
Google App Maker Shutting Down - dataminded
https://support.google.com/a/answer/9682494
======
spankalee
I started this project as my 20% when I joined Google over 10 years ago.

I had somewhat accidentally been a Filemaker consultant for a while before
that and saw how far non-programmers could get with a visual schema editor and
GUI editor and some light scripting. They often made a mess, so I came into to
fix things, but the fact that a small business owner could make a working
custom inventory and invoicing tool with absolutely no training beyond the
manual was incredible to me.

I'm really saddened by this shut down, for the continued reputation damage
that's being done, because it's my baby (and you don't often get to create an
entirely new public product at Google), and because I still believe that the
world needs more and better tools that allow non- and casual programmers to
build software to solve their own problems.

~~~
neovive
Congratulations on such a cool project. I was hoping to test AppMaker with our
functional users when it was first available on GSuite, but shortly after, the
decision to remove support for Google Sheets as a data source proved to be a
significant barrier. Our low-tech users enjoyed working with Sheets, but did
not understand Cloud SQL. I never understood why that decision was made.

~~~
squidi
My IT Department even refused to enable Cloud SQL for App Maker to run. It
killed off all hopes to use it

~~~
mehh
Smart move by them, just because someone can build an app doesn't mean they
should. The amount of VBA stuff kicking around in enterprises is a nightmare!

------
echelon
Google, by thinking so short term, has knee-capped any developer and
engineering good will for their platforms. Today's version of Microsoft is who
Google should be right now, but somehow we wound up in a different timeline.
Could you have imagined these roles switched back in 2005?

Imagine if someone comes along and takes away Google's search business? At
this point, their results are such a trash fire it can't be _that_ hard. And
if that happens, they've got nothing, because they've been lazy and arrogant
(or at least appear that way to an outside observer).

I'm long MSFT, but definitely not GOOG. It feels like the unhealthiest FAANG.
Their culture is in turmoil, they rely on one product that can be duplicated,
and they routinely spurn the rest of the world.

Edit: this might be my most controversial HN comment to date. It's constantly
bouncing between 2 and -2.

~~~
Guest0918231
> And if that happens, they've got nothing, because they've been lazy and
> arrogant

Without search they would still have GMail, Maps, YouTube, Chrome, Android,
and AdSense/Adwords. Surely that counts for something. That's the #1 email
service, #1 navigation and mapping system, #1 video hosting website, #1
browser, #1 mobile phone platform, and #1 online advertising system. Then of
course Cloud, Drive, Docs, Translate and all sorts of other services.

I don't know how you can consider that nothing and being lazy. These are
services used by most of us on a daily basis. It's an impressive and diverse
group of products, and it would be very difficult to compete against any
single one of them.

> It feels like the unhealthiest FAANG

Really? You think Netflix is in a stronger position? They're a single product
that depends on the ever changing licensing from a variety of third-parties.

What happens to Apple revenue without the iPhone and supporting services and
products?

Facebook and Instagram feel susceptible to falling out of fashion and not
being cool. That's a scary business to bet on long term. It's also far easier
to build a Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp clone compared to Google Search.

~~~
jedberg
> Really? You think Netflix is in a stronger position? They're a single
> product that depends on the ever changing licensing from a variety of third-
> parties.

You mean like CBS, NBC, and ABC, aged 93, 92, and 77 respectively?

Netflix is a single _platform_ but arguably every piece of content is its own
product.

~~~
rchaud
> Netflix is a single platform but arguably every piece of content is its own
> product.

That's the problem. As time goes on, all the really popular shows will have
left Netflix (Friends, The Office, Frasier, Always Sunny, etc) and all that
will be left are Netflix Originals.

The vast majority of those are not premium shows like The Crown, You and
Stranger Things, but straight-to-DVD caliber bilge that will initially entice
users because of the netflix branding, but turn them off once they realize
it's low quality. You can't keep commissioning new programming forever while
keeping the price at $12.99/mo. or whatever.

~~~
jedberg
> The vast majority of those are not premium shows like The Crown, You and
> Stranger Things, but straight-to-DVD caliber bilge that will initially
> entice users because of the netflix branding, but turn them off once they
> realize it's low quality.

How many shows does NBC have each year? How many are still around the next?

Netflix does the same thing as all the other Networks. The difference is,
since it's all on demand, they can just keep their low quality stuff around
for the few people who actually enjoyed it, making their service appeal to a
broader base.

Netflix's goal isn't to have only mega-hits -- it's to have enough different
stuff to keep all the subscribers happy.

There is a very small Venn diagram of people who like Stranger Things and that
new Goop show, and that's just what Netflix wants.

