10 ms·

Google kills two-year “Pixel Pass” subscription after just 22 months

156 points by stalfosknight 3y ago

htrp 3y ago
> The terms of the Pixel Pass were for two years, and paying the subscription for that time would pay off your Pixel phone. Early cancellation meant a big final bill for the remainder of the phone cost. That won't happen here, though—while new signups are no longer allowed, existing users will be able to finish out their two-year term. The end of the term was supposed to mean re-upping with a shiny new device, but Google now says, "By the end of the 2 year term, you can’t upgrade to a new phone with Pixel Pass." But you do get a 100$ off coupon for your next pixel. The jokes literally write themselves at this point.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- zamadatix 3y ago
  I guess I don't get which part is supposed to be the joke? You entered a 2 year subscription to get the phone up front and after 2 years you aren't able to renew and do it all again. Seems plain and boring?
ars 3y ago
If I were a pixel pass subscriber, I would want a refund on the price difference between pixel pass versus buying all the included subcomponents, plus the cost of the initial free phone. Although after writing that, I'm wondering if there actually is any monetary difference. Edit: Other commenters explained that after 2 years you did not get another phone, you got the chance to renew and then get another phone. So I guess there's no need to get a refund because Google fulfilled their contract. The article makes this sound a lot worse than it is.
- henryfjordan 3y ago
  > Google said you could "save up to $294 over two years" compared to buying everything individually
- crazygringo 3y ago
  But then you'd be paying Google, not the other way around. The whole point of the bundle was to be cheaper than buying the things individually. The users already got the savings.
Invictus0 3y ago
How is that legal? Seems like a blatant bait and switch
- henryfjordan 3y ago
  The deal was a 2-year contract for a phone. They aren't going to renew any contracts when they run the full-term. Nobody was going to get the new upgraded phone without renewing for another 2 years. It's their right to not want to renew on a deal that wasn't working out for them. You might be able to claim they made promises about the longevity of the program in order to get you to sign up but Google will say the terms were pretty clear and they delivered on the contract. It'd be an uphill battle, but maybe there'll be a class-action
solardev 3y ago
The real news here is that a Google service lasted more than 12 months
- 0x457 3y ago
  Only because there was no difference between cancelling it 1 month after or 22 months after its inception. People signed up for a 2-year subscription service. It wasn't really a service, just a bundle deal from the store.
  - sulam 3y ago
    Was it really a service, then? Seems like a change in pricing model.
    - 0x457 3y ago
      It isn't a service. It's just a SKU in their online store. There is nothing different between buying that and buying things separately besides price. Unlike iPhone Upgrade Program, where it charges your credit/debit card monthly, they charge a full price of the phone on synchrony account and report that to credit agencies.
davidg109 3y ago
I have no faith in any of Google’s endeavours lasting. When you sign up for any Google service, you’re essentially a human lab rat with the odds being the service will be unceremoniously cancelled. I’ve developed the “anything but Google” mentality with this in mind.
- supportengineer 3y ago
  I miss being a paying customer. I want to pay a reasonable fee and get a good product or service with FANTASTIC customer service.
- zamadatix 3y ago
  It is silly how blindly they handle these cancellations. Not necessarily in a "wow I can't believe they cancelled so many things" sense but a "they don't really try to clearly distinguish services they are more serious about vs ones they are less serious about". Out of all the products I'd guess Google is serious about keeping long term none of them really have any messaging that's the case so when things like Pixel Pass get cancelled it hurts trust in everything.
- viscanti 3y ago
  If you're really lucky, they'll sell the product to someone else and then you get to have a relationship with a new company (like google domains). That seems to be the very rare exception though and you should expect to have to find your own replacement for any Google service you use because it's unlikely to last very long.
CM30 3y ago
And yet another Google service goes to the Google Graveyard. The only practical advice you can follow now is "if it's a Google product and it's not Search, YouTube, Maps, Gmail or Docs, don't bet on it being around in the long term"
- tlogan 3y ago
  Not sure about maps, gmail and docs…
  - Night_Thastus 3y ago
    Google is stuck with gmail whether they like it or not. Gmail is used by what, 1.8 billion people? And e-mail isn't some small take-it-or-leave-it feature. Even disregarding the mail itself, e-mail is central as a form of online ID for accounts. If Google tried to kill Gmail there would be an uproar of incredible proportions. Realistically, their best bet for getting rid of it would be to gradually abandon it, making it slower, less reliable, taking away features, etc over the course of a decade or two. But even then, they'd likely need to wait another ~40 years for generational effects to kick in and most people to get off of it.
    - Workaccount2 3y ago
      Crazy to think that technically Google has every right to just turn off gmail one day. No warning, no advisories. Just shut off the servers. They don't even have to acknowledge it.
