As an investor this makes me wary. How much short term value are they gaining by sacrificing user satisfaction? Google's UX is pretty top notch today and they don't really have any relevant competitors. With this move, they are creating space for differentiation along better UX and potentially losing out a share of users over time.
So investors can count on Google to ax a product that's underperforming, but can't count on them to make competitive products, lasting brands or keeping loyal customers.
Shocker, this is why I didn't invest anything in that platform as a consumer user, Google is so so prone to killing off projects. It was a cool idea but it obviously was one among many and wasn't going to get the attention/time/resources needed to build something meaningful.
As a looker customer seeing this news makes me very uneasy. We have invested a ton in their platform by building three of our core products on their embedded version. The thought that our future relies now more in Google's product decisions is scary.
Ugh. Google entering this pretty much wipes out the space - companies like bit.ly are going to need to work on seriously differentiating themselves from the pack, and even then I don't think they're long for the world.
I can honestly say I hope to never be in a market - or working on a product - where google suddenly decides to enter the game. Even if their offering sucks, or is broken, it sucks all the air out of the room because it's OMG Google.
I don't doubt they are launching this but I'm surprised Google is launching such a consumer-facing product at a developer conference. Perhaps there is a developer/API angle but I doubt it.
It would be like Steve Jobs launching a new version of iWork at WWDC. Sure, it's great, but it doesn't have any impact on developers.
At some point Google needs to realize that releasing products then killing them like this makes people worry about using them for other projects. Simply going on number of users / revenue per user doesn't seem to be a a great long term strategy.
This is what I love and hate about this company. They are not afraid to release products and then kill them shortly. They are no afraid to experiment. Keeps them looking like they are always innovating and ahead of the curve.
The unfortunate part is that as a software developer it does not give me a confidence in the logevity of any google platform. I have a friend who was gearing up to use the platform and was testing out an idea that he was hoping to launch soon. I bet he won't be as confident taking dependency on Google platform the next time.
I wouldn't consider this awkward. It tells me that Google might not need to continue to make certain products even if the consumer wants them. Those users will often end up right back on the Google platform in some way or another.
Doesn't it feel like Google is being insecure and desperate? But they are so big, I don't see a reason they should feel insecure by any new tech to rush out something.
Their tech is clearly inferior at the moment. Why force it down people's throats like Microsoft. It doesn't make sense.
Given that this is Google, my money is on them either abandoning it, or making a new version every 2-3 years (for no discernable reason) making no actual progress as a result.
I would LOVE to be proven wrong, but Google's track record with bringing products to market, and actually keeping them for longer than a media boost, is downright depressing.
At some point it feels like every Google side project is just a media buy for their real business: hiring engineers to drive more ad revenue, engineers who are enticed by shiny projects like these.
It is cannibalizing their existing offerings. I am already using ChatGPT instead of Google for some things.
And it's not the Kodak days, Googlers fully understand that they need to disrupt themselves. And to tell you the truth many engineers there are more excited than afraid that things are happening, I think they will have the opportunity to get much more creative than before.
I understand you're upset, but that's probably a really naive view. Maybe it seems to you that there is no DIRECT upside for you personally, but there's always an upside, just like there's always a downside for every good thing that happens.
This looks to me just synonymous to killing a high maintenance, low returns project so that they can focus better on either the business version or other stuff. The "indirect" upside is you get other Google products of better quality.
I really wanna like it, but I'm honestly really scared to invest both professionally and emotionally in new Google products. I feel like I've learned that fire is hot and that I shouldn't count on any new Google product lest I find myself in a fit of despair as I look for alternatives in a few years.
I think Google has such a strong consumer following now that it isn't as interested in keeping the developers happy. We were early adopters so got a good amount of attention at the start but that certainly seems to have waned with Google's popularity.
That is a niche product, Google doesn't want to have niche products for some reason. Google is great at making niche products, but leadership doesn't like them and always shuts them down...
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