~~~
heavyset_go
> _How many shows does NBC have each year?_

People don't pay $12.99 for NBC each month.

~~~
jedberg
Not sure how that's relevant. Given this is a discussion about company
viability, you could say no one pays Google for anything.

But they do, by viewing ads. They pay with their attention. That's how they
pay NBC too.

------
crazygringo
Once again so many people are piling in with the "Google cancels everything"
trope. But the official blog post states it was due to "low usage" [1] after
18 months of general availability.

Obviously, as well-intentioned or well-designed as it may have been... the
product was a dud with users. I mean, did _anyone_ here ever use it? Or know
someone non-technical who did?

So obviously they got the product wrong, somehow. This isn't a beloved product
like Reader... it looks like it was a dud. And they're trying again with the
other suggested alternatives, since "no-code" still has promise.

I fail to see how this is any different from a startup that doesn't gain
traction and shuts down. What do HN'ers think Google should do when a product
is a dud without enough users and no clear path to success can be found -- if
not cancel it? At least they're still supporting it for another full year (so
users can find other solutions), which is almost as long as it existed for in
the first place.

[1] [https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2020/01/app-maker-
updat...](https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2020/01/app-maker-update.html)

~~~
mqus
I somewhat agree with your point but what does "low usage" mean if you're
Google? In comparison to their other services 100k people[0] are not many. For
a startup/small business they certainly are.

[0] made up, could be much lower, of course.

~~~
crazygringo
For any company anywhere, it's going to be relative to the costs of running
it.

There's no such thing as absolute low/high usage for Google.

There's simply different thresholds for _enough_ usage for a product that
takes 1 engineer to maintain, 10 engineers, 100 engineers, or 1,000 engineers.

Google isn't going to have hugely different metrics here from a startup.
Either a product justifies its profitability or it doesn't. Aside from minor
details, doesn't substantially matter if it's a 50-person team inside a
MegaCorp, or a 50-person startup.

~~~
bcrosby95
You're missing opportunity cost in your calculations. That is significantly
different for Google vs a startup vs a small business. It isn't enough to make
"some profit" in a mega corporation. The profit compared to the resources
invested has to be of a similar magnitude to their primary business, or else
they're wasting resources. Things are axed all the time for not being
profitable enough.

~~~
crazygringo
But the same is absolutely true for VC. They're not looking for 2x returns,
they're looking for 10x returns.

And VC-funded startups are the right comparison to make here. Are they any
less ruthless about pulling the plug on something that can't show any probable
path to required growth?

(I think it goes without saying that neither Google nor VC's are trying to
fund lifestyle businesses, the way a mom-and-pop bootstrapped startup might
be.)

------
epall
Oof. This really hurts. So often when folks complain about Google shutdowns, I
defend G with “but that was a consumer product! GCP doesn’t kill off things.
It’s different.” But here we have Google Cloud (in my defense, _not_ GCP)
killing off a powerful, proprietary _Enterprise_ product with no viable
migration path. At least folks get a year to migrate off, but that’s a lot of
sunk cost.

------
dy
I seriously considered App Maker to build some internal code flows but could
not develop the trust needed to deploy into production. With SaaS apps that
require serious onboarding and deployment it's become almost impossible to
trust Google in particular on this issue.

I'm hoping SMBs will start to seriously consider business continuity as a key
feature of SaaS. If I wanted to differentiate as a SaaS product today, I'd
consider offering putting at minimum source code into escrow upon
sale/bankruptcy.

~~~
sarora27
Genuinely curious, in your experience, have you found a particular set of SaaS
apps to have required a more involved Onboarding/Deployment or is it generally
a few usual suspects?

------
ralex13
Google recently acquired Appsheet (nocode app development platform) [1].
Considering the recent boom in nocode apps, it's highly likely that Google is
trying to stay ahead of the game by acqui-hiring specialists for this.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/14/google-acquires-
appsheet-t...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/14/google-acquires-appsheet-to-
bring-no-code-development-to-google-
cloud/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKMgjufy9YQdjmpqaedUTN7c0Q491w1ydgSd2RJbzTIwYSrKWFvYCob1qOdlVfwH15QpB7W7T25OB
--
ESoQV_HI4doM4Gize8htkPqfLxItZLqHwrzMohveobsNCWWuk3dlfpFa7hpcKl3IqD-5se9Mf4TXIkFcuOvejBX_GXZCI)

~~~
arkh
> nocode apps

Do you mean fancier Wordpress?

