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Seriously does anyone trust Google to run a product? Even if they came out tomorrow with a teleportation service I'd be too worried they'd cancel it mid-flight

by pluc 3y ago

Seriously does anyone trust Google to run a product? Even if they came out tomorrow with a teleportation service I'd be too worried they'd cancel it mid-flight to try it out.

paulgb 3y ago
Until Domains, I mostly trusted google to keep running a paid b2b product with lots of users. Most of the famous products they've killed have been ones that either didn't bring in revenue, or never became popular. After the Domains announcement, I can't in good conscience bring myself to spin up any new GCP services, and have started leaning more heavily on AWS. Part of me thinks that Domains is a signal that Google is planning a larger exit from the cloud business, given the GCP / Domains integration, and the absolutely atrocious comms from Google around Domains has not reassured me at all.
- TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
  > that either didn't bring in revenue Domain registration is famously difficult to profit from unless the registrar is able to upsell
  - paulgb 3y ago
    They used it to upsell Google Workspace, as well as their own TLDs (.dev, .app). And although they didn't upsell GCP through it, the integration between the two was a nice (small) incentive to use GCP.
  - andrewpolidori 3y ago
    What makes it so difficult to profit from? A yearly subscription to maintain some text entries doesn't seem that crazy to me.
    - loopdoend 3y ago
      The costs are known, the competition is high, the margins are low. You still have to deal with support/abuse. There is no real “high volume customer”.
    - thiht 3y ago
      There’s a lot of contractual obligations and edge cases in domain names, and a lot of potential for fraud and disputes. It’s a business with high legal fees. Also how domains should be managed evolves with time. For example GDPR has a huge impact on WHOIS, especially since the ICANN took so much time to acknowledge that in their specs, so there was a time where it was impossible for a registrar to be compliant with GDPR and ICANN rules. It’s still not 100% clear how it’ll be handled by RDAP (future successor of WHOIS) And last but not least, some registries for ccTLDs are real pains in the ass to work with, and won’t hesitate to slap you with big fines if you make any mistake.
- 23B1 3y ago
  We've had multiple multi-cloud customers signal a desire to move away from GCP for years now because savvy CXOs are just fed up with the unreliability. When you're looking to resolve a ton of tech debt that you have because of the ground constantly shifting beneath your feet for 1-2 decades... well, you just get fed up and want the reliability of serious enterprise vendors. It makes innovation much harder due to the downstream effects, but at least I'm not carrying more and more risk forward thanks to Google/Alphabet's ADHD approach to product, brand, and support.
  - dividedbyzero 3y ago
    What exactly do you mean by unreliability?
    - chias 3y ago
      Not having to ask "will the product I rely on today exist tomorrow?"
    - js4ever 3y ago
      Probably the constant deprecation of API / SDK from Google, you have to keep up with their crazy deprecation policy. On the other side I still have some APPS calling AWS API since 10y without any issues.
    - 23B1 3y ago
      "When will Alphabet opaquely and unilaterally depreciate this product upon which we've come to rely, as they do with many other products all the time?" Alphabet is a hopelessly disorganized bureaucracy whose leadership appears, at best indifferent to customer needs, at worst hostile to customers that don't toe their line. It's just a risk calculation you have to make when you're spending millions to build systems of record upon which your enterprise will depend for years to come. I don't know if its fair or even accurate – but it's the feedback I get from client CTOs and CIOs at sizable companies.
- redman25 3y ago
  They killed GCP IOT core as well. Forced us to find another vendor.
late25 3y ago
No, I do not. Google needs new leadership. There’s something to be said about trying things, but this continued uncertainty is killing their brand.
- _jal 3y ago
  > this continued uncertainty is their brand FIFY. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Google_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Google_s... If it doesn't shove an ad in someone's face, Google is structurally incapable of caring about it.
  - javier2 3y ago
    This. The Ads priiiint money, anything else looks unimportant.
    - dcow 3y ago
      Sure, if you want to fade into history as an ultimately irrelevant ad network that simply had the novel ideal of tying ads into internet search early on in the internet’s youth and became popular and rich for a decade, then take this stance.
      - JadeNB 3y ago
