
In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users - Signez
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3305946/email/in-killing-inbox-google-takes-another-swipe-at-its-most-passionate-users.html
======
TimTheTinker
I don't think Google cares whether its users are "passionate" or not. They've
reached market saturation, so further spread of their products through word-
of-mouth (via passionate users and such) isn't a goal at this time.

With regard to their Internet service products, their goal seem to be to
monetize the user base effectively, while avoiding wasting funds on
unnecessary developer time. To that end, many of their products seem to exist
as short-term bets or "experiments", ostensibly to give users something
great/interesting, but internally justified by the extra data or "research"
those products will generate. See Google Voice (angle: voicemails help train
Google Assistant), Inbox (angle: research on some email ideas for potential
incorporation into GMail), etc.

Google's cultural fixation on decision-making based on data and statistics
will bite them eventually. It may help them squeeze the market, but it won't
help them _care_ about other people.

~~~
Buge
You're right that passionate users can no longer effectively bring new people
to Google. But passionate users can lead people away from Google.

~~~
8ytecoder
This. Google cloud for example is the most technologically advanced. But no
one in my company would touch it with a ten foot pole. Google can and will
shutdown things is just ingrained - even when we pay, things will change so
drastically or be not supported any more that you just can't assume anything.

~~~
roneythomas6
But Google Cloud deprecation policies and other SLA's for generally available
products.

~~~
tmaly
They had an internal search box you could setup to crawl your intranet. They
have shut this down and order all companies to turn it off. SLA does not
matter

~~~
arbie
Are you referring to the Google Search Appliance?

~~~
ccarter84
Yea, that sure was nice while it lasted :-|

------
andrewstuart
Google's shutdown of products and APIs seems to have led to critical level of
trust loss amongst developers and influencers.

It's time for Google to either fix this or get out of providing services and
APIs to developers.

Google doesn't seem to put any weight at all on the outcry every time its
shutters another service/API.

The trust must be restored.

Google doesn't seem to understand that when they shut service X, that their
(potential) customers for service Y (such as Google Compute Engine) become
concerned that service Y will be shut down too.

To put a positive suggestion forward, Google could consider giving all
services a "sunset guarantee".

A "sunset guarantee" is a commitment that the service will be shut down only
with a minimum notice period of say for example 5 years.

~~~
thebooglebooski
"The trust must be restored."

Playing devil's advocate, what happens when the trust doesn't become restored?

The company loses ad revenue?

Developers flee in mass droves to...Yahoo and Microsoft?

Look what happened when people "lost trust" in Facebook. Shares are down 4%
relative to a year ago. Is the company permanently crippled? Are people
revolting and moving to alternate forms of social media? Fewer of the people
immediately connected to your local graph are probably using Facebook. But
that local loss of users gets completely offset by the new users they grow
internationally.

Ultimately, these companies are beholden to their boards and shareholders.

Unless Inbox users clicked enough ads to make a dent in revenue, the
organization has every reason to deprioritze competing products, and continue
down the path of creating free A/B tests, and then merging the winner into a
hybrid/better product.

Take a look at Fuchsia.

Or Dart and Flutter.

Or Hangouts and Talk.

An easy heuristic here might be, "Lose trust in the few in order to benefit
the many." It sounds really sad, but it is the reality numerous companies live
by.

~~~
ladzoppelin
Facebook is in trouble man, I am amazed the outcry of general public. Its all
circumstantial evidence but the amount of people in my circle who are talking
about leaving, creating fake profiles and getting their kids pictures of the
platform is profound. Edit: IMO.

~~~
O_H_E
The problem is that all HN reader's outer circles would never constitute 1% of
Facebook's user base

~~~
coldtea
Teenagers have abandoned Facebook in favour of other social media platforms
such as Snapchat and Instagram, according to a study from the Pew Research
Center.

Just 51% of US individuals aged 13 to 17 say they use Facebook – a dramatic
plunge from the 71% who said they used the social network in Pew’s previous
study in 2015, when it was the dominant online platform.