~~~
freehunter
Your dismissive tone makes it sound like a bad thing. Considering how wildly
successful Wordpress has been and how many small businesses it has enabled,
I'd say "fancier Wordpress" is a market with a lot of potential.

~~~
arkh
Not dissing Wordpress. Just the redescovering of software you install and can
configure easily / install plugins to get what you want without coding
yourself.

Lot of people hate on Wordpress but will go for other Nocode solution which
has better PR because they're new and so have lot of free money from SV funds.
Or just so they can make themselves feel "better than a Wordpress agency" when
what they're selling is the exact same thing.

> We're a nocode agency

Ok, so you're selling website and apps using code made by other people. Like
any Wordpress based agency.

------
afandian
The bit that matters:

> Due to the specific source code used for App Maker, you can’t directly
> migrate your apps to another platform. We recommend that you explore these
> options

There must be some kind of demand curve model whose independent variable is
the ability to move to another service. A highly specialised PAAS might solve
all your problems but be so unique that it's too risky to spend too much money
on.

~~~
spankalee
Had I started App Maker with the web platform and Node of today, I would have
definitely designed things to use standard web APIs, Node on the server, and
common tools for things like IO and data. Apps would have mostly a set of JS
modules talking to generic enough backends to be portable. Ideally there would
just be an eject button that would give you either a npm-ready project, or a
Docker container. Then you could run it anywhere.

The problem is that App Maker was built in GWT (basically what made sense in
2009), and because we didn't have a JS server runtime, ran JS script in Rhino
on Java servers. Rhino was great at the time, but didn't evolve, and offered
super-powers (like custom Java host objects that can observe mutations, even
on arrays) that made JS written to our environment difficult to port. Also,
all of the server and data interactions were via APIs that are strange by
today's standards because of the layering on Java.

------
robin_reala
Another one for the Google Graveyard:
[https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)

------
awinograd
This is most likely due to their acquisition of AppSheet which will likely
become the "replacement"

[https://blog.appsheet.com/appsheet-acquired-by-google-
cloud](https://blog.appsheet.com/appsheet-acquired-by-google-cloud)

~~~
october_sky
Until it's also shuttered in 18 months, sheesh.

~~~
ovi256
Well, that would be 18 months after the VP that championed the acquisition has
been promoted and moved on.

~~~
jessaustin
I feel this falls short as an explanation of Google's ongoing service carnage.
Where are all these people going?

------
october_sky
> Due to the specific source code used for App Maker, you can’t directly
> migrate your apps to another platform. We recommend that you explore these
> options

I couldn't help but recall the song, "There she goes again" [1], when I saw
this. Google propose partial alternatives, but I wonder how long until those
are also shuttered. Is it even worth migrating to another Google product? if
you have to do the work yourself, migrate to a different (or open source)
vendor.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68MKLkNSMN4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68MKLkNSMN4)

~~~
SQueeeeeL
No, any reasonable user would start completely removing themselves from Google
(really any corporate SaaS environment that they don't completely own the
source code of). This seems like killing the goose that laid the golden egg,
I'm sure on a balance sheet these products are loosing money, but that
basically tells any client who wants to build a service that you aren't
trustworthy in the long term.

~~~
techntoke
That's what is funny about all these cloud services, especially Amazon. You no
longer get to think about the common sense way of doing things, but instead
you have to use the AWS way. You're better off investing your time into
building your own agnostic solution.

~~~
jcadam
I really hate the way AWS forces you to choose between portability and cost-
efficiency.

~~~
toomuchtodo
But then it’s not really cost efficient, eh? Just a mirage until the pain
comes. Until then, “let them consume highly abstracted services”.

There’s a reason some savvy firms continue to own their own infra. No one is
forcing you to use AWS.

------
cf
This is old news but one thing I think Google misses. No one product they
cancel is used by tons of people, but the amount of people fucked over by the
cancellation of any one product is enough to be an ongoing reputation hit for
them.

------
danzapp
Hi to all, sorry if someone have already proposed the same thing, but I
confess I didn't read all your message. although google has announced the end
of app maker due to low usage, and therefore the community will not be so
large, I propose to petition (I don't know which is the most appropriate
channel) to ask Google, at least to leave active existing projects for at
least one more year. Do you think Google can realistically listen to the user
community? I want to highlight that we are all customers since App maker must
be used with Cloud SQL which is a paid service.

------
popotamonga
Just hope they don't kill flutter please.

~~~
jmull
I would really advise against investing in flutter.

