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Anyone here work for Google in a capacity that can explain why they remove features that are oft used and that people love? Things like Reader, location-based

Anyone here work for Google in a capacity that can explain why they remove features that are oft used and that people love? Things like Reader, location-based reminders ("remind me when I get home to..."), controlling my oven via the Assistant, Fitbit with Google workspace accounts, and now Maps timeline. Like... I will just find replacements for all those and further myself even more from the Google ecosystem. What benefits does Google get out of killing these popular features?

klodolph 2y ago
It comes down to “the project doesn’t have enough staffing to keep operating” in the end, and those decisions get made way higher up. Any engineer at Google has no visibility into that. Engineers at Google only understand how understaffed projects get shut down—it’s because there isn’t enough staff on the project to keep updating to work with Google’s changing infrastructure. This isn’t the root cause, though, it’s just a contributing factor. Maybe if Google infrastructure changed less, some of these projects would stick around longer with reduced staff.
- bitcharmer 2y ago
  How much staffing does a feature like that even require? It's not like it even requires any maintenance at this point. They could just leave it alone.
  - roland35 2y ago
    I think the issue is that the underlying dependencies are changing, so even if the feature set never changes it still requires some amount of engineering work to keep it up and running.
  - myth_drannon 2y ago
    Depends on the tech stack. If it's JS/TS then it's a nightmare to maintain, with all the Critical and High security issues. Packages that are not updated anymore you need to replace with something else. You can't just leave it alone, it's easier to shut it down and save yourself another accident and subsequent postmortem.
  - klodolph 2y ago
    It does require maintenance, unfortunately.
  - criddell 2y ago
    The service has access to years and years of very fine-grained location data for millions of people. There's no way they could just let it drift. It would be a liability nightmare.
- londons_explore 2y ago
  To be more concrete... It isn't acceptable for a service to be running from a years-old build, since it wouldn't pick up any security fixes. Googles infrastructure evolves reasonably quickly - so most reasonably large services will need quite a few code changes every year just to keep up with the fact that internal database type X is going away and everyone needs to migrate to database Y which might have subtly different semantics requiring bits of your service be rewritten. There is also a gradual flow of legal/privacy mandates (eg. as of Y date, IP addresses must not flow through technology Z because we now have to consider them personal information) At some point, one of these migrations requires a lot of work, and there aren't enough humans really keen on doing the work, so it gets shut down. Management could assign workers to do the work, but generally maintaining stuff isn't good for the career path, so few volunteer for big but non-impactful projects like this. As soon as the 'founders' of a project have moved on, it is vulnerable to this kind of shutdown.
  - klodolph 2y ago
    We can assume that with minimal staff, the project is still building and deploying new versions with new dependencies. If it weren’t getting new builds and security fixes, it would raise internal alarms designed to catch unpatched software. It’s the “database X is going away” that really, really kills an understaffed project.
  - brigandish 2y ago
    > Googles infrastructure evolves reasonably quickly - so most reasonably large services will need quite a few code changes every year just to keep up with the fact that internal database type X is going away and everyone needs to migrate to database Y which might have subtly different semantics requiring bits of your service be rewritten. I find this an unsatisfying explanation (to be clear, I'm not criticising you but the effect you're describing), if we develop to interfaces as a principle, then underlying implementations shouldn't matter.
    - Tyr42 2y ago
      We have interfaces. They have one implementation. Then next year we have different interfaces with a different implementation.
- davidmurdoch 2y ago
  I figured engineers wouldn't know. But someone at the company makes these decisions. Do they ever poll random users to get feedback in how much a feature is loved? I'm curious what data and processes are used to determine if a project should be staffed more vs just killed. From the outside it doesn't make sense.
- wwtrv 2y ago
  > enough staffing to keep operating” Which is interesting considering how bloated Google seems to be.
- BurningFrog 2y ago
  Changing infrastructure so much that you constantly have to rewrite your actual applications is a tail-wagging-the-dog scenario.