      - Night_Thastus 3y ago
        In theory, but never in practice. The big kicker that makes it impractical is that most businesses and government organizations use GMail. There's so much money and power out there that would pressure Google into fixing it immediately. If they seriously tried it would be endless, endless lawsuits about all the lost productivity, valuable company information, etc. If Google made their intentions clear, I bet it wouldn't stay down for more than 3 days before they relented due to all that pressure.
iAMkenough 3y ago
I’d be curious to see how many $100 off coupons they issue vs how many are utilized.
Scoring6931 3y ago
[flagged]
pimlottc 3y ago
This is confusingly written. It makes it sounds like you'd get a free phone after 24 months, but it's just really a 2-year subscription plan that bundles the hardware and a selection of Google services in a single monthly fee. What you get after 2 years is the chance to sign up for another 2-year subscription, which includes a new phone, paid monthly over another 2 years. Google has not just deprived a bunch of people of free phones, they are just eliminating this subscription bundle plan. More info: - https://blog.google/products/pixel/introducing-pixel-pass/ https://blog.google/products/pixel/introducing-pixel-pass/ - https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/pixel-6-with-pixel-pass-how-google-bundle-works-and-if-it-saves-money/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/pixel-6-with-pixel-pass-how...
- znpy 3y ago
  > What you get after 2 years is the chance to sign up for another 2-year subscription, which includes a new phone, paid monthly over another 2 years. Does it really matter? Most TOSes that i've read clearly include the possibility of the service provider to interrupt the contract at any time without any consequences. Which really means that the "what you get" above is really just an agreement on how much to pay and how often.
  - ertian 3y ago
    I'm sure they're legally allowed to do it. They wouldn't be doing it otherwise. But it's something customers are going to want to keep in mind when picking Google products or services: they have a track record of ditching you. If you're looking for long-term products you can rely on, maybe Google isn't the best choice.
- MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  Let's just look at the phone that the 5a adopters (me) would be getting from their store. You start off with the Pixel 7a at $499. There's an immediate $250 credit that is applied over the next 2 years. This drops that price to $249. Pixel Pass users get a $100 bonus credit. Now it's at $149. Then there's an immediate $85 trade-in bonus. So now we're at $64. Gosh, Google sure is doing me dirty by charging me $2.67 instead of $12 a month.
VonGuard 3y ago
When I got Stadia, I set my dad up with it to play Red Dead 2, because he knows nothing of games, and I wasn't buying him a PS4 just to play 1 game. It was great. When he got stuck, I logged in across the country and advanced the story for him, and he took back over. Spectacular product. I told my dad, day 1, "You'd better enjoy this now, because in 2 years, Google will kill this and you'll never be able to play again." I was off by about a year, but I was 100% right. At least they gave me back 100% of my money and game purchase $. Still, standard Google. Additionally, anyone notice that nothing works worse together than Google and Google. I had Google Wifi, Google phones, Chromebooks, EVERYTHING. And nothing ever worked reliably. Ever.
- freedomben 3y ago
  You should get your dad a steam deck! It sounds like he would love it. you could (with some setup) even use Steam Link to log in remotely. latency/throughput would obvoiusly be much worse, enough so that you might not be able to do any fast-moving reflex-required scenarios, but it's playable.
  - VonGuard 3y ago
    I just cannot rationalize getting him any gaming equipment. He could manage Stadia, juuuust barely. He frequently cannot figure out his cell phone. He is basically a ludite. My mom had to stand there and turn Stadia on on the tablet for him... I was considering Shadow but it's just too complex too.
    - thenipper 3y ago
      GeForce now works pretty well. I use it for gaming while traveling and haven’t had too many issues
      - wishfish 3y ago
        GeForce Now is working great for me. But for this person's dad, it probably wouldn't work well at all. The interface is cluttered with game icons. Which is fine for me. But someone averse to tech would probably find it confusing & overwhelming.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
damsta 3y ago
Is having an end-of-life deadline a requirement in pre-mortems done for product launches at Google?
darknavi 3y ago
Our family is on GoogleFi because of the unparalleled international travel benefits. I really hope they don't kill it but I am sure they will one day.
- Zaheer 3y ago
  Not sure on the details but T-Mobile is excellent internationally as well.
  - AlotOfReading 3y ago
    TMobile at one point charged me $15 every time my phone pinged a tower in a foreign country. They disconnected my account after $1200 in charges and only notified me by sending snail mail to my address on a different continent asking to call them with my now-disconnected phone. "Excellent" is not the word that comes to mind, especially given their constant security breaches. I'm on fi now and hoping Google forgets it exists so they don't cancel it.
  - darknavi 3y ago
    Not sure how it is now but when we were on vacation last year they capped you at 5GB a month of international. Still way better than other carriers, but Fi doesn't cap you, it just counts as your normal plan.