        > Sure, if you want to fade into history as an ultimately irrelevant ad network that simply had the novel ideal of tying ads into internet search early on in the internet’s youth and became popular and rich for a decade, then take this stance. The problem with any current leader is that they do want to do this. Or, rather, they don't care if they do. Who cares what Google will look like in the long run? They'll be gone. Right now, they presided over the appearance of continued growth, and that's what matters. (I have no internal knowledge about Google, of course, but I am at a university, whose plan is (1) attract more students, (2) more students, (3) more, (4) start thinking about what to do with all these students.)
zarzavat 3y ago
This decision has trashed Google’s brand and whoever made it should be fired. It’s not that Google domains is particularly important, but Google’s reputation for untrustworthiness in the consumer space has now metastasized to their cloud business. People were willing to give Google the benefit of the doubt before, that they would not treat business customers the same as consumers. Now they aren’t.
- dcow 3y ago
  I mean I’d even argue that Google domains is important in terms of making the product a seamless experience when using GCP (and generally just carving out Google as being part fundamental internet infrastructure). I wouldn’t underestimate how much a small QoL thing like having one company as both your registrar and cloud service provider can impact the choice of which otherwise commodity service to use. Not having to do a bunch of domain verification BS for every new piece of infrastructure is (was) a pretty awesome experience. Sure you can have an MBA look at the situation and ask “Do we really need a registrar? The other cloud providers don’t have one and look at their margins”. So what this really signals to me is that Google has lost all capacity to be forward thinking, trendy and innovative. And without that (and thus a general relevance as a tech company), what is Google?
  - dtech 3y ago
    AWS definitely has a domain registrar, although I believe they subcontract. Azure subcontracts to GoDaddy. Both still provide the service.
    - explaininjs 3y ago
      Are you sure? This (sourced) comment claimed the opposite: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37456916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37456916
  - CharlieDigital 3y ago
    I'm a big time proponent of Google Cloud because I believe that they've done a few things particularly well in their overall architecture that others have gotten wrong. But this decision rubs me the wrong way because there's a deep integration with several of the services that allow connecting an external domain. The verification of domain ownership with Google purchased domains was effectively seamless and aligned with this overall architecture principle of Stuff That Just Makes Sense. I still think that GCP is a great platform to build on, but the problem now is that they've further tarnished their image to other stakeholders who have a say in the platform decision making process.
slacka 3y ago
Counter point, I've been using a VoIP service called GrandCentral since college. Google purchased them. Nearly 20 years later, I'm still using that same number with far more feature. In this case, Squarespace acquired Google Domains. Assuming the transition as seamless as GrandCentral was for me, what's the issue here? From what I've heard of Squarespace and their support, they will be just as good a custodian as Google.
- joecool1029 3y ago
  Bandwidth.com mostly runs that service and they have proven themselves a competant business that Google built other products like GOOG-411 off of. Google Voice is just a frontend to it. I think if it ran entirely on Google's infra and the service itself could be killed like the registrar was it would have been killed years ago (notably it stagnated from like 2012-2018 or so and there was a period of time they had a half-assed panel redesign and the product blog for it wasn't updated for years)
  - nytesky 3y ago
    Can you get a number from bandwidth.com directly? Google Voice is invaluable.
    - joecool1029 3y ago
      You can but they don't really do B2C, their B2B has come down for small businesses but still requires a larger commitment then makes sense for a phone number or two. Unrelated, but I've found it bizarre Google Voice doesn't do RCS but they made a big push otherwise to enable it for their Messages app.
gcanyon 3y ago
gmail? docs? If google cancelled either of those I'd be very surprised and equally disappointed.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
1-6 3y ago
The problem is, organizationally, it's a mesh network. If no one is kept on a single product for long, how can a product survive turnover rates when the next shiny object appears? It's a game of musical chairs.
xnx 3y ago
Google is about ads and AI. Everything else is a distraction.