- donkers 2y ago
  It’s not a staffing thing. They’re fundamentally getting away from storing your location data to avoid having to deal with law enforcement requests and other problematic things.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- brainwad 2y ago
  I don't think that's it, since this project has been in the works for years and has burnt way more resources than just keeping on-server location history in maintenance mode ever would have. It seems to be motivated by actual privacy concerns with Google keeping an exhaustive history of users' precise and semantic locations on Google servers, in particular the increasing use of geofence warrants (https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2023/12/14/google-just-killed-geofence-warrants-police-location-data/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2023/12/14/google-...).
- surajrmal 2y ago
  While often true, in this case it seems like supporting the web view as it would break the new security model. I'm sure they could develop something similar to how you can use WhatsApp from the web, but that's also probably a lot of work for a feature that's probably not heavily used.
Waterluvian 2y ago
These projects are all ways to get ads on eyeballs. Some of them are experimental and if they’re not profitable, they’re a waste. One could argue that loss leaders help keep people using Google, but I suspect that’s at odds with how things work at Google.
donkers 2y ago
They are trying to get out of having to fulfill law enforcement requests because they have this data. If it’s only on-device (i.e. no web-based view) then Google can’t give law enforcement data they don’t have.
- davidmurdoch 2y ago
  Eehhhhh. Encryption at rest is technically possible here, no? Though I guess they could still be gagged and coerced by law enforcement to MITM the front end (browser/client). But they could also be coerced to do that in the mobile app too, so nothing seems to have really changed.
  - davidmurdoch 2y ago
    Is there a reason for the downvotes?
okdood64 2y ago
From the fine article: > The company plans to sunset web access and switch to a more private, on-device approach. This would make Google Maps’ Timeline data unique to each connected phone — as the migration would deactivate the universal sync mechanism. So even though they're killing the feature as it exists today, they're replacing it with something more secure. What's wrong here exactly?
- davidmurdoch 2y ago
  Uh, I use it from the web.
  - mh- 2y ago
    I do, too. Stuff like "what was that restaurant we went to in <random city> in <random year>". I really liked this feature and consciously left it enabled, knowing the privacy tradeoffs.
  - Ferret7446 2y ago
    And so do cops, apparently, when they totally don't abuse their powers to force Google to give up your data.
- owen_p 2y ago
  It seems hard to believe that offering the service via a desktop web app is any less secure - If it was, surely the same security concerns would apply to gmail, google docs, etc? When I saw this reasoning my immediate assumption was that they made the decision first, then came up with this excuse in order to keep up appearances and conceal the _real_ reason, (which I would guess is something like "they're undertaking a project which involves making large changes to google maps in order to increase revenue, and the work needed to make desktop maps timeline compatible with these changes isn't deemed worthwhile since it doesn't have many users and doesn't directly create revenue").
  - striking 2y ago
    It's going to only be stored on your phone. Any sync is going to be encrypted with per device keys. Google is tired of giving the cops your location. For once they are doing a good thing.
oefrha 2y ago
Likely cost cutting is a factor. They’ve been getting rid of lots of freebies (e.g. no more free Photos storage), enforcing previously unenforced limits (e.g. Google Drive storage for business accounts), aggressively ramping up ad density (e.g. YouTube), and hiking rates across the board like crazy in recent years. I was shocked to find out my Workspace Enterprise bill has shot up 40% early this year, which is after another price hike from a year or two earlier.
kozikow 2y ago
Not a Googler, but gpt4o has been a declaration of war by OpenAI and Google is shutting down things no longer considered to have long-term strategic value.
- walteweiss 2y ago
  Why was it a declaration of war?
brainwad 2y ago
It's to protect users from geofence warrants (https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2023/12/14/google-just-killed-geofence-warrants-police-location-data/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2023/12/14/google-...).
HumblyTossed 2y ago
My guess would be, that feature is "done" and there's not much else interesting to work on, so people have moved on and now it's not maintained. More likely than not this is a result of engineers only ever wanting to work on new projects.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