It's "kitchen-sink" approach is resource-intensive to maintain. E.g., there's
a language to maintain and a full suite of controls (doubly hard since
integration with OS UX conventions is a constantly moving target) in addition
to everything else you need for a full cross-platform app development
platform.

Yet, where's the revenue stream to pay for it?

I think it's a matter of time before Goggle pulls resources off it.

It's open I believe, so it won't just stop, but it will quickly sink into
disrepair without significant resources maintaining it.

~~~
ReverseCold
Flutter is seriously the easiest app development framework though (and still
indistinguishable from native apps, even on old hardware, unlike React). I
managed to train a bunch of high school students with minimal prior
programming experience (AP Computer Science _Principles_ , which doesn't
really require you to learn how to program) to make a basically production
ready frontend. Flutter support is also amazing, and is easily up to par with
iOS and Android except when it comes to certain platform native features (like
Apple Watch supports, iOS Widgets, etc.)

They really have something here, and I think they know it. Hopefully they
don't pull resources anytime soon.

~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
It's Google. It has to be not just profitable, but take-over-the-world
profitable to survive. It doesn't matter if it's laying golden eggs if it's
not laying _enough_ golden eggs. Goose for dinner!

------
aaronharnly
I only ever kicked the tires a bit on it, but my impression was that App Maker
was really complicated as a "no code" platform, but not as powerful or
portable as a "code" platform.

------
gundmc
I actually really liked App Maker. I started a project on it in my Gsuite
domain and was able to get a functioning prototype up in an afternoon starting
from 0.

Then I ran into the biggest limitation that became a total nonstarter - it's
impossible to share an app outside of your Gsuite domain.

It's a shame, I think this product was a little tender love and care away from
really being something great.

~~~
golem14
Ditto. For someone who just wants to get a little DB app out, needs some
amount of scripting and doesn't want to deal with counting pixels and spend
eons on FE internals, CSS etc, appMaker is/was great.

I wish Google were to make the codebase open source, so that users can
continue to run their deployments on self-hosted deployments, but of course
that's a pipedream.

Oh well, at least there is 1 year of migration time left.

------
ProAm
It's been about 18 months, seems right.

~~~
kbenson
Not that I'd ever really heard of this product before, but it seems like it's
been more like 3 years? Here's an article[1] from June 2018 that mentions it
had been out for a year and a half at _that_ point.

1: [https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/14/app-maker-googles-low-
code...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/14/app-maker-googles-low-code-tool-
for-building-business-apps-comes-out-of-beta/)

~~~
ProAm
I think it went GA about 18 months ago, but I was being facetious more than
anything. I just dont use Google products beyond maps, android and search when
DDG doesnt do it for me these days. Can't trust that 1) it will still be
around in a year or 2) they change the core product so much its unusable 3)
can depend on any level of customer support for it

------
agentdrtran
I built two app maker apps that actually saw real-world use. Extremely
disappointed to see Google get bored and kill off another product they under-
invested in.

------
flowersjeff
Per: "We recommend that you explore (...) options":

What are everyones' best (open) options: (looking for suggestions / shilling /
sharing)

------
szczepano
Would be nice if they make it open source.

------
whatitdobooboo
This might be good in the grand scheme of things, as google matures they might
feel the need to focus heavily on a few products rather than just try many.

Also initially i dont think anyone built their company on google
infrastructure, so these products had a different mindset when made.

------
harrisreynolds
We've built a tool that can fill the gap for anyone looking at alternatives
called Webase.

You can check out Webase here:
[https://www.webase.com/](https://www.webase.com/)

~~~
robin_reala
I mean, OK, but maybe you could explain some of the ways your alternative
solution compares to App Maker?

------
bransonf
Let this be a warning, never get locked into a platform specific solution.

~~~
macintux
...run by Google, anyway.

The world has run on platform specific solutions for generations. Usually it
works.

------
s3r3nity
This is an odd move, as Microsoft is doubling down on this, as part of their
"no-code" push on top of Office Apps + Azure.

~~~
ernsheong
They recently acquired AppSheet, a no-code platform.

------
polskibus
Not sure if this is good or bad news to MS PowerApps (less competition? Or bad
business idea?). What does the HN crowd think?

~~~
tyingq
The leader in the space is Quickbase. They seem to be doing well, and worth at
least a billion. [https://pitchbook.com/newsletter/vista-to-acquire-quick-
base...](https://pitchbook.com/newsletter/vista-to-acquire-quick-base-
in-1b-sbo)

~~~
jtwaleson
Not according to the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Low-Code Application Platforms
;) Or how would you describe the space that App Maker is in?

Disclosure: worked for one of the leaders in that MQ.

