HAVE been affected by features that users adopt as part of their workflow and productivity that Google decides to axe on a whim. It makes us as an IT organization look stupid when our users come asking us where the feature they rely on went. I just want to know if leadership at Google has any inkling that this is their reputation or not.
evilduck 5y ago
Loss leaders are a thing. I've had a free GSuite account on my personal domain which effectively acted as free job training and contributed to choosing them as an email provider for two companies I've worked for and clearly contributed to vastly more revenue than it would cost to host my personal GSuite account for my next 10 lifetimes. Over the last decade I've slowly but surely stopped recommending Google for anything they offer. It's been a slow attrition but I've wound up at zero. They've very effectively taken a good chunk of their best evangelists and turned them into detractors. I have no idea if they've done the math and decided that was worth it, but I sure hope they have and it's not just total incompetence from one of the biggest players in the industry.
- daveloyall 5y ago
  Exactly. As an early adopter, I brought who knows how many souls to gmail. I set up a couple small companies on Google Apps, or whatever they want to call it this year. (Mine is called GAFYD...) When Google gave me a free HTC Magic handset in San Francisco, I showed it to everyone. I performed tricks with it. I made people want one. To this day, three members of my immediate family use newer models of my old Pixel phone. I told a man with a lot of CPU heavy jobs that GCE exists. I'm talking about "influence" a lot.. but let's be clear, that's not all. Google knows me--or at least it had the opportunity to. Somewhere between all those referrals and the emails in my mbox files at gmail and GAFYD which pre-date the launch of those services by a decade or my bug reports, or working in one of their datacenters for a while, they should know that I helped them be what they are today. Maybe they do. Maybe this kind of treatment is what I deserve. (to reiterate what others have posted, it isn't about the money. It's about the major unplanned migration. Which they still have not notified me about.)
throwoutway 5y ago
Haha! Just yesterday, that is exactly what Google was promoting as their first defense against antitrust regulation. That “these free services provide thousands of dollars a year in value to the average American”. So if they’re going to kill the free stuff, then they have no ground to stand on. https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/the-harmful-consequences-of-congresss-anti-tech-bills/ https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/the-h...

joemi 5y ago

I wouldn't really rank this one under "lately" since it's been a legacy version for a decade. The writing was on the wall for this a long time ago.

rc_mob 5y ago
I apologize for believing them when they said it would be free forever. My bad.

karmasimida 5y ago

Frankly speaking, most people out of HN don't care. Not this is a good or bad thing, but this news make no sense to 99.9% of their customers.