
Google quietly launches an AI-powered Pinterest rival named Keen - SanderMak
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/19/21296636/google-keen-pinterest-rival-ai-machine-learning
======
burlesona
Google launches and then kills new products so frequently it makes me
extremely reluctant to try anything new. Best case the product sucks and I
don't care. Worst case I love it and they shut it down a year later. I'm
otherwise a pretty enthusiastic early adopter of most things tech, but when
Google is the brand behind it I feel like it's not worth even looking until
the thing has become huge otherwise it's just going to get shuttered.

~~~
m463
I wonder why this happens.

Is it engineers internally that gather up momentum for a projects, see it to
fruition and then folks move to other projects?

Or is it the sort of "google waterwheel" that scoops up non-google
participants, gets them to create a google account, and in a few years moves
on to other corners of the internet?

the end result is that google seems to "dabble"

~~~
gumby
I think there are two factors.

One is the standard big company political issues thing. Bad products are
sustained, good ones killed because the bad one happened to have a manager who
couldn't listen or see clearly, and had some political credibility while the
good one lacked political strength. This is simply one of the pathologies of
big organizations. (even the best large organizations suffer seriously from
this problem, and I doubt many would consider google to be particularly well
run. They have a huge gusher of money flowing their way even if everybody went
home for a week, so have no competitive pressure to improve on that
dimension).

This interlocks with the second factor. 87% of their revenue comes from one
source and that source is very large. So you could start a new project,
generate some revenue, but if it isn't on a growth trajectory that would move
that 87% down, well, is it really worth investing in? I believe this is why
Nest was brought onto Google's balance sheet: it contributes something around
a percent or so to google's revenue, which helped push that number down
slightly.

By contrast, look at Apple which has a (slightly) diversified set of products;
they continue to invest in macs and ipads which don't constitute a huge
percentage of revenue (though they'd be F200 or F100 businesses were they on
their own). Apple is so secretive, even internally, you'd think they were
_worse_ run than google but somehow it works. Perhaps that secrecy makes the
internal fighting harder as only a small number of people who know each other
well end up seeing the big picture? I haven't the faintest idea.

------
panpanna
I hate Pinterest, all it does is to pollute my search results with garbage. If
I search for something I want to get to the source, not some middleman.

Why do we need an alternative??

~~~
smcameron
I've taken to adding -site:pinterest.* to my searches. Google should de-index
pinterest.

~~~
zamboni-killer
There’s a chrome plugin named “Unpinterested” that does this for you.
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unpinterested/gefa...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unpinterested/gefaihkenmchjmcpcbpdijpoknfjpbfe?hl=en)

------
kgin
Google needs an entirely separate brand/entity to launch these things. Nobody
wants to hang out at the utility company office no matter how much free coffee
they put in the lobby.

~~~
throwaway0220
> _Google needs an entirely separate brand /entity to launch these things._

From the very first paragraph: " _Google’s Area 120 team, an internal
incubator that creates experimental apps and services, has launched Keen..._ "

In a way this is _exactly_ what you're suggesting: an entirely separate
identity [1] to launch these experiments, and avoid direct association with
Google's core products. Keen's site[2] only mention Google in the footer.

Of course, " _Google launches a Pinterest-rival_ " makes it sound more juicy
than " _Area 120 launches an experimental product_ "...

(disclaimer: Googler, but no affiliation with A120 or the product. I'm hearing
for the first time here)

[1] [https://area120.google.com/](https://area120.google.com/)

[2] [https://staykeen.com/home](https://staykeen.com/home)

------
pradn
It's borderline journalistic malpractice to say "Google" launched this, when
it's clearly from the internal incubator, Area 120. This distinction is
important - projects in Area 120 have different aspirations and fold
frequently. I know people have this perception that Google kills projects too
easily, and this just feeds it without good reason. Like - they're telling you
to expect a rocky ride, and people will still complain when it folds.

~~~
harshalizee
99% of consumers absolutely do not care of it was part of an incubator or
otherwise. It's still funded by the Google/Alphabet umbrella and that's the
only thing that most users will use to form an opinion on whether they'd like
to try it out or not. Ironically, the fact that it came out of an incubator
have me the impression that it's highly experimental and will likely die
earlier than most other Google products.

~~~
pradn
99% of consumer won't even know where it's from unless they look it up. Hell,
you'd be surprised by how many people don't know Android and YouTube are by
Google. It's misleading to mention it's from Google and not from the incubator
if it's in the tech press.

------
tengbretson
Will a competitor to Pinterest make google images more broken or less broken?
I need to know before I make up my mind to like or dislike this

~~~
ComputerGuru
Objectively, pinterest broke Google Image Search so I can’t see how another
player could make it worse. If you posit that a single link is shared on both
platforms, the chances of getting to the original source are at least greater
than 1x.