In this year’s study reported Facebook use was, according to Pew, “notably
lower” than the percentage of teens who said they used YouTube (85%),
Instagram (72%) or Snapchat (69%). In the previous study, just 52% of teens
said they used Instagram, while 41% said they used Snapchat.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/01/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/01/facebook-
teens-leaving-instagram-snapchat-study-user-numbers)

~~~
davidcbc
Considering Facebook owns Instagram this sounds like great news for Facebook.
Facebook the company owning the product teens are using instead of Facebook
the product seems like a good long term strategy.

~~~
coldtea
Yeah, not so great news for Facebook the company I'm afraid.

Being a social media user is age-independent, whereas one's teens is something
they grow out of.

So, not only existing teens grow out of being teens (and eventually Snapchat
users), but new teens won't necessarily grow into it to replace them.

Unlike older people, who value utility and what they already know more, new
teens are just entering the social media field (and thus are more open to
whatever might come next), and they are all about what's cool (so when a
service loses it's cool it abandoned MySpace-like fast).

~~~
llampx
Good point. To that, I'd add that Facebook needs "cool" users. Grandmas may
use Facebook a ton and be very loyal, but they're not a cool, inspiring user
group others want to follow and emulate.

------
Gatsky
There is always so much vitriol on HN about these kinds of announcements.

I've never understood why. Google presumably has lots of data and feedback
from people using Inbox, and determined that it wasn't useful enough or
widespread enough to justify ongoing investment. Why is this surprising or
shocking? This happens all the time in commercial and open source software.

The internet is great, but unfortunately has the ability to agglomerate
individual moments of otherwise transient irritation into a pyroclastic flow
of outrage.

~~~
sharmi
In the case of open source project,

* if the maintainer is no longer able to take the project further, the code is still there an can be used as is, maybe with a few bugfixes. (ala, thunderbird). The code does not disappear overnight. r.

* All the associated data is still yours and available. So no information is lost.

* If it is very critical, you can develop it yourself further

I am not an user of Inbox, but I can understand the outrage. When a service is
offered for free by such a mammoth of a company, it gives a false sense of
security and permanence. It crushes most competition and development of open
source alternatives. Then one fine day, the rug is pulled from under your feet
and there is no recourse.

The most ironic aspect is you no longer have access to your pinned emails,
bundles and such. Yet, somewhere in google's distributed data storage, it will
continue to reside for a long long time. The information asymmetry is
outrageous.

~~~
shaklee3
Correct me if I'm wrong, but inbox shared your same content as Gmail, right?
If that's the case, nothing was lost.

~~~
coldtea
People didn't use Inbox for unique content over Gmail. Both always had just
their mails.

It's the UI interactions (plus some metadata), and those are gone.

------
wybiral
I don't even try to understand Google anymore. They released "Hangouts Chat"
not to be confused with Google Hangouts, which is not to be confused with
their Allo, Duo, Voice, or Messenger apps. On the upside, they shut down
Google Spaces and replaced Gmail Chat with Google Hangouts (not Hangouts Chat,
that's different) and now they've canned Inbox and are keeping the Gmail app.

Huh?

~~~
lunchables
And if we can't follow this, imagine the average consumer. I can't even
imagine how much more successful Google could be if they could cure their
insane A.D.D. problem.

------
paublyrne
The new look Gmail has performed very poorly for me. Hanging for extended
periods while changing views, and during search. I'm not sure why a UI refresh
would have such an effect but I've been avoiding switching because of this

~~~
dawnerd
I hate their “new” tabs that tries to categorize emails. It’s just extra
clicks to get to the emails I want. It’s forced me to go back to a dedicated
email app.

~~~
placuaf
What are you talking about man? You can easily turn it off in "configure
inbox" section.

~~~
alexnewman
Yea but disables other things as well. Like the ability to snooze

~~~
bootlooped
Enabling/disabling tabs via "Configure Inbox", or through Settings > Inbox >
Categories does not effect the ability to snooze. The only thing it effects is
whether emails are sorted into different tabs or not.

------
omosubi
I used to be a Google fan boy but am starting to dislike them more and more.
This, they killed off reader and the creepy data collection they do is why
I've started to look into alternatives for their products - anyone have any
good suggestions?