by pluc 3y ago

Seriously does anyone trust Google to run a product? Even if they came out tomorrow with a teleportation service I'd be too worried they'd cancel it mid-flight to try it out.

paulgb 3y ago

Until Domains, I mostly trusted google to keep running a paid b2b product with lots of users. Most of the famous products they've killed have been ones that either didn't bring in revenue, or never became popular. After the Domains announcement, I can't in good conscience bring myself to spin up any new GCP services, and have started leaning more heavily on AWS. Part of me thinks that Domains is a signal that Google is planning a larger exit from the cloud business, given the GCP / Domains integration, and the absolutely atrocious comms from Google around Domains has not reassured me at all.

TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
> that either didn't bring in revenue Domain registration is famously difficult to profit from unless the registrar is able to upsell
- paulgb 3y ago
  They used it to upsell Google Workspace, as well as their own TLDs (.dev, .app). And although they didn't upsell GCP through it, the integration between the two was a nice (small) incentive to use GCP.
- andrewpolidori 3y ago
  What makes it so difficult to profit from? A yearly subscription to maintain some text entries doesn't seem that crazy to me.
  - loopdoend 3y ago
    The costs are known, the competition is high, the margins are low. You still have to deal with support/abuse. There is no real “high volume customer”.
  - thiht 3y ago
    There’s a lot of contractual obligations and edge cases in domain names, and a lot of potential for fraud and disputes. It’s a business with high legal fees. Also how domains should be managed evolves with time. For example GDPR has a huge impact on WHOIS, especially since the ICANN took so much time to acknowledge that in their specs, so there was a time where it was impossible for a registrar to be compliant with GDPR and ICANN rules. It’s still not 100% clear how it’ll be handled by RDAP (future successor of WHOIS) And last but not least, some registries for ccTLDs are real pains in the ass to work with, and won’t hesitate to slap you with big fines if you make any mistake.
23B1 3y ago
We've had multiple multi-cloud customers signal a desire to move away from GCP for years now because savvy CXOs are just fed up with the unreliability. When you're looking to resolve a ton of tech debt that you have because of the ground constantly shifting beneath your feet for 1-2 decades... well, you just get fed up and want the reliability of serious enterprise vendors. It makes innovation much harder due to the downstream effects, but at least I'm not carrying more and more risk forward thanks to Google/Alphabet's ADHD approach to product, brand, and support.
- dividedbyzero 3y ago
  What exactly do you mean by unreliability?
  - chias 3y ago
    Not having to ask "will the product I rely on today exist tomorrow?"
  - js4ever 3y ago
    Probably the constant deprecation of API / SDK from Google, you have to keep up with their crazy deprecation policy. On the other side I still have some APPS calling AWS API since 10y without any issues.
  - 23B1 3y ago
    "When will Alphabet opaquely and unilaterally depreciate this product upon which we've come to rely, as they do with many other products all the time?" Alphabet is a hopelessly disorganized bureaucracy whose leadership appears, at best indifferent to customer needs, at worst hostile to customers that don't toe their line. It's just a risk calculation you have to make when you're spending millions to build systems of record upon which your enterprise will depend for years to come. I don't know if its fair or even accurate – but it's the feedback I get from client CTOs and CIOs at sizable companies.
redman25 3y ago
They killed GCP IOT core as well. Forced us to find another vendor.

late25 3y ago

No, I do not. Google needs new leadership. There’s something to be said about trying things, but this continued uncertainty is killing their brand.