monlockandkey 3y ago
I think the frustration we all have was that Google was the Willy Wonka factory of cool tech and services. Eagrly waiting to see what cool candy they can invent. Now that has disappeared, many people are dissolutioned by the lack of focus and stagnation.
- bluSCALE4 3y ago
  Yep, even at the snail pace Apple provides updates, it seems they're catching up.
dotBen 3y ago
The issue was whoever created this didn't design a widely compelling proposition.. You had to value the bundled Google Game Pass and YouTube Music Premium to make it a good deal. Anyone who doesn't play games and uses Spotify would be under water vs just paying monthly for the phone (if payments is what makes the new phone accessible). Also the open secret in Google Pixel lifecycle is that Google heavily subsidizes the trade in value of the prior gen phone at launch, which has meant each consecutive Pixel phone has cost me $100 or less to trade up into on an annual basis. Holding onto a Pixel phone for 2 years actually leads to a significant depreciation curve vs annual trade up.
- uxp8u61q 3y ago
  Are you happy with your creation of e-waste? Seriously, a phone a year...
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Unless he's smashing the old phone with a sledgehammer, it doesn't cease to exist. That he's given money for the trade-in indicates it's refurbished and sold used to someone else, so the total waste is reduced, perhaps even more so than someone who buys top of the line phones, and after three years puts them in a drawer and buys a new one (because the trade in value is almost nothing and/or by then it's cracked, etc).
    - ghusto 3y ago
      I think the point is that if people like him didn't keep buying new phone unnecessarily, then there would be less phone being manufactured unnecessarily. The fact that he sells it on doesn't change that.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        More likely supply would just be constrained - up to some point. Just like the supply of housing isn’t increased unless more people buy new ones. Of course, at some point people start throwing working phones away.
Gentil 3y ago
I avoid using google wherever possible. Forget all the hate they get. Their customer service sucks making it harder to recommend any of their product. Then there is the fact that they will just kill the product any time. If you are going to use google products, stick to dinosaur products like android, gmail etc. DO NOT EVER INVEST IN A NEW GOOGLE PRODUCT. It is just a matter of time before it disappears. This has become a joke. The last project I had hold my breath for was Project Ara. And I don't plan to do that again.
- MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - chiefalchemist 3y ago
    Yes, in this case that's it. However, that comment's emotion is driven by Google's fondness for eliminating products so quickly. Diatribe or not, this is how people are reacting to Google's "oh just kill it" habit. fwiw, it's not the only comment in this tread that's effectively called Google untrustworthy, and for good reason. Note: I'm not questioning your loyalty to Google; to each her/his own. However, there are others given Google's history who feel they've been "second time shame on me" too many times now.
    - MisterBastahrd 3y ago
      I don't have any "loyalty to Google." There are no options that are better for what I'm willing to spend and they consistently have a quality phone product. I recently switched my internet service to T-Mobile but their phone options are not up to snuff for what I'm willing to pay and their prices are $30 higher for the same level of service. It's not loyalty. It's economics.
- wishfish 3y ago
  The customer service is a potential killer for me. For a while, I was relying on Gmail. Then started seeing the horror stories of people losing their accounts with almost no recourse of getting them back. I realize the false-positive bans are probably just 1 in a million but that's still too big of a risk for something crucial like my main email. Moved everything to a personal domain.
CKMo 3y ago
Rugpulled again! killedbygoogle.com might have a new entry now
TwentyPosts 3y ago
...but why? It seems like a great, simple concept, and not one that seems very expensive to maintain. What's the reasoning here? Like, what sort of returns did they expect here, and why weren't they met?
- xapata 3y ago
  Because they're finding it's easier to give people a monthly bill credit for 24 months. They're not ending the discount, they're ending the way it's marketed.
nerdjon 3y ago
I find this pretty wild because I am paying more than this for my iPhone Upgrade Program (which I get yearly upgrades) and Apple One (Premier). Was this just not successful or is this just another case of Google being Google and if it isn't an instant success it doesn't survive? To me this seems like one of those things you subsidize for a few years to get people using your services and then people are "locked" in. Or just recognize that someone doing this is one of our best customers since they are clearly in your ecosystem and just more beneficial in that regard alone.
- TillE 3y ago
  Yeah this is a bizarre one. It should be a successful type of program; Apple has been doing it since 2015, and bundling services together with the device makes total sense. Surprising to cancel it instead of just adjusting the price.
JEDI-HACKER 3y ago
[dead]
esskay 3y ago
I mean, it's Google. At this point it's pretty much mandatory that anything they launch must be killed within 2 years after someone inside realised what a terrible idea it was. Never trust Google for anything, ever.
walteweiss 3y ago
Google kills. Must be the most sustainable brand on Earth. Am I surprised?