~~~
mattkevan
After being a keen Google user in the late 2000s to mid 2010s, I’ve been in on
a process of extracting them from my life now their true creepy colours are on
display.

YouTube => Deleted

Google plus => Deleted

Gmail => Deleted, switched to Soverin [0], works great, less than $4 per month
for 25gb email hosting

Drive => Deleted, moved to iCloud

Docs => Deleted, use iWork for docs and Bear [1] for text

Search => Duck Duck Go, getting better all the time

Chrome => Safari, excellent battery life, good tracking protection

Google Photos => Deleted, moved to Apple photos

Next project is to move my website off of Google Analytics.

I’d love to fully switch to Apple Maps as it’s getting better but don’t know
if I fully trust it yet. Google Maps is the gold standard.

[0] [https://www.soverin.net](https://www.soverin.net)

[1] [https://bear.app](https://bear.app)

~~~
decasia
Soverin sounds like a good project. What do you make of the fact that the
warrant canary hasn't been updated since May, though?

[https://soverin.net/warrant-canary](https://soverin.net/warrant-canary)

~~~
ashelmire
Aren't warrant canaries valid until removed? Dates on them don't matter.

~~~
Buge
It says "Up to date as of: 2018-05-22". That seems to imply that it may have
been invalidated at some later point. If it is valid until removed, then it
shouldn't have a date at all.

------
sseth
Those (like me) who like using Google products know the bargain. Until a
product reaches critical mass, it could get canceled.

Wave died. G Suite has succeeded. Chrome succeeded. Reader died. Google+ is in
a coma. Hangouts and Google Photos which came out of the ashes looks like they
will stay, though what they are doing with their chat tools is a real mystery.
In hardware, Chromecast succeeded, Nexus faded away as did a bunch of other
stuff. Among the ones i am a little worried about : Google Keep - which i am
using more and more. I hope it does not die. Also, Google wifi which i am
using now - hope it stays. I tried Inbox and liked it, but I did not invest a
lot in it.

The ones you can be certain won't go away are the ones with a billion+ users :
Gmail, Android, Chrome, Maps, Search, Youtube, Google Drive (almost 1B) and
Google Photos (500M+) should be fine as well.

But Google does not owe me anything. And I don't owe them. I don't have to use
any of their products if I don't want to.

~~~
SSLy
Drive and Photos are data vacuums, these won't go away.

------
beams_of_light
This is puzzling, as Google pushed Inbox pretty hard. I was under the
impression that the Gmail interface would be decommissioned, and Inbox would
be the future.

~~~
sonnyblarney
If you've worked in large orgs it makes sense.

They had a strategic priority a while back to 'make mail good on mobile' ...
whereas now they are folding it all back into the gmail umbrella because the
overall strategic impetus would be to be gmail founded.

So, short term strategy now important with the longer term issues of product
portfolio. Collapse the 'good bits' of inbox into Gmail and move forward.

You have to consider it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have two email
products at the same time.

The real problem is the new Gmail is not very good.

It still blows my mind how companies with billions of dollars to burn get UI
wrong. Like the first Windows 10.

~~~
hyperbovine
I think most of it can be explained by your very first sentence. Gmail is 15
years old. It has massive institutional inertia and clout. Hundreds of
engineers ([https://www.quora.com/How-large-is-the-Gmail-
team](https://www.quora.com/How-large-is-the-Gmail-team)), probably a similar
number of PHBs. Some of those people have spent their entire professional
lives working on Gmail. They are loath to admit it sucks. Understandably.

You don't just phase that sort of thing out in favor of some upstart that came
along three years ago. You can't. A category 5 shitstorm would ensue. Few
people have the stomach for that.

Fine you say, can't Inbox and Gmail at least co-exist? There again the answer
is no. The usurper must eventually be vanquished. The situation is not long-
term sustainable.

~~~
ambicapter
Did Gmail really suck tho?

------
uluyol
The death of reader wasn't as bad as this for me. Soon after reader died,
alternatives popped up left and right, and some of them are better than reader
ever was.

What alternative is there to gmail/inbox? Unlike an RSS reader, I think it's
much more difficult to make an email service that's close to being as good as
gmail/inbox while having the same level of features, especially across
platforms.