~~~
tyingq
They show Outsystems in their upper right hand quadrant. They claim 1200
customers. Quickbase claims 6000. I excluded Microsoft and Salesforce because
it's hard to single out just the low-code piece.

------
mehh
So DataStudio, how long do we give that?

------
err4nt
Whenever Google launches a new product, seems like you have ~18 months to
build the long-term support option its users will need to migrate to once
Google shutters their service. :D

~~~
Fiveplus
Which makes me think - are YouTube, Drive and Gmail the holy trinity of long-
term google projects that will stand the test of time?

~~~
jannes
I think you can safely add Search, Maps and Android to your list.

~~~
albertzeyer
Not sure on Android. They already work on some replacements. They probably
will have some mobile OS for the long-term future, but not sure if that will
be Android. But there probably will be some compat layer, at least for the
beginning, when/if they plan to roll out some successor/replacement.

------
izacus
Did anyone here actually use this?

~~~
golem14
Yup, for an enterprise-internal CRM. Worked really well; flexible, and did NOT
require me to do much or really any amount of FE tweaking (all the UI is
composed with a GUI).

Very sad to see it go.

And FWIW, not planning to go with any other no-code solution; and definitely
not with anything hosted by Google unless the provide a no-code migration tool
;)

------
beshrkayali
I'm kinda looking forward to the day I'll see "Google is shutting down Gmail"
top post on HN.

~~~
flixic
I think Gmail will exist for a very long time... but HN will quite certainly
exist for longer.

~~~
techntoke
So true, yet you got downvotes. Someone is salty.

------
pmlnr
(offtopic-ish, just need to let it out)

Google is frightening. Buy startup, shut it down late enough for people not to
realize that was the goal from the beginning. In the meanwhile crack down on
apps like Termux:API for being able to send SMS from android with scripts.

I'm on the verge of believing that Google is out to kill tinkering and the
tinkering (aka hacker) mindset. I just don't see why it's any good for them.

~~~
jpm_sd
I'm pretty sure they are just dumb, not malicious.

"Let's buy this company! It could grow into a billion dollar business!"

18-36 months later: "It's not growing fast enough. Kill it."

~~~
mstade
What's that old saying, never attribute to malice that which can be adequately
explained by stupidity?

~~~
UI_at_80x24
Goes right up there with: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on
me."

I have been 'burned' by Google once. I have learned from history, and the
foibles of others related to Google. I won't be fooled again.

~~~
braythwayt
Looks like we had the same idea.

Upvote this post, it makes the point with far more elegance.

------
rowathray
Can't wait til they shut down Flutter. Flutter is weak.

------
thefounder
Next on list: Google firebase/Firestore/cloudstore/datastore or whatever name
it has nowadays.

~~~
dragonwriter
Er, “firebase”, “firestore”, and “cloud datastore”, are all names of
different, existing (somewhat overlapping) Google offerings.

~~~
MperorM
Tangentially, I've been extremely frustrated with that.

From the firebase page, you can only create a 'firebase function' using
node.js.

If you instead go to the google cloud page, you can create a 'cloud function'
using other languages such as python, which will then show up under firebase
as a 'firebase function' as well.

What the hell? It is extremely confusing what can and can't be done in google
cloud. There is no consistency between services. Half the documentation
consists of circular references that explain very little.

I work with IBM cloud professionally and am shocked how confusing GCP is in
comparison. I opted for GCP for my pet project because their wavenet text-to-
speech is slightly better than Watson's. I am starting to regret that decision
seeing how needlessly confusing GCP is.

------
FpUser
Fool me once ...

I've got enough fun with Google in the early days. The only googly things I
use now are something like look at the map from the browser etc. My email (app
and address), document editors, code base etc do not touch/use _anything_ even
remotely aware of Google.

------
srathi
The amount of negativity for Google has gone through the roof on HN recently.
Of course, there are issues with Google, but the general sentiment on HN
towards Google is disproportionately negative.

~~~
basilgohar
How else can it be measured except by the sentiment of the people here
expressing it? You can argue there's a silent majority, and I think a lot of
us may not disagree, but the sentiment of the people expressing themselves
should at a minimum be judged to be sincere lacking and further evidence
otherwise.

The uncertainty of Google's service future and also the loss of control of my
own data's future drove me to purchase email services from a commercial email
provider rather than continue to rely on Google's Gmail for my personal email.
So, I can say I also share this sentiment, and I am actively seeking
alternatives to all the other, more "stable" services such as Search, Maps,
YouTube, and so on and trying to rely less-and-less on them.