_jal 3y ago
> this continued uncertainty is their brand FIFY. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Google_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Google_s... If it doesn't shove an ad in someone's face, Google is structurally incapable of caring about it.
- javier2 3y ago
  This. The Ads priiiint money, anything else looks unimportant.
  - dcow 3y ago
    Sure, if you want to fade into history as an ultimately irrelevant ad network that simply had the novel ideal of tying ads into internet search early on in the internet’s youth and became popular and rich for a decade, then take this stance.
    - JadeNB 3y ago
      > Sure, if you want to fade into history as an ultimately irrelevant ad network that simply had the novel ideal of tying ads into internet search early on in the internet’s youth and became popular and rich for a decade, then take this stance. The problem with any current leader is that they do want to do this. Or, rather, they don't care if they do. Who cares what Google will look like in the long run? They'll be gone. Right now, they presided over the appearance of continued growth, and that's what matters. (I have no internal knowledge about Google, of course, but I am at a university, whose plan is (1) attract more students, (2) more students, (3) more, (4) start thinking about what to do with all these students.)

zarzavat 3y ago

This decision has trashed Google’s brand and whoever made it should be fired. It’s not that Google domains is particularly important, but Google’s reputation for untrustworthiness in the consumer space has now metastasized to their cloud business. People were willing to give Google the benefit of the doubt before, that they would not treat business customers the same as consumers. Now they aren’t.

dcow 3y ago
I mean I’d even argue that Google domains is important in terms of making the product a seamless experience when using GCP (and generally just carving out Google as being part fundamental internet infrastructure). I wouldn’t underestimate how much a small QoL thing like having one company as both your registrar and cloud service provider can impact the choice of which otherwise commodity service to use. Not having to do a bunch of domain verification BS for every new piece of infrastructure is (was) a pretty awesome experience. Sure you can have an MBA look at the situation and ask “Do we really need a registrar? The other cloud providers don’t have one and look at their margins”. So what this really signals to me is that Google has lost all capacity to be forward thinking, trendy and innovative. And without that (and thus a general relevance as a tech company), what is Google?
- dtech 3y ago
  AWS definitely has a domain registrar, although I believe they subcontract. Azure subcontracts to GoDaddy. Both still provide the service.
  - explaininjs 3y ago
    Are you sure? This (sourced) comment claimed the opposite: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37456916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37456916
- CharlieDigital 3y ago
  I'm a big time proponent of Google Cloud because I believe that they've done a few things particularly well in their overall architecture that others have gotten wrong. But this decision rubs me the wrong way because there's a deep integration with several of the services that allow connecting an external domain. The verification of domain ownership with Google purchased domains was effectively seamless and aligned with this overall architecture principle of Stuff That Just Makes Sense. I still think that GCP is a great platform to build on, but the problem now is that they've further tarnished their image to other stakeholders who have a say in the platform decision making process.

slacka 3y ago

Counter point, I've been using a VoIP service called GrandCentral since college. Google purchased them. Nearly 20 years later, I'm still using that same number with far more feature. In this case, Squarespace acquired Google Domains. Assuming the transition as seamless as GrandCentral was for me, what's the issue here? From what I've heard of Squarespace and their support, they will be just as good a custodian as Google.

joecool1029 3y ago
Bandwidth.com mostly runs that service and they have proven themselves a competant business that Google built other products like GOOG-411 off of. Google Voice is just a frontend to it. I think if it ran entirely on Google's infra and the service itself could be killed like the registrar was it would have been killed years ago (notably it stagnated from like 2012-2018 or so and there was a period of time they had a half-assed panel redesign and the product blog for it wasn't updated for years)
- nytesky 3y ago
  Can you get a number from bandwidth.com directly? Google Voice is invaluable.
  - joecool1029 3y ago
    You can but they don't really do B2C, their B2B has come down for small businesses but still requires a larger commitment then makes sense for a phone number or two. Unrelated, but I've found it bizarre Google Voice doesn't do RCS but they made a big push otherwise to enable it for their Messages app.

gcanyon 3y ago

gmail? docs? If google cancelled either of those I'd be very surprised and equally disappointed.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

1-6 3y ago

The problem is, organizationally, it's a mesh network. If no one is kept on a single product for long, how can a product survive turnover rates when the next shiny object appears? It's a game of musical chairs.

xnx 3y ago

Google is about ads and AI. Everything else is a distraction.