~~~
jdhendrickson
What do you consider better than reader was? I'm still looking for something
that scratches that itch in the same way so I'd really like to hear your
opinion.

~~~
Inthenameofmine
Inoreader is a very good alternative now imo. It lacks the way to share and
subscribe to other people's shared articles, but i'd still give it a 9/10.

On that note, it boggles my mind that no startup has simply coppied google
reader's features yet.

------
dmix
> A radically analytical approach is powerful, but it can blind you to the
> factors that cannot be measured. Factors such as user passion.

This is not true. You can still align KPIs to stuff like that... The problem
is looking at 'vanity metrics' or one-size-fits-all metrics like pure user
growth, without proper segmentation of high-value and high-engagement users.

Or worse marketing/positioning failing to pull its weight and blaming the
product. Or giving it a half-hearted attempt, limited resource/talent-wise,
and then comparing the results 1-to-1 with other successful products which
were heavily prioritized.

There's plenty of opportunity to miss the boat. Aligning metrics with business
goals is a dynamic process, not one-size-fits-all, which is lost on many
business in the big data world.

------
canistr
The part that gets me the most about killing Inbox and forcing users to go
back to Gmail is the accumulation of Pinned emails.

I was happy to oblige to using pins when I transitioned from Gmail -> Inbox.
Stars were replaced with pins but there is no direct mapping. But now that
Inbox is dead, the years of pinned emails are effectively useless when they
should've been starred in Gmail. It's a frustrating experience for users
especially when this is not the first time for Google.

This is why as an Android Developer, I'm in the majority community opinion
believing that Dart/Flutter/Fuschia shouldn't be trusted. These products/dev
tools are going to be in perpetual beta and not worth taking the risk of going
to prod with.

------
everdev
I'll miss reminders the most because I use my mail client as my ToDo lost as
well. I switched to Gmail preemptively and I'm back to writing emails to
myself again...

~~~
procinct
I’m pretty sure the new Gmail has a todo list built into it called Tasks.
Could be only with Gsuite though.

~~~
city41
Gmail’s tasks are inferior to Inbox’s reminders. For one they don’t have
recurring tasks. The ease of creating a reminder and snoozing it just like an
email was killer. Of the hundreds of todo apps made over the decades, Inbox
finally nailed it. I’ll greatly miss Inbox.

------
romed
I think people are overlooking the big picture here. Inbox had a lot of
machine learning features that Gmail lacked, like Smart Reply. I think this
was just because they really couldn't afford to run Smart Reply on all the
incoming email. Now they can, so Gmail has gained Smart Reply and they no
longer need to partition that out for cost reasons.

While Gmail still lacks some of the other email intelligence features that I
will miss, like the Trips bundle, I have a feeling they will emerge in Gmail
shortly.

------
ryan-allen
The upside is that, now some smart cookie can make a web app that 'reinvents
the inbox' and sell it to Google for millions. Time is of the essence!

------
foobaw
Just a side note but if you dig around, you'll realize that a lot of Googlers
left the Inbox team around 2016.

There isn't much competition to email. It's likely that other products were
prioritized (like ARCore) due to competition from Apple, etc.

------
qalmakka
I've only used Inbox since the very first day it was released, and I loved it;
it's a simple mix of concepts that resulted in an experience that has made
mail much more pleasant (and less of a hassle) to me. I don't think anyone
that has intensively used Inbox in the last years may think even remotely that
the new Gmail is a similar experience, because it definitely still has a
completely different look and feel.

I think I'll switch back to Thunderbird on desktop for the time being, given
that the hassle (and delays) of having several POP3 accounts configured on the
Gmail website isn't really worth the effort without Inbox.

------
twblalock
I don't see an endgame that wouldn't have resulted in outrage.

I doubt Google would be committed to keeping both Gmail and Inbox around
forever.

Either Gmail would be merged into Inbox, or Inbox features would be merged
into Gmail. Both of those choices would outrage a large group of users.
Frankly it seems that getting rid of Inbox involves pissing off far fewer
people than getting rid of Gmail.

------
djaychela
I use and like inbox, mostly because I took straight away to using the snooze
function - the best thing I've found in an email client, full stop. While this
can apparently be done in Gmail now, I'd like to look for an alternative at
this point - paid - to move from Google.

Any suggestions for an email client that has decent android support, and
offers a snooze function?