------
imedadel
> An experimental product from Area 120 and PAIR at Google

Well, I guess that won't make people switch from Pinterest...

------
s3r3nity
So this is just Google Collections, which already existed? [1] Why did you
need to create yet another new app for something you already do - just focus
on improving the existing product.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/22/googles-collections-
featur...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/22/googles-collections-feature-now-
pushes-people-to-save-recipes-products-using-
a-i/#:~:text=Originally%20a%20name%20given%20to,to%20Collections%20based%20on%20your)

~~~
stepstop
This phenomenon has been written about on HN before. The gist is that some
Google product manager launched this so they could get promoted. They and a
few of the team will get promoted, and then the product will be forgotten, and
eventually shut down like everything else.

------
president
I give it a year before the project gets canned. Google is great at tools and
utilities (e.g. Maps, Gmail) but whenever they try their hand at something
that involves the human soul, they fail at attracting regular people. For all
of Pinterest's faults, at least their branding is such that most people don't
see it as a generic giant corporation.

~~~
buboard
They just want to displace pinterest's SEO from their image search results.
This could actually be useful for them

~~~
bryanrasmussen
I think they've also done some stuff at different times to displace Facebook
from somewhere or other, anyway my bet is as follows:

this is someone's project to get noticed for being innovative and moved on to
somewhere else with more money and then this gets staffed with people not on
the fast track who will try their best to get out of it and finally it will
close down and if anyone has been suckered into using it they will write an
article about how Google closed it down and then HN will repeat the ever
expanding list of things Google has closed down. Something may have just made
me cynical about Google products though.

------
nojvek
Google is pretty awful at maintaining anything that isn’t a billion dollar
profit maker. They also suck at doing anything social network related.
Pinterest shouldn’t have much to worry about. They could copy the good ideas
like Facebook copied circles when Google Plus came out.

Google’s brand is tainted. They are real good at search, tracking and shoving
ads. Not so great at fostering things from 0 and maintaining them.

------
bberenberg
There are lots of conversations about ideological echo chambers online. I am
concerned that tools like Pinterest and now Keen may be creating creative echo
chambers that result in large swaths of artists drawing from the same few
styles to help build their own.

~~~
wayoutthere
I've felt this way about Pinterest for some time. It doesn't really follow any
sort of trends, there is just a "Pinterest style" that's basically a meme. It
was cool for a while when Pinterest was new, but it looks out-of-date these
days and the echo chamber hasn't seemed to notice that people have moved on.

------
reaperducer
Is this something that really needs to be "AI-powered," whatever that means?

~~~
w4hirelife99
“Does a company that has only ever crawled through other peoples content to
lift its visibility by their rules really need to keep doing that?”

------
ible
It must be uncomfortable being a google engineer on these products.

Having your work cancelled and thrown away is one of the most disheartening
things as a developer.

It has to be back of mind for them when they are building. When it gets
released they get to come see all the comments better on how long until Google
kills it, and the people who won’t try it because of that risk.

~~~
always_left
So... a startup?

~~~
ilikehurdles
Except, the engineers get paid adequately.

~~~
renewiltord
Sure, it's a trade-off in what sort of upside and control you want.

------
wzy
Google++

------
niutech
Do you remember So.cl from Microsoft? It will certainly share its fate.

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mark_l_watson
Well it does look like an interesting experiment.

All the standard warnings about lack of privacy on Keen, treat it like you
would FaceBook, enjoy checking it out, but treat it much as you would a
rattlesnake on a hiking trail. I almost regret reading the book Surveillance
Capitalism because life before that was like ignorant life in the move Matrix
(except for me, I could have written a shorter version of SC myself). Reading
that book was definitely taking the Red Pill. I don’t blame anyone for
continuing the good old Blue Pill lifestyle :-)

EDIT: it is interesting how the site is not really “Google branded” at all.
Just in the fine print “ Keen - An experimental product from Area 120 and PAIR
at Google”

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srack20210
there is no way i am trying any service out of google now... sorry google, but
the trust has broken...

------
nikolay
No vanity URLs, no thank you! :D

------
binaryfour
How many times is Google going to try these things before they realize that's
not their differentiator as a business?

~~~
convolvatron
when the giant ocean of money they swim in starts to dry up