156 points by stalfosknight 3y ago

htrp 3y ago

> The terms of the Pixel Pass were for two years, and paying the subscription for that time would pay off your Pixel phone. Early cancellation meant a big final bill for the remainder of the phone cost. That won't happen here, though—while new signups are no longer allowed, existing users will be able to finish out their two-year term. The end of the term was supposed to mean re-upping with a shiny new device, but Google now says, "By the end of the 2 year term, you can’t upgrade to a new phone with Pixel Pass." But you do get a 100$ off coupon for your next pixel. The jokes literally write themselves at this point.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zamadatix 3y ago
I guess I don't get which part is supposed to be the joke? You entered a 2 year subscription to get the phone up front and after 2 years you aren't able to renew and do it all again. Seems plain and boring?

ars 3y ago

If I were a pixel pass subscriber, I would want a refund on the price difference between pixel pass versus buying all the included subcomponents, plus the cost of the initial free phone. Although after writing that, I'm wondering if there actually is any monetary difference. Edit: Other commenters explained that after 2 years you did not get another phone, you got the chance to renew and then get another phone. So I guess there's no need to get a refund because Google fulfilled their contract. The article makes this sound a lot worse than it is.

henryfjordan 3y ago
> Google said you could "save up to $294 over two years" compared to buying everything individually
crazygringo 3y ago
But then you'd be paying Google, not the other way around. The whole point of the bundle was to be cheaper than buying the things individually. The users already got the savings.