~~~
frankydp
Gmail has snooze. With the settings to customize your swipe in each direction.

~~~
djaychela
Nice, thanks for the tip on the swipe which makes the Gmail app much more
usable for me.

------
ronnier
Google Inbox did one evil thing. To delete an item in iOS's Inbox, you swipe
left to right, whereas pretty much every other app in iOS you swipe right to
left. This has thrown me into such confusion now in all apps that I'm happy to
see Inbox go away.

~~~
frankydp
You can customize each direction of swipe in the Gmail app.

~~~
mcintyre1994
How do you do that? Just opened Gmail for the first time in ages and it has
both swipes to archive as default.. which is stupid.

------
Apaec
If you want to be passionate about a piece of software, make sure it's OSS.

------
Heliosmaster
I see in these comments a lot of bitterness, where I think there should be
opportunity: if you think Google made a mistake in killing Inbox and it was a
feature beloved by many users.. why don't you spin up your version of it? They
have already done the hard part for you: the idea.

When google killed greader, Feedly, The old Reader and other products rose up
to the challenge. They felt there was market, and they launched (or just
changed and marketed better) their product.

What is stopping you from doing the same now?

~~~
njarboe
I believe that the hacker news general attitude is correct that the idea is
not the hard part. The hard part is execution and getting adoption. Inbox
works and is use by many. Hundreds of functional imitations can/will die, even
when readily available on github.

------
dmourati
I don't agree with the conclusion that passionate users are going to take
their passion elsewhere. This feels like more of an idle threat by a scorned
user.

------
m3kw9
Eventually I failed to see much difference if Inbox and GMail app. I just
deleted Inbox because it seemed redundant. Gmail isn’t that good either with
their auto categories. I always have to go thru multiple folders to find mail
that I was expecting and arrived, never rally know which folder they’ve put
it. Is like your mom came into your room and cleaned it but she misplaced
stuff and you’d have to find it.

------
maym86
If they'd just implement the reminders and grouping features in Gmail I'd be
fine with this. I don't particularly care about how the UI looks. I use
snoozed reminders so much and being able to unclutter my inbox with groups
makes a huge difference. Doesn't seem like it would be hard to optionally
include them in Gmail. Without them moving back to Gmail feels like a step
backwards.

------
cwyers
I'm up for a good Google hate as much as anyone (man alive, I could give a
good rant on how they seem to be trying to screw up in the chat space), but is
there any evidence that Inbox users are more passionate than the top N Gmail
users when sorting on the passion index, where N = the number of Inbox users
(and a likely small fraction of total Gmail users)? I highly doubt it.

------
tzury
I am convinced that in the roadmap of Gmail, the greatness of Inbox is planned
to be integrated. This is my opinion only, and time will tell how wrong or
right I am.

There are 2 Types of Gmail users, gmail.com and G Suite.

I think Google prefer maintaining two types of backends, rather than two types
of front-ends.

------
VonGuard
I'd settle for them actually releasing new visual themes for Gmail. They've
had the same cartoony themes for near 8 years now I think. Maybe longer. I
liked them initially, but that was it. They don't even allow anyone to submit
their own or anything like that....

~~~
mxfh
I would be happy if the let me keep the classic gmail already. They are quite
pushy about the UI switch lately, if you reverted back to the old look.

~~~
krackers
I think they're going to prevent opting-out past end of september

------
skybrian
Meanwhile in a different topic, people are criticizing Google for the
confusion of having way too many chat services.

I think in the end, Google doesn't want more than one email service. If Inbox
showed enough growth to someday replace Gmail, it might have had a chance.

------
tluyben2
If they would only open source it... At least then someone can hack away on
it.

------
moocowtruck
im not sure whats going on in google when it comes to email, but i really hope
when this new look is enabled again in 2 weeks i can still go back to
classical...

~~~
rch
Same here. I've been accepting the new look when prompted to try it out, but I
keep switching back within a few hours. I hope those metrics mean something.

