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A normal company would have had basically one product all these years and not renamed it just due to internal engineering efforts. I also imagine chat apps are

by oivey 4y ago

A normal company would have had basically one product all these years and not renamed it just due to internal engineering efforts. I also imagine chat apps are great for promotion driven development. Not that hard to make from scratch relative to something like search or maps. I’m surprised Gmail isn’t constantly cannibalized, although still it has been a small amount. Some execs must be protecting dilution of that important brand.

esrauch 4y ago
They did do Inbox which tried to cannabalize Gmail but it ended with it merging some features back in to Gmail instead.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago
  I really miss inbox
  - gryfft 4y ago
    The only thing more upsetting to me than having Inbox foisted on me was having it torn away from me afterwards. I was resistant to more change for the sake of change from Google, then Inbox won me over with its excellent UI. It became a combination of to-do list, email, and calendar that felt like an extension of my brain. The tiny concessions to its good UX that were pulled into Gmail were cold comfort. The equivalent functionality in GCalendar is way more clunky.
    - danpalmer 4y ago
      But Inbox was never foisted on anybody, the standard Gmail interface has always been available.
      - gryfft 4y ago
        I guess I'm misremembering again.
- 8ytecoder 4y ago
  They did shut it down before it took off though. And made a half hearted attempt to merge the features.
  - conradfr 4y ago
    That's a better outcome than the mediocre YouTube music killing Play Music.
    - smeej 4y ago
      Especially for those of us who had uploaded all our songs from CDs by miscellaneous local bands that went extinct long before every band put its songs on YouTube.
throwaway29303 4y ago
A normal company would have had (...) Alphabet (or Google) is not a normal company. According to Alphabet's[0] website: As Sergey and I wrote in the original founders letter 11 years ago, “Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.” As part of that, we also said that you could expect us to make “smaller bets in areas that might seem very speculative or even strange when compared to our current businesses.” From the start, we’ve always strived to do more, and to do important and meaningful things with the resources we have. [0] - https://abc.xyz https://abc.xyz
- Lammy 4y ago
  Alphabet couldn't be a more appropriate name for such an "abnormal" company https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance/ https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...
  - throwaway29303 4y ago
    Indeed. And I find it interesting how this The research arms of the CIA and NSA hoped that the best computer-science minds in academia could identify what they called “birds of a feather:” Just as geese fly together in large V shapes, or flocks of sparrows make sudden movements together in harmony, they predicted that like-minded groups of humans would move together online. (...) ties up nicely with Google's FLoC[0]: FLoC provides a privacy-preserving mechanism for interest-based selection of ads and other content. As a user moves around the web, their browser uses the FLoC algorithm to work out its "interest cohort", which will be the same for thousands of browsers with a similar recent browsing history. The browser recalculates its cohort periodically, on the user's device, without sharing individual browsing data with the browser vendor or anyone else. And the name makes the whole thing even funnier. Pretty interesting coincidence. ;-) [0] - https://developer.chrome.com/docs/privacy-sandbox/floc/ https://developer.chrome.com/docs/privacy-sandbox/floc/
deleted 4y ago
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by oivey 4y ago

esrauch 4y ago

They did do Inbox which tried to cannabalize Gmail but it ended with it merging some features back in to Gmail instead.

ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago
I really miss inbox
- gryfft 4y ago
  The only thing more upsetting to me than having Inbox foisted on me was having it torn away from me afterwards. I was resistant to more change for the sake of change from Google, then Inbox won me over with its excellent UI. It became a combination of to-do list, email, and calendar that felt like an extension of my brain. The tiny concessions to its good UX that were pulled into Gmail were cold comfort. The equivalent functionality in GCalendar is way more clunky.
  - danpalmer 4y ago
    But Inbox was never foisted on anybody, the standard Gmail interface has always been available.
    - gryfft 4y ago
      I guess I'm misremembering again.
8ytecoder 4y ago
They did shut it down before it took off though. And made a half hearted attempt to merge the features.
- conradfr 4y ago
  That's a better outcome than the mediocre YouTube music killing Play Music.
  - smeej 4y ago
    Especially for those of us who had uploaded all our songs from CDs by miscellaneous local bands that went extinct long before every band put its songs on YouTube.

throwaway29303 4y ago

A normal company would have had (...) Alphabet (or Google) is not a normal company. According to Alphabet's[0] website: As Sergey and I wrote in the original founders letter 11 years ago, “Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.” As part of that, we also said that you could expect us to make “smaller bets in areas that might seem very speculative or even strange when compared to our current businesses.” From the start, we’ve always strived to do more, and to do important and meaningful things with the resources we have. [0] - https://abc.xyz https://abc.xyz

Lammy 4y ago
Alphabet couldn't be a more appropriate name for such an "abnormal" company https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance/ https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...
- throwaway29303 4y ago
  Indeed. And I find it interesting how this The research arms of the CIA and NSA hoped that the best computer-science minds in academia could identify what they called “birds of a feather:” Just as geese fly together in large V shapes, or flocks of sparrows make sudden movements together in harmony, they predicted that like-minded groups of humans would move together online. (...) ties up nicely with Google's FLoC[0]: FLoC provides a privacy-preserving mechanism for interest-based selection of ads and other content. As a user moves around the web, their browser uses the FLoC algorithm to work out its "interest cohort", which will be the same for thousands of browsers with a similar recent browsing history. The browser recalculates its cohort periodically, on the user's device, without sharing individual browsing data with the browser vendor or anyone else. And the name makes the whole thing even funnier. Pretty interesting coincidence. ;-) [0] - https://developer.chrome.com/docs/privacy-sandbox/floc/ https://developer.chrome.com/docs/privacy-sandbox/floc/

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]