Invictus0 3y ago

How is that legal? Seems like a blatant bait and switch

henryfjordan 3y ago
The deal was a 2-year contract for a phone. They aren't going to renew any contracts when they run the full-term. Nobody was going to get the new upgraded phone without renewing for another 2 years. It's their right to not want to renew on a deal that wasn't working out for them. You might be able to claim they made promises about the longevity of the program in order to get you to sign up but Google will say the terms were pretty clear and they delivered on the contract. It'd be an uphill battle, but maybe there'll be a class-action

solardev 3y ago

The real news here is that a Google service lasted more than 12 months

0x457 3y ago
Only because there was no difference between cancelling it 1 month after or 22 months after its inception. People signed up for a 2-year subscription service. It wasn't really a service, just a bundle deal from the store.
- sulam 3y ago
  Was it really a service, then? Seems like a change in pricing model.
  - 0x457 3y ago
    It isn't a service. It's just a SKU in their online store. There is nothing different between buying that and buying things separately besides price. Unlike iPhone Upgrade Program, where it charges your credit/debit card monthly, they charge a full price of the phone on synchrony account and report that to credit agencies.

davidg109 3y ago

I have no faith in any of Google’s endeavours lasting. When you sign up for any Google service, you’re essentially a human lab rat with the odds being the service will be unceremoniously cancelled. I’ve developed the “anything but Google” mentality with this in mind.

supportengineer 3y ago
I miss being a paying customer. I want to pay a reasonable fee and get a good product or service with FANTASTIC customer service.
zamadatix 3y ago
It is silly how blindly they handle these cancellations. Not necessarily in a "wow I can't believe they cancelled so many things" sense but a "they don't really try to clearly distinguish services they are more serious about vs ones they are less serious about". Out of all the products I'd guess Google is serious about keeping long term none of them really have any messaging that's the case so when things like Pixel Pass get cancelled it hurts trust in everything.
viscanti 3y ago
If you're really lucky, they'll sell the product to someone else and then you get to have a relationship with a new company (like google domains). That seems to be the very rare exception though and you should expect to have to find your own replacement for any Google service you use because it's unlikely to last very long.

CM30 3y ago

And yet another Google service goes to the Google Graveyard. The only practical advice you can follow now is "if it's a Google product and it's not Search, YouTube, Maps, Gmail or Docs, don't bet on it being around in the long term"

tlogan 3y ago
Not sure about maps, gmail and docs…
- Night_Thastus 3y ago
  Google is stuck with gmail whether they like it or not. Gmail is used by what, 1.8 billion people? And e-mail isn't some small take-it-or-leave-it feature. Even disregarding the mail itself, e-mail is central as a form of online ID for accounts. If Google tried to kill Gmail there would be an uproar of incredible proportions. Realistically, their best bet for getting rid of it would be to gradually abandon it, making it slower, less reliable, taking away features, etc over the course of a decade or two. But even then, they'd likely need to wait another ~40 years for generational effects to kick in and most people to get off of it.
  - Workaccount2 3y ago
    Crazy to think that technically Google has every right to just turn off gmail one day. No warning, no advisories. Just shut off the servers. They don't even have to acknowledge it.
    - Night_Thastus 3y ago
      In theory, but never in practice. The big kicker that makes it impractical is that most businesses and government organizations use GMail. There's so much money and power out there that would pressure Google into fixing it immediately. If they seriously tried it would be endless, endless lawsuits about all the lost productivity, valuable company information, etc. If Google made their intentions clear, I bet it wouldn't stay down for more than 3 days before they relented due to all that pressure.

iAMkenough 3y ago

I’d be curious to see how many $100 off coupons they issue vs how many are utilized.

Scoring6931 3y ago

[flagged]

pimlottc 3y ago

This is confusingly written. It makes it sounds like you'd get a free phone after 24 months, but it's just really a 2-year subscription plan that bundles the hardware and a selection of Google services in a single monthly fee. What you get after 2 years is the chance to sign up for another 2-year subscription, which includes a new phone, paid monthly over another 2 years. Google has not just deprived a bunch of people of free phones, they are just eliminating this subscription bundle plan. More info: - https://blog.google/products/pixel/introducing-pixel-pass/ https://blog.google/products/pixel/introducing-pixel-pass/ - https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/pixel-6-with-pixel-pass-how-google-bundle-works-and-if-it-saves-money/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/pixel-6-with-pixel-pass-how...

