I like this, and it feels "Google-y". Worried that a handful of us will use it, lean on it heavily, and then Google will do what Google does and pull the plug on it.
Well in all honesty if you end up leaning on it heavily in spite of the warning you kind of deserve whatever you get...
>This is a Beta release of Cloud Shell. This feature is not covered by any SLA or deprecation policy and may be subject to backward-incompatible changes.
I wasn't explicit with my earlier comment, you're right about the beta period. I was referring to after when they exit beta and are a good, useful service for a year or two.
Which would be understandable if they ever shut down any cloud service offering of this level before (which they have not).
This whole "Google loves to shut stuff down" is really tired and overplayed.
Go ahead and compare Google's track record with Apple's or Microsoft's, or any other company. They are about on par, yet Google almost always gives 6+ months notice (often over a year), provides one-click alternatives, allows you to export your data in one of many formats, and more often than not has an in-house alternative that you can use automatically.
Take a look at the wiki page of google's products [1]. I'd be surprised if you even knew about 10% of those, let alone used more 1 or 2 significantly.
On that list that I've used: Buzz, Pack, Desktop, Reader, iGoogle.
To Be Discontinued: Google Drive Hosting, Google Code.
I don't think it's tired and overplayed. It's a consequence of how Google works; try lots of things and don't be afraid to pull the plug. That strategy is great, and it works.
It's just sometimes the services that are on the edge of being worth Google's time to maintain cause the most backlash because a fair number of people used those services.
Google refused to allow you to pay for them? Each of those services could trivally have had some combination of ads and paid services but Google's management made strategic decisions to put resources elsewhere.
Only using paid services up front might seem to help but one look at the way Google Apps has been in maintenance mode for years suggests that even that offers only limited protection.
Realistically, how many people would have paid for something like Google Reader after getting it for free for so many years? I think it would be a tough sell and you would have witnessed a lot of complaining...
On the other hand, the negative PR they have gotten from Reader (it's pretty much the poster child for the "Google cancels products" meme) - they probably should have kept it around, even if it was not strategic.
I'm pretty sure anyone working at Google knows how to put ads on a free service but in any case, I saw a lot of people calling for a paid option in the period between the de-featuring for the botched Google+ roll-out and actually closing the service down. That would have been a natural approach: free version has ads with some sort of “Pro” option to remove them.
Any other company? You've named three. Truth is enterprise grade companies that serve the business market and don't give their products away for free or participate in a race to the bottom typically don't do this type of thing to the degree that google does. Perhaps the companies that do (including parts of msft) are those that deal with developers or consumers which apparently are more likely to not complain to much (other than to whine online) when they get the shaft. The stereotype, unfortunately, is true. At least that is what I have found.
Also, and this is important, there is the benign neglect phase where they simply keep the product minimally working but don't spend any time to improve it (like google voice).
To the best of my recollection, I don't believe we've ever shutdown a product. Was there one in particular that hit you? (Reader, Wave, etc are totally different divisions.)
Google Code was first turned into a graveyard, then deprecated, and soon will shut down altogether. Reader was not strictly a development tool (which is what I guess you refer to as "your division"), but was heavily used by developers, so it significantly disrupted people's workflow. Same for Wave and any web API (there's quite a few of them which were unceremoniously dumped).
It is not really Google's fault that Code was not a successful product, other than that they simply didn't have the energy/budget/will to actually make it a competitive product with Github.
Saying Google "doesn't have the budget" to do something is fairly preposterous, tbh. I can understand that they were wrong-footed by the rise of Github; Code was built to compete with Sourceforge, when GH didn't even exist. From day 1 though, it was clear that Code wasn't even "better enough" to actually kill SF for good; further development was incredibly slow. When Github hit their stride, Google reacted by just giving up. They didn't even attempt a comeback.
well, google isn't a small business, where "the budget" can be synonymous with "the bank account(s)". like many (all?) large businesss, things are organizationally regimented into units (and sub-units, etc), and budgets are allocated toward each unit.
so while "google" might have funds, the "google code development team" may have a very tiny allocation.
Of course, but budget allocation does not descend from Heaven fully formed, so to speak. Google directors (i.e. Google) decided Code was not a priority, so in the end it's Google-the-company's fault that it had to close.
I think there was no reason for them to keep Google Code as a going concern with the rise of Github. They were not going to do as good a job as Github, and it wasn't something they were making any money off of.
Even if they had been trying.
But yes, like many Google products, it was basically released and abandoned. They weren't trying. (If they had been, maybe we never would have had a github...)
I do think as a public service, they could have left all the code (and wiki documentation) accessible read-only virtually perpetually. Surely they can afford that.
Instead, we get tarball download only, and only until late 2016, after which it's all gone forever, if it hasn't been migrated elsewhere by code owners or third parties.
Google Drive hosting, to be fair it still works and you guys gave plenty of heads up (August 31, 2016). Just because they are in different divisions doesn't mean Google hasn't shut things down.
Oh brother. I guess if you're using the strict definition that a product is only something people pay for, then you may be right, but in the more generally accepted meaning that a Google product is something Google makes that people outside of Google use, you're just flat out wrong.
I am so tired of this meme. Every business shuts down products and services. To re-iterate this meme every time Google announces something is tired. I'm guessing you still hold Google accountable for shutting down Reader - a service you probably never used but go to the well each and every time they announce a service or product.
Multiple people (now three!) have downvoted this, but the idea that everyone who talks about Google service closures is complaining about one specific service--Google Reader--is the "meme" that we should all be quite tired of, as it is trotted out like a broken record every single time anyone points out reservations about Google's track record: no matter the context, no matter how many services have been shut down or cut down since, no matter what announcements Google makes about limiting their policies, and no matter whether the person mentioned Google Reader or not... it is even used against people like myself, who had absolutely no specific interest in Google Reader in the first place :/.
It is nothing more than a knee-jerk way to dismiss a rather easily defended position (due to the large number of closures that have been documented, ones that are more extreme or would have been considered less likely than Google Reader) by stereotyping someone's argument down to not just a "strawman" (an argument that is easily defeated), but essentially a purposely broken and laughable version of their argument so as to purposely ill-inform other people (which I feel the need to separate from a "strawman", as the goal is not to defeat the argument but to belittle the opponent). It is frankly one of the more underhanded argumentation tactics that people seem to enjoy defending here.
The reality is that Reader is a non-issue for most people here, as it isn't something you likely built your business or infrastructure around (and to the ones who ended up indirectly relying on it, that is a stretch to blame them for), but when Google randomly shuts down, cuts down, or entirely reboots APIs and services--something they have done many times, at the extremely painful end with things like Checkout and Login, but also with things such as App Engine or Charts--the fact that people seem to seriously have just forgotten how recent these things have been is distressing, and is made all the worse by people who insist on perpetuating "you are just whining about Reader" lie :/.
He linked a TON of projects that have been shut down. The logic of your message seems to be "they only shut down things that aren't popular, therefore you should feel fine using this really niche product that will never expand beyond a small group of developers."
And for the record, I did use iGoogle. And there were plenty of people who used Wave, Reader, Code, and Labs.
Reader and Code are the only ones that had traction.
I object to the idea that it is, "a Google" when we could make the same argument of many tech companies. I object specifically here because it's been shown to be a talking point in a whole deck of talking points written for an MPAA smear campaign on Google.
And it's not particularly fair. They should call it, "Pulling a startup" given how often we fail at them.