~~~
trendia
I'm sure one of their metrics is "time on site", which often doesn't
distinguish between "spends more time because they enjoy the product" and
"spends more time because they can't find the things they're looking for and
are becoming very frustrated with your service"

~~~
thwy12321
Are you suggesting google is using their analytics data naively? With all due
respect, these large tech corporations are ran by adults who understand user
experience.

~~~
briandear
Then explain Material Design? When I have to hunt around and try to figure out
what an icon actually means, that isn’t demonstrating an understanding of UX.
Google UX is “great” if you already know how to use it. Apple UX by comparison
is friendly even to complete rookies. The only Google UX I actually like is
their search page.

~~~
farhang
The latest UI changes(all the rounded corners and soft shadows, for example)
in Chrome and elsewhere seem to show that they're even moving away from
Material Design too,after years of hyping it

------
rsynnott
I didn’t personally care for Inbox anyway, but after the Reader debacle, I
avoid becoming dependent on any new Google product.

------
sorenjan
I never bothered with Inbox because I figured Google would cancel it some day.
I understands user's disappointment, but it can't be a surprise. This is what
Google does.

It's amazing to me that a company with close to 90 000 employees and that
attracts top talent can't find a way to support their services longer than a
few years. How much does a handfull of indian engineers and space in their own
datacenter cost?

~~~
nodelessness
Are Indian engineers your favourite coolies that will do the dirty work of
keeping your systems running after you've lost interest in them ?

~~~
sorenjan
Isn't that were US companies are outsourcing to? Why would Google use
expensive Silicon Valley-engineers to do bugfixes on a product they'd rather
cancel? Are you denying there's a price difference?

~~~
mbrumlow
I can tell you that I am going through the experience for the 3rd time now of
my entire team being let go in favor for engineers in India.

So far it seems to be like this.

1) Have a big spin up in the US. Create a new product in 1 year or less. 2)
Stabilize the product over the 2nd year. 3) Slowly lay off US engineers and
support teams in favor for guys in India.

Don't get me wrong, I have no issue with Indian engineers. The problem seems
to be management cares about headcount and not quality. It would be one thing
if we were being replaced by better engineers, but that is not the case.

------
PakG1
Seems I should apologize for being one of those gmail people who never ever
tried out Inbox. :) Sorry, everyone.

------
Zigurd
I use Inbox for all my mail. I'm fine with Inbox being EOL'ed because the
migration is effortless and only relatively minor features remain in limbo.

My least favorite thing about Inbox was the low-density UI. I want side-bars.
I want to be able to have a high-density list view. Inbox never integrated my
hangouts transcripts. I'm fine with going back to a much-evolved GMail.

~~~
andybak
Inbox has a couple of unique and valuable features that exists in no other
clients. Sadly the ones I depend on the most.

------
nkkollaw
I agree, although I doubt they care.

I also tried to switch to Gmail in preparation, and it's a lot worse IMO.

------
shanev
My favorite feature of Inbox was the organization of Trips. Thankfully there's
still TripIt.

------
smtpserver
Does this mean that the app itself will stop working or just stops getting
updates?

~~~
beanboot
Im wondering this myself. I hope its the former.

------
jaimex2
Ugh, anyone remember the Latitude crap fest?

Between dead, Google Plus and only available on Android.

~~~
loomhigh223555
I use google plus...I only saw this because it is on my Google Alert. What is
this latitude crap fest?

------
tyrex2017
they will kill anything that 99% of their users dont care for. it would be
insane not to.

it is strange for us people because we know 1000s who care for those
products/features

------
aussieguy1234
Today's startup idea: Build a new Inbox

------
yanneves
Anyone got a Superhuman invite?

------
zavi
This is overblown, people's livelihoods don't rely on Inbox. Most features are
in Gmail now anyways.

And no whataboutism please, this deprecarion event is about Inbox, not some
other product.

------
ponco
rip inbox

------
village-idiot
When’s the last time Google has to even pretend to give a shit about the end
user?

~~~
village-idiot
Before you all dismiss this idea, remember google reader? Super popular, super
dead.