znpy 3y ago
> What you get after 2 years is the chance to sign up for another 2-year subscription, which includes a new phone, paid monthly over another 2 years. Does it really matter? Most TOSes that i've read clearly include the possibility of the service provider to interrupt the contract at any time without any consequences. Which really means that the "what you get" above is really just an agreement on how much to pay and how often.
- ertian 3y ago
  I'm sure they're legally allowed to do it. They wouldn't be doing it otherwise. But it's something customers are going to want to keep in mind when picking Google products or services: they have a track record of ditching you. If you're looking for long-term products you can rely on, maybe Google isn't the best choice.
MisterBastahrd 3y ago
Let's just look at the phone that the 5a adopters (me) would be getting from their store. You start off with the Pixel 7a at $499. There's an immediate $250 credit that is applied over the next 2 years. This drops that price to $249. Pixel Pass users get a $100 bonus credit. Now it's at $149. Then there's an immediate $85 trade-in bonus. So now we're at $64. Gosh, Google sure is doing me dirty by charging me $2.67 instead of $12 a month.

VonGuard 3y ago

When I got Stadia, I set my dad up with it to play Red Dead 2, because he knows nothing of games, and I wasn't buying him a PS4 just to play 1 game. It was great. When he got stuck, I logged in across the country and advanced the story for him, and he took back over. Spectacular product. I told my dad, day 1, "You'd better enjoy this now, because in 2 years, Google will kill this and you'll never be able to play again." I was off by about a year, but I was 100% right. At least they gave me back 100% of my money and game purchase $. Still, standard Google. Additionally, anyone notice that nothing works worse together than Google and Google. I had Google Wifi, Google phones, Chromebooks, EVERYTHING. And nothing ever worked reliably. Ever.

freedomben 3y ago
You should get your dad a steam deck! It sounds like he would love it. you could (with some setup) even use Steam Link to log in remotely. latency/throughput would obvoiusly be much worse, enough so that you might not be able to do any fast-moving reflex-required scenarios, but it's playable.
- VonGuard 3y ago
  I just cannot rationalize getting him any gaming equipment. He could manage Stadia, juuuust barely. He frequently cannot figure out his cell phone. He is basically a ludite. My mom had to stand there and turn Stadia on on the tablet for him... I was considering Shadow but it's just too complex too.
  - thenipper 3y ago
    GeForce now works pretty well. I use it for gaming while traveling and haven’t had too many issues
    - wishfish 3y ago
      GeForce Now is working great for me. But for this person's dad, it probably wouldn't work well at all. The interface is cluttered with game icons. Which is fine for me. But someone averse to tech would probably find it confusing & overwhelming.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

damsta 3y ago

Is having an end-of-life deadline a requirement in pre-mortems done for product launches at Google?

darknavi 3y ago

Our family is on GoogleFi because of the unparalleled international travel benefits. I really hope they don't kill it but I am sure they will one day.

Zaheer 3y ago
Not sure on the details but T-Mobile is excellent internationally as well.
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  TMobile at one point charged me $15 every time my phone pinged a tower in a foreign country. They disconnected my account after $1200 in charges and only notified me by sending snail mail to my address on a different continent asking to call them with my now-disconnected phone. "Excellent" is not the word that comes to mind, especially given their constant security breaches. I'm on fi now and hoping Google forgets it exists so they don't cancel it.
- darknavi 3y ago
  Not sure how it is now but when we were on vacation last year they capped you at 5GB a month of international. Still way better than other carriers, but Fi doesn't cap you, it just counts as your normal plan.

monlockandkey 3y ago

I think the frustration we all have was that Google was the Willy Wonka factory of cool tech and services. Eagrly waiting to see what cool candy they can invent. Now that has disappeared, many people are dissolutioned by the lack of focus and stagnation.

bluSCALE4 3y ago
Yep, even at the snail pace Apple provides updates, it seems they're catching up.

dotBen 3y ago

The issue was whoever created this didn't design a widely compelling proposition.. You had to value the bundled Google Game Pass and YouTube Music Premium to make it a good deal. Anyone who doesn't play games and uses Spotify would be under water vs just paying monthly for the phone (if payments is what makes the new phone accessible). Also the open secret in Google Pixel lifecycle is that Google heavily subsidizes the trade in value of the prior gen phone at launch, which has meant each consecutive Pixel phone has cost me $100 or less to trade up into on an annual basis. Holding onto a Pixel phone for 2 years actually leads to a significant depreciation curve vs annual trade up.

