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I have ranted about Google dropping products before and I will continue to do so. Google keeps fumbling the opportunity to own large swathes of the web experie

I have ranted about Google dropping products before and I will continue to do so. Google keeps fumbling the opportunity to own large swathes of the web experience while cutting into competitors. Although Google Podcasts probably looked like a minor loss on the quarterly balance sheet, the intangible brand benefits and especially the analytics that could be garnered from having a large population using your product are hard to overstate. Even apple realized this when they relaunched their podcast app.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Experienced people know better, newcomers get burned and end up learning through experience or knowledge transfer from others. If you’re investing your time or resources into using a new Google product at this point, that’s on you. To help others you know DeGoogle their life is a public service. https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle
- haunter 3y ago
  >To help others you know DeGoogle their life is a public service Half of the recommended alternatives are not even alternatives, like recommending TeX/LaTeX as a Docs recplacement. It's just a no go. I know the intentions are good but that's not gonna work for the regular userbase outside of the HN and adjacent circles. >It's an open-source (and offline) document processor using TeX/LaTeX. It's different than Docs or Word but amazing, once you get used to it.
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    Well, sending LibreOffice documents back and forth is not too bad. Yes, it's not a real-time collaboration but it works surprisingly well if both parties are open minded enough to go back to a slower workflow. Apple with iCloud also has some basic collaboration features for pages. Yes, Google docs has become dominant and people use it because it's there. But we'd definitely get along fine without it too.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      I sent documents around at work for many years. It's awful in general compared to collaborative document editing and I would absolutely hate to go back to using LibreOffice (or Microsoft) presentation or word documents for most purposes. Perhaps I did more of it than you have but collaborative document editing is a huge upgrade.
      - vouaobrasil 3y ago
        I get that. I would love it if LibreOffice had some sort of feature. Maybe it could even be integrated into some kind of open chat protocol like Matrix...
  - retrac 3y ago
    For what it's worth, it's a suggestion for LyX [1], not TeX. Lyx uses TeX/LaTeX, but you don't need to know TeX to use Lyx, anymore than you need to know how to use Microsoft Word with the control codes visible, to use Word. It's a powerful feature underneath you can drop into, but they are both GUI document editors. I would not recommend Lyx as a replacement for Microsoft Word if it's just a simple one-page letter. But it's quite a good suggestion for an alternative if you are writing a book or an academic paper. It has features to support citations, tables of contents etc., maybe better than Word does in some cases. (I've loved and used Lyx for two decades now, so I just had to defend it here, sorry.) [1] https://www.lyx.org/ https://www.lyx.org/
    - haunter 3y ago
      >but you don't need to know TeX to use Lyx, anymore than you need to know how to use Microsoft Word Did you know it takes 6 clicks with a dropdown menu and a window involved to set a piece of text selection bold in Lyx? Tells a lot, and not in a good way, that some people totally think and believe that this is comparable to Docs, Word, LibreOffice etc.
delfinom 3y ago
Google has no brand strategy other than slapping material ui on everything.
randomdata 3y ago
> Google keeps fumbling the opportunity to own large swathes of the web experience That is no doubt on purpose as to keep the regulators at bay. Small potatoes aren't worth risking the cash cow over.
ryukoposting 3y ago
At this point I've come to believe that Google does this intentionally. Enter a market, rely on brand recognition to build a user base, slurp up data, then leave if the ad revenue doesn't pay for maintenance. At worst, you create a couple new users and keep a lot of existing users in your circle until the next shiny thing comes along.
- donatj 3y ago
  I mean it has to be backfiring at this point, right? Right? I used to LOVE Google products, but I have been burned sooo many times now I am just inclined to not even trying anything Google puts out because they are but a sand mandala in the wind. About a year ago I had a friend convince me to try Google Domains, despite my better judgement. It was a wonderful experience and within just a couple months, true to form, Google pulled the rug out from me once again, presumably yelling “Gotcha!” while they did so.
  - pcdoodle 3y ago
    Same for me. I used to host my domains, email, Ads, etc. Now I won't touch it.
  - ryukoposting 3y ago
    When they killed Google Play Music, I swore off every Google service except for GMail. It's proven to be a good decision.
- surajrmal 3y ago
  Google doesn't make these decisions. Some local Directors do when they decide to defund something. Individually each choice might make sense, but in aggregate, maybe not so much. People like to think of big companies as a mobolith, but Google is more like a country full of SMBs and a few bigger ones. The big ones are stable, but SMBs go bust all the time.
  - ryukoposting 2y ago
    Are those local directors not making those decisions in their professional capacity as a Google employee? Saying "well on the inside it's more like a bunch of little businesses" is missing the point. It has Google's reach, Google's user base, and integration with the Gmail accounts that billions of people use every day. It's a Google product, after all, and those have a long and illustrious history of being really good until they get gunned down for no stated reason. On a related note, I found my Daydream VR headset the other day. It does, in fact, say "Google" on the box, not "Jim Smith, Manager at Google."
addicted 3y ago
I don’t understand what Google is doing. Their reputation is awful right now. There’s no scenario under which I can recommend a new (or existing, outside maybe Google Maps, Search and a handful of well established money makers) Google product anymore. Even consider something like messaging and calling on Android. That is something you would expect Google to support no matter what. And they have. But even in that very simple situation they’ve made people jump through hoops killing and releasing new versions of the same app or renaming apps or shifting people from 1 app to another. You have GChat, Messages, Duo, Allo, GTalk, Hangouts, Meet, new Hangouts all doing 1 of 2 things.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  Google doesn't need a good reputation...they just need enough people to use (really: test) it because it's a Google product. And it works because we have a society where mindless diversions with fairly useless things has become a worldwide pasttime, a culture that Google themselves helped create.
- Loggias 3y ago
  [dead]
navane 3y ago
Spotify dropping millions to get into podcasting, Google just gives it up.
datadrivenangel 3y ago
Even googlers think that Google is fumbling this.
- surajrmal 3y ago
  Googlers are closer to HN crowd than they aren't. It's probably more interesting to see what folks outside the tech community think.
agumonkey 3y ago
It's a shame cause google podcasts was really well done. No experimental concept.. very lean and mean.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