klodolph 2y ago

It comes down to “the project doesn’t have enough staffing to keep operating” in the end, and those decisions get made way higher up. Any engineer at Google has no visibility into that. Engineers at Google only understand how understaffed projects get shut down—it’s because there isn’t enough staff on the project to keep updating to work with Google’s changing infrastructure. This isn’t the root cause, though, it’s just a contributing factor. Maybe if Google infrastructure changed less, some of these projects would stick around longer with reduced staff.

bitcharmer 2y ago
How much staffing does a feature like that even require? It's not like it even requires any maintenance at this point. They could just leave it alone.
- roland35 2y ago
  I think the issue is that the underlying dependencies are changing, so even if the feature set never changes it still requires some amount of engineering work to keep it up and running.
- myth_drannon 2y ago
  Depends on the tech stack. If it's JS/TS then it's a nightmare to maintain, with all the Critical and High security issues. Packages that are not updated anymore you need to replace with something else. You can't just leave it alone, it's easier to shut it down and save yourself another accident and subsequent postmortem.
- klodolph 2y ago
  It does require maintenance, unfortunately.
- criddell 2y ago
  The service has access to years and years of very fine-grained location data for millions of people. There's no way they could just let it drift. It would be a liability nightmare.
londons_explore 2y ago
To be more concrete... It isn't acceptable for a service to be running from a years-old build, since it wouldn't pick up any security fixes. Googles infrastructure evolves reasonably quickly - so most reasonably large services will need quite a few code changes every year just to keep up with the fact that internal database type X is going away and everyone needs to migrate to database Y which might have subtly different semantics requiring bits of your service be rewritten. There is also a gradual flow of legal/privacy mandates (eg. as of Y date, IP addresses must not flow through technology Z because we now have to consider them personal information) At some point, one of these migrations requires a lot of work, and there aren't enough humans really keen on doing the work, so it gets shut down. Management could assign workers to do the work, but generally maintaining stuff isn't good for the career path, so few volunteer for big but non-impactful projects like this. As soon as the 'founders' of a project have moved on, it is vulnerable to this kind of shutdown.
- klodolph 2y ago
  We can assume that with minimal staff, the project is still building and deploying new versions with new dependencies. If it weren’t getting new builds and security fixes, it would raise internal alarms designed to catch unpatched software. It’s the “database X is going away” that really, really kills an understaffed project.
- brigandish 2y ago
  > Googles infrastructure evolves reasonably quickly - so most reasonably large services will need quite a few code changes every year just to keep up with the fact that internal database type X is going away and everyone needs to migrate to database Y which might have subtly different semantics requiring bits of your service be rewritten. I find this an unsatisfying explanation (to be clear, I'm not criticising you but the effect you're describing), if we develop to interfaces as a principle, then underlying implementations shouldn't matter.
  - Tyr42 2y ago
    We have interfaces. They have one implementation. Then next year we have different interfaces with a different implementation.
davidmurdoch 2y ago
I figured engineers wouldn't know. But someone at the company makes these decisions. Do they ever poll random users to get feedback in how much a feature is loved? I'm curious what data and processes are used to determine if a project should be staffed more vs just killed. From the outside it doesn't make sense.
wwtrv 2y ago
> enough staffing to keep operating” Which is interesting considering how bloated Google seems to be.
BurningFrog 2y ago
Changing infrastructure so much that you constantly have to rewrite your actual applications is a tail-wagging-the-dog scenario.
donkers 2y ago
It’s not a staffing thing. They’re fundamentally getting away from storing your location data to avoid having to deal with law enforcement requests and other problematic things.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
brainwad 2y ago
I don't think that's it, since this project has been in the works for years and has burnt way more resources than just keeping on-server location history in maintenance mode ever would have. It seems to be motivated by actual privacy concerns with Google keeping an exhaustive history of users' precise and semantic locations on Google servers, in particular the increasing use of geofence warrants (https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2023/12/14/google-just-killed-geofence-warrants-police-location-data/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2023/12/14/google-...).
surajrmal 2y ago
While often true, in this case it seems like supporting the web view as it would break the new security model. I'm sure they could develop something similar to how you can use WhatsApp from the web, but that's also probably a lot of work for a feature that's probably not heavily used.

Waterluvian 2y ago

These projects are all ways to get ads on eyeballs. Some of them are experimental and if they’re not profitable, they’re a waste. One could argue that loss leaders help keep people using Google, but I suspect that’s at odds with how things work at Google.

donkers 2y ago

They are trying to get out of having to fulfill law enforcement requests because they have this data. If it’s only on-device (i.e. no web-based view) then Google can’t give law enforcement data they don’t have.

davidmurdoch 2y ago
Eehhhhh. Encryption at rest is technically possible here, no? Though I guess they could still be gagged and coerced by law enforcement to MITM the front end (browser/client). But they could also be coerced to do that in the mobile app too, so nothing seems to have really changed.
- davidmurdoch 2y ago
  Is there a reason for the downvotes?

okdood64 2y ago

From the fine article: > The company plans to sunset web access and switch to a more private, on-device approach. This would make Google Maps’ Timeline data unique to each connected phone — as the migration would deactivate the universal sync mechanism. So even though they're killing the feature as it exists today, they're replacing it with something more secure. What's wrong here exactly?

davidmurdoch 2y ago
Uh, I use it from the web.
- mh- 2y ago
  I do, too. Stuff like "what was that restaurant we went to in <random city> in <random year>". I really liked this feature and consciously left it enabled, knowing the privacy tradeoffs.
- Ferret7446 2y ago
  And so do cops, apparently, when they totally don't abuse their powers to force Google to give up your data.
owen_p 2y ago
It seems hard to believe that offering the service via a desktop web app is any less secure - If it was, surely the same security concerns would apply to gmail, google docs, etc? When I saw this reasoning my immediate assumption was that they made the decision first, then came up with this excuse in order to keep up appearances and conceal the _real_ reason, (which I would guess is something like "they're undertaking a project which involves making large changes to google maps in order to increase revenue, and the work needed to make desktop maps timeline compatible with these changes isn't deemed worthwhile since it doesn't have many users and doesn't directly create revenue").
- striking 2y ago
  It's going to only be stored on your phone. Any sync is going to be encrypted with per device keys. Google is tired of giving the cops your location. For once they are doing a good thing.

oefrha 2y ago

Likely cost cutting is a factor. They’ve been getting rid of lots of freebies (e.g. no more free Photos storage), enforcing previously unenforced limits (e.g. Google Drive storage for business accounts), aggressively ramping up ad density (e.g. YouTube), and hiking rates across the board like crazy in recent years. I was shocked to find out my Workspace Enterprise bill has shot up 40% early this year, which is after another price hike from a year or two earlier.

kozikow 2y ago

Not a Googler, but gpt4o has been a declaration of war by OpenAI and Google is shutting down things no longer considered to have long-term strategic value.

walteweiss 2y ago
Why was it a declaration of war?

brainwad 2y ago

It's to protect users from geofence warrants (https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2023/12/14/google-just-killed-geofence-warrants-police-location-data/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2023/12/14/google-...).

HumblyTossed 2y ago

My guess would be, that feature is "done" and there's not much else interesting to work on, so people have moved on and now it's not maintained. More likely than not this is a result of engineers only ever wanting to work on new projects.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]