uxp8u61q 3y ago
Are you happy with your creation of e-waste? Seriously, a phone a year...
- bombcar 3y ago
  Unless he's smashing the old phone with a sledgehammer, it doesn't cease to exist. That he's given money for the trade-in indicates it's refurbished and sold used to someone else, so the total waste is reduced, perhaps even more so than someone who buys top of the line phones, and after three years puts them in a drawer and buys a new one (because the trade in value is almost nothing and/or by then it's cracked, etc).
  - ghusto 3y ago
    I think the point is that if people like him didn't keep buying new phone unnecessarily, then there would be less phone being manufactured unnecessarily. The fact that he sells it on doesn't change that.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      More likely supply would just be constrained - up to some point. Just like the supply of housing isn’t increased unless more people buy new ones. Of course, at some point people start throwing working phones away.

Gentil 3y ago

I avoid using google wherever possible. Forget all the hate they get. Their customer service sucks making it harder to recommend any of their product. Then there is the fact that they will just kill the product any time. If you are going to use google products, stick to dinosaur products like android, gmail etc. DO NOT EVER INVEST IN A NEW GOOGLE PRODUCT. It is just a matter of time before it disappears. This has become a joke. The last project I had hold my breath for was Project Ara. And I don't plan to do that again.

MisterBastahrd 3y ago
[flagged]
- chiefalchemist 3y ago
  Yes, in this case that's it. However, that comment's emotion is driven by Google's fondness for eliminating products so quickly. Diatribe or not, this is how people are reacting to Google's "oh just kill it" habit. fwiw, it's not the only comment in this tread that's effectively called Google untrustworthy, and for good reason. Note: I'm not questioning your loyalty to Google; to each her/his own. However, there are others given Google's history who feel they've been "second time shame on me" too many times now.
  - MisterBastahrd 3y ago
    I don't have any "loyalty to Google." There are no options that are better for what I'm willing to spend and they consistently have a quality phone product. I recently switched my internet service to T-Mobile but their phone options are not up to snuff for what I'm willing to pay and their prices are $30 higher for the same level of service. It's not loyalty. It's economics.
wishfish 3y ago
The customer service is a potential killer for me. For a while, I was relying on Gmail. Then started seeing the horror stories of people losing their accounts with almost no recourse of getting them back. I realize the false-positive bans are probably just 1 in a million but that's still too big of a risk for something crucial like my main email. Moved everything to a personal domain.

CKMo 3y ago

Rugpulled again! killedbygoogle.com might have a new entry now

TwentyPosts 3y ago

...but why? It seems like a great, simple concept, and not one that seems very expensive to maintain. What's the reasoning here? Like, what sort of returns did they expect here, and why weren't they met?

xapata 3y ago
Because they're finding it's easier to give people a monthly bill credit for 24 months. They're not ending the discount, they're ending the way it's marketed.

nerdjon 3y ago

I find this pretty wild because I am paying more than this for my iPhone Upgrade Program (which I get yearly upgrades) and Apple One (Premier). Was this just not successful or is this just another case of Google being Google and if it isn't an instant success it doesn't survive? To me this seems like one of those things you subsidize for a few years to get people using your services and then people are "locked" in. Or just recognize that someone doing this is one of our best customers since they are clearly in your ecosystem and just more beneficial in that regard alone.

TillE 3y ago
Yeah this is a bizarre one. It should be a successful type of program; Apple has been doing it since 2015, and bundling services together with the device makes total sense. Surprising to cancel it instead of just adjusting the price.

JEDI-HACKER 3y ago

[dead]

esskay 3y ago

I mean, it's Google. At this point it's pretty much mandatory that anything they launch must be killed within 2 years after someone inside realised what a terrible idea it was. Never trust Google for anything, ever.

walteweiss 3y ago

Google kills. Must be the most sustainable brand on Earth. Am I surprised?