Experienced people know better, newcomers get burned and end up learning through experience or knowledge transfer from others. If you’re investing your time or resources into using a new Google product at this point, that’s on you. To help others you know DeGoogle their life is a public service. https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle

haunter 3y ago
>To help others you know DeGoogle their life is a public service Half of the recommended alternatives are not even alternatives, like recommending TeX/LaTeX as a Docs recplacement. It's just a no go. I know the intentions are good but that's not gonna work for the regular userbase outside of the HN and adjacent circles. >It's an open-source (and offline) document processor using TeX/LaTeX. It's different than Docs or Word but amazing, once you get used to it.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  Well, sending LibreOffice documents back and forth is not too bad. Yes, it's not a real-time collaboration but it works surprisingly well if both parties are open minded enough to go back to a slower workflow. Apple with iCloud also has some basic collaboration features for pages. Yes, Google docs has become dominant and people use it because it's there. But we'd definitely get along fine without it too.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    I sent documents around at work for many years. It's awful in general compared to collaborative document editing and I would absolutely hate to go back to using LibreOffice (or Microsoft) presentation or word documents for most purposes. Perhaps I did more of it than you have but collaborative document editing is a huge upgrade.
    - vouaobrasil 3y ago
      I get that. I would love it if LibreOffice had some sort of feature. Maybe it could even be integrated into some kind of open chat protocol like Matrix...
- retrac 3y ago
  For what it's worth, it's a suggestion for LyX [1], not TeX. Lyx uses TeX/LaTeX, but you don't need to know TeX to use Lyx, anymore than you need to know how to use Microsoft Word with the control codes visible, to use Word. It's a powerful feature underneath you can drop into, but they are both GUI document editors. I would not recommend Lyx as a replacement for Microsoft Word if it's just a simple one-page letter. But it's quite a good suggestion for an alternative if you are writing a book or an academic paper. It has features to support citations, tables of contents etc., maybe better than Word does in some cases. (I've loved and used Lyx for two decades now, so I just had to defend it here, sorry.) [1] https://www.lyx.org/ https://www.lyx.org/
  - haunter 3y ago
    >but you don't need to know TeX to use Lyx, anymore than you need to know how to use Microsoft Word Did you know it takes 6 clicks with a dropdown menu and a window involved to set a piece of text selection bold in Lyx? Tells a lot, and not in a good way, that some people totally think and believe that this is comparable to Docs, Word, LibreOffice etc.

