
Google shuts down its blog management tool just 10 months after launch - Boulth
https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/07/13/google-blog-compass-shutdown/
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sparrish
"it was limited to India for its entire life."

Limited launch provided proof that it was a bad market fit and so they 'failed
quickly' and shut it down. Isn't this supposed to be how it's done?

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charles_f
Agreed ; but the fact that people notice the pattern and are either amused or
disappointed by it, to me is telling that maybe they're doing something wrong
about it.

Google isn't a startup and tends to shutdown services that are popular but on
which they can't find a correct business model (e.g. Reader or Inbox) without
much warning, actual replacement options, or open sourcing solutions for self
hosