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"... we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience." Yeah, Reader held back the deve

by bdz 13y ago

"... we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience." Yeah, Reader held back the development of the robot car, glasses, floating balloon internet and the brazilian social site...

batiudrami 13y ago
I'm pretty sick of this argument. Google is a company, they are not compelled to continue to support a product which is (presumably) not making money, or even if the resources they devote to it could be making more money elsewhere. Honestly I think Google went above and beyond by giving advance notice, having an API which allows feed exporting and allowing subscriptions to continue to be exported after they close it down for those who ignored the advance notice as well as linking to alternative products. Sure it sucks for those who used it, but can you imagine a company like Apple or Facebook doing all that for a product they're killing?
- oelmekki 13y ago
  Even if I agree with you that google handled reader shutdown pretty well once it's been decided, I'm not sure the "they're a company, they do what they please to make money" is better than the argument it's refuting. You can't say "Please, let all of you use our products, it'll be awesome !", then say "we don't care if you're not satisfied, we do what we please". Having users also imply responsibilities.
- epsylon 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure plenty of Reader power users would have been glad to pay for it, myself included.
  - deweerdt 13y ago
    That would have meant customer support, wouldn't it? Google doesn't do that.
    - coldtea 13y ago
      1) You can pay and get no support. You just deal with it. And it the service works OK (and there's nothing challenging about Google Reader workings) then there's nothing much to deal with, anyway. 2) Google does do support for some paid products they have. Like Adwords (of course) and GAE, and IIRC the enterprise Google offerings.
- johnchristopher 13y ago
  Understanding the position you are explaining doesn't make the shutdown of Google reader any less regrettable or irritating. It's my impression that it's a little bit cliché and borderline to trolling: every time a "free" product is shutdown and people complain or discuss about it there is a good free-market capitalist soul coming with condescending comments about how people shouldn't expect anything when given something for "free". We know it. It's still pissing users off. Deal with it.
  - cbr 13y ago
    If people get pissed off even when companies "do everything right" then companies won't try as hard in the future. Getting other people to accept changes like this from companies helps change the incentive structure so that there will be fewer cases where a free service disappears with no notice or data export.
  - batiudrami 13y ago
    I don't think my position is any closer to trolling than the also cliche comments of 'Google have so much money, running reader must be next-to-nothing for them', 'if Google gave me the option, I'd gladly pay for it', 'yeah sure, the (maybe) one full time staff required to look after Reader is really taking energy away from other projects' which is basically all of the comments on these threads. That was what my post was meant to refute, and the weird sense of entitlement that Google is somehow in the wrong by killing a product which is a waste of resources for them. There are plenty of alternatives (and I suspect we'll see a whole bunch more over the coming months), complaining like we deserve reader to still be available (when consumer-pays products are clearly outside Google's business model) isn't helping.
    - bonaldi 13y ago
      The "weird sense" comes directly from Google's pitches, which amount to "use our free service: Trust all your data to it! Nothing will go wrong, we're here forever!". Which is a pitch they continue to make, with Drive and Hangouts and each successive launch, but never once cautioning "btw if this doesn't work out for us we'll kill the service". They even relaunch previously failed projects in the same spaces where they've pulled this before, with Keep aiming for the same space Notebook (RIP) did. Do they think we're stupid? They can't have their cake and eat it. They can position themselves as the trustworthy guardians for whom organising the world's information is the only goal, or they can position themselves as the ruthless capitalists where business is the ultimate goal, but they can't do both. That's what people object to. You can say that they're naive for believing that a business won't put the bottom line first, but Google has always pretended otherwise, right from the first line of the IPO. "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one." Fine, but then "any conventional company would do this" is not a good enough defence for your actions.
- yfefyf 13y ago
  Google isn't charging its users. But it couldn't make any money if it has no users.
- charlesray 13y ago
  I just think it's laughable to assume that Google would shut down a product for no good reason. I don't think Google Reader's user base was nearly as large as the loud complaints would have you think. That said, I gave Feedly a shot the other day and immediately deleted my Reddit account. I haven't been back on Reddit except to read silly football transfer rumors in a week and a half. I feel so much more sane. So there's that.
- mikeash 13y ago
  You're attacking a straw man here. To attack Google for shutting down Reader in general is, I agree, silly. They don't owe us anything, and they managed the shutdown fairly gracefully. But that's not what was going on in the comment you replied to. He's pointing out that their stated justification doesn't make a lot of sense. Google says they're shutting down Reader to put more focus on a smaller number of products, but they're just as scattered as ever. Pointing out that their words don't match their actions here is a perfectly reasonable thing to do here.
  - laureny 13y ago
    > He's pointing out that their stated justification doesn't make a lot of sense. Google says they're shutting down Reader to put more focus on a smaller number of products, but they're just as scattered as ever You can't criticize Google for shutting down Reader and then accuse them of being scattered in the same sentence. By shutting down Reader, they are limiting their scattering, and Reader is not the only product they are shutting down. > Pointing out that their words don't match their actions here is a perfectly reasonable thing to do here. Very true, that's why I'm pointing out that your words are inconsistent :)
    - mikeash 13y ago
      Huh? Of course I can accuse them of being scattered when they shut down Reader, if they still have a ton of other projects without any particular coherent goal, which is absolutely the case. They want to shut it down, fine, I don't really care. But the result is not "focus".
      - TheCraiggers 13y ago
        Regardless of how many products they have, they still have one less after shutting down Reader. I'd say the argument still stands.
        coldtea 13y ago
        >Regardless of how many products they have, they still have one less after shutting down Reader. I'd say the argument still stands. Not if, in the same period they "closed the Reader to in order to focus", they started more than one products, all around the map. If I tell you: "I stopped going to the gym in order to focus on my painting more. Oh, and I also started bowling, belly-dancing, snooker, and etching classes -- and I'm leaving next week for snorkeling in Thailand" then I'd argue that me stopping 1 thing does not not in the least mean I'm more focused now.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >I'm pretty sick of this argument. Google is a company, they are not compelled to continue to support a product which is (presumably) not making money, or even if the resources they devote to it could be making more money elsewhere. And I'm sick of hearing THIS argument. Google is a company. They make money out of our eyeballs. We have every right to criticise them whenever they do something some of us don't like.
- embolism 13y ago
  You're missing the point. They have the right to shut down the product, but nobody believes their explanation about why they are shutting it down.
- jmcqk6 13y ago
  > went above and beyond by giving advance notice, having an API which allows feed exporting and allowing subscriptions to continue to be exported after they close it down for those who ignored the advance notice as well as linking to alternative products. As a side note, I hate that this is seen as "above and beyond" instead of "standard industry practice"
jvdh 13y ago
Yes, keeping a webservice running takes time. Especially one that's being hit millions of times a day.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  The way Google runs its services, much of the infrastructure is an existing back-end (yay, map reduce, also an inherent front-side CDN). There's some application-specific hosting, but it's a relatively thin layer. So the hosting costs aren't all that huge. My read: the stated rationale for killing Google Reader, especially in light of the huge cry of protest and impacts on blog traffic (Rob Malda posted web traffic results showing huge declines at WordPress and other blog sites at WashPo) suggests to me something else at work. Just a hunch.
  - jvdh 13y ago
    I was being a bit too sarcastic perhaps. My point was that I hope that everyone who regularly visits this site knows that keeping any kind of webservice up and running takes time. No matter how automated it is. But I completely agree that there is probably an alternate force at work here.
  - jarek 13y ago
    > My read: the stated rationale for killing Google Reader, especially in light of the huge cry of protest and impacts on blog traffic (Rob Malda posted web traffic results showing huge declines at WordPress and other blog sites at WashPo) suggests to me something else at work. Usual theory about driving "updates" traffic away from decentralized RSS and into proprietary arms of Google+. Twitter removed RSS feed access to an account's updates for the same reason.
Pxtl 13y ago
Presumably they're working on getting Currents onto the Web, instead of having one product for the Web and one product for mobile.
maximilianburke 13y ago
Yet another unfortunate reminder that if you're not paying, you're not the customer.
- muzz 13y ago
  I wanted to pay. There was never a way to do so.
frio 13y ago
While Orkut's fair game, the rest is Google X, which I'd consider a reasonably different ball-game.

by bdz 13y ago

batiudrami 13y ago

I'm pretty sick of this argument. Google is a company, they are not compelled to continue to support a product which is (presumably) not making money, or even if the resources they devote to it could be making more money elsewhere. Honestly I think Google went above and beyond by giving advance notice, having an API which allows feed exporting and allowing subscriptions to continue to be exported after they close it down for those who ignored the advance notice as well as linking to alternative products. Sure it sucks for those who used it, but can you imagine a company like Apple or Facebook doing all that for a product they're killing?

oelmekki 13y ago
Even if I agree with you that google handled reader shutdown pretty well once it's been decided, I'm not sure the "they're a company, they do what they please to make money" is better than the argument it's refuting. You can't say "Please, let all of you use our products, it'll be awesome !", then say "we don't care if you're not satisfied, we do what we please". Having users also imply responsibilities.
epsylon 13y ago
I'm pretty sure plenty of Reader power users would have been glad to pay for it, myself included.
- deweerdt 13y ago
  That would have meant customer support, wouldn't it? Google doesn't do that.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    1) You can pay and get no support. You just deal with it. And it the service works OK (and there's nothing challenging about Google Reader workings) then there's nothing much to deal with, anyway. 2) Google does do support for some paid products they have. Like Adwords (of course) and GAE, and IIRC the enterprise Google offerings.
johnchristopher 13y ago
Understanding the position you are explaining doesn't make the shutdown of Google reader any less regrettable or irritating. It's my impression that it's a little bit cliché and borderline to trolling: every time a "free" product is shutdown and people complain or discuss about it there is a good free-market capitalist soul coming with condescending comments about how people shouldn't expect anything when given something for "free". We know it. It's still pissing users off. Deal with it.
- cbr 13y ago
  If people get pissed off even when companies "do everything right" then companies won't try as hard in the future. Getting other people to accept changes like this from companies helps change the incentive structure so that there will be fewer cases where a free service disappears with no notice or data export.
- batiudrami 13y ago
  I don't think my position is any closer to trolling than the also cliche comments of 'Google have so much money, running reader must be next-to-nothing for them', 'if Google gave me the option, I'd gladly pay for it', 'yeah sure, the (maybe) one full time staff required to look after Reader is really taking energy away from other projects' which is basically all of the comments on these threads. That was what my post was meant to refute, and the weird sense of entitlement that Google is somehow in the wrong by killing a product which is a waste of resources for them. There are plenty of alternatives (and I suspect we'll see a whole bunch more over the coming months), complaining like we deserve reader to still be available (when consumer-pays products are clearly outside Google's business model) isn't helping.
  - bonaldi 13y ago
    The "weird sense" comes directly from Google's pitches, which amount to "use our free service: Trust all your data to it! Nothing will go wrong, we're here forever!". Which is a pitch they continue to make, with Drive and Hangouts and each successive launch, but never once cautioning "btw if this doesn't work out for us we'll kill the service". They even relaunch previously failed projects in the same spaces where they've pulled this before, with Keep aiming for the same space Notebook (RIP) did. Do they think we're stupid? They can't have their cake and eat it. They can position themselves as the trustworthy guardians for whom organising the world's information is the only goal, or they can position themselves as the ruthless capitalists where business is the ultimate goal, but they can't do both. That's what people object to. You can say that they're naive for believing that a business won't put the bottom line first, but Google has always pretended otherwise, right from the first line of the IPO. "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one." Fine, but then "any conventional company would do this" is not a good enough defence for your actions.
yfefyf 13y ago
Google isn't charging its users. But it couldn't make any money if it has no users.
charlesray 13y ago
I just think it's laughable to assume that Google would shut down a product for no good reason. I don't think Google Reader's user base was nearly as large as the loud complaints would have you think. That said, I gave Feedly a shot the other day and immediately deleted my Reddit account. I haven't been back on Reddit except to read silly football transfer rumors in a week and a half. I feel so much more sane. So there's that.
mikeash 13y ago
You're attacking a straw man here. To attack Google for shutting down Reader in general is, I agree, silly. They don't owe us anything, and they managed the shutdown fairly gracefully. But that's not what was going on in the comment you replied to. He's pointing out that their stated justification doesn't make a lot of sense. Google says they're shutting down Reader to put more focus on a smaller number of products, but they're just as scattered as ever. Pointing out that their words don't match their actions here is a perfectly reasonable thing to do here.
- laureny 13y ago
  > He's pointing out that their stated justification doesn't make a lot of sense. Google says they're shutting down Reader to put more focus on a smaller number of products, but they're just as scattered as ever You can't criticize Google for shutting down Reader and then accuse them of being scattered in the same sentence. By shutting down Reader, they are limiting their scattering, and Reader is not the only product they are shutting down. > Pointing out that their words don't match their actions here is a perfectly reasonable thing to do here. Very true, that's why I'm pointing out that your words are inconsistent :)
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Huh? Of course I can accuse them of being scattered when they shut down Reader, if they still have a ton of other projects without any particular coherent goal, which is absolutely the case. They want to shut it down, fine, I don't really care. But the result is not "focus".
    - TheCraiggers 13y ago
      Regardless of how many products they have, they still have one less after shutting down Reader. I'd say the argument still stands.
      - coldtea 13y ago
        >Regardless of how many products they have, they still have one less after shutting down Reader. I'd say the argument still stands. Not if, in the same period they "closed the Reader to in order to focus", they started more than one products, all around the map. If I tell you: "I stopped going to the gym in order to focus on my painting more. Oh, and I also started bowling, belly-dancing, snooker, and etching classes -- and I'm leaving next week for snorkeling in Thailand" then I'd argue that me stopping 1 thing does not not in the least mean I'm more focused now.
coldtea 13y ago
>I'm pretty sick of this argument. Google is a company, they are not compelled to continue to support a product which is (presumably) not making money, or even if the resources they devote to it could be making more money elsewhere. And I'm sick of hearing THIS argument. Google is a company. They make money out of our eyeballs. We have every right to criticise them whenever they do something some of us don't like.
embolism 13y ago
You're missing the point. They have the right to shut down the product, but nobody believes their explanation about why they are shutting it down.
jmcqk6 13y ago
> went above and beyond by giving advance notice, having an API which allows feed exporting and allowing subscriptions to continue to be exported after they close it down for those who ignored the advance notice as well as linking to alternative products. As a side note, I hate that this is seen as "above and beyond" instead of "standard industry practice"

jvdh 13y ago

Yes, keeping a webservice running takes time. Especially one that's being hit millions of times a day.

dredmorbius 13y ago
The way Google runs its services, much of the infrastructure is an existing back-end (yay, map reduce, also an inherent front-side CDN). There's some application-specific hosting, but it's a relatively thin layer. So the hosting costs aren't all that huge. My read: the stated rationale for killing Google Reader, especially in light of the huge cry of protest and impacts on blog traffic (Rob Malda posted web traffic results showing huge declines at WordPress and other blog sites at WashPo) suggests to me something else at work. Just a hunch.
- jvdh 13y ago
  I was being a bit too sarcastic perhaps. My point was that I hope that everyone who regularly visits this site knows that keeping any kind of webservice up and running takes time. No matter how automated it is. But I completely agree that there is probably an alternate force at work here.
- jarek 13y ago
  > My read: the stated rationale for killing Google Reader, especially in light of the huge cry of protest and impacts on blog traffic (Rob Malda posted web traffic results showing huge declines at WordPress and other blog sites at WashPo) suggests to me something else at work. Usual theory about driving "updates" traffic away from decentralized RSS and into proprietary arms of Google+. Twitter removed RSS feed access to an account's updates for the same reason.

Pxtl 13y ago

Presumably they're working on getting Currents onto the Web, instead of having one product for the Web and one product for mobile.

maximilianburke 13y ago

Yet another unfortunate reminder that if you're not paying, you're not the customer.

muzz 13y ago
I wanted to pay. There was never a way to do so.

frio 13y ago

While Orkut's fair game, the rest is Google X, which I'd consider a reasonably different ball-game.