delfinom 3y ago

Google has no brand strategy other than slapping material ui on everything.

randomdata 3y ago

> Google keeps fumbling the opportunity to own large swathes of the web experience That is no doubt on purpose as to keep the regulators at bay. Small potatoes aren't worth risking the cash cow over.

ryukoposting 3y ago

At this point I've come to believe that Google does this intentionally. Enter a market, rely on brand recognition to build a user base, slurp up data, then leave if the ad revenue doesn't pay for maintenance. At worst, you create a couple new users and keep a lot of existing users in your circle until the next shiny thing comes along.

donatj 3y ago
I mean it has to be backfiring at this point, right? Right? I used to LOVE Google products, but I have been burned sooo many times now I am just inclined to not even trying anything Google puts out because they are but a sand mandala in the wind. About a year ago I had a friend convince me to try Google Domains, despite my better judgement. It was a wonderful experience and within just a couple months, true to form, Google pulled the rug out from me once again, presumably yelling “Gotcha!” while they did so.
- pcdoodle 3y ago
  Same for me. I used to host my domains, email, Ads, etc. Now I won't touch it.
- ryukoposting 3y ago
  When they killed Google Play Music, I swore off every Google service except for GMail. It's proven to be a good decision.
surajrmal 3y ago
Google doesn't make these decisions. Some local Directors do when they decide to defund something. Individually each choice might make sense, but in aggregate, maybe not so much. People like to think of big companies as a mobolith, but Google is more like a country full of SMBs and a few bigger ones. The big ones are stable, but SMBs go bust all the time.
- ryukoposting 2y ago
  Are those local directors not making those decisions in their professional capacity as a Google employee? Saying "well on the inside it's more like a bunch of little businesses" is missing the point. It has Google's reach, Google's user base, and integration with the Gmail accounts that billions of people use every day. It's a Google product, after all, and those have a long and illustrious history of being really good until they get gunned down for no stated reason. On a related note, I found my Daydream VR headset the other day. It does, in fact, say "Google" on the box, not "Jim Smith, Manager at Google."

addicted 3y ago

I don’t understand what Google is doing. Their reputation is awful right now. There’s no scenario under which I can recommend a new (or existing, outside maybe Google Maps, Search and a handful of well established money makers) Google product anymore. Even consider something like messaging and calling on Android. That is something you would expect Google to support no matter what. And they have. But even in that very simple situation they’ve made people jump through hoops killing and releasing new versions of the same app or renaming apps or shifting people from 1 app to another. You have GChat, Messages, Duo, Allo, GTalk, Hangouts, Meet, new Hangouts all doing 1 of 2 things.

vouaobrasil 3y ago
Google doesn't need a good reputation...they just need enough people to use (really: test) it because it's a Google product. And it works because we have a society where mindless diversions with fairly useless things has become a worldwide pasttime, a culture that Google themselves helped create.
Loggias 3y ago
[dead]

navane 3y ago

Spotify dropping millions to get into podcasting, Google just gives it up.

datadrivenangel 3y ago

Even googlers think that Google is fumbling this.

surajrmal 3y ago
Googlers are closer to HN crowd than they aren't. It's probably more interesting to see what folks outside the tech community think.

agumonkey 3y ago

It's a shame cause google podcasts was really well done. No experimental concept.. very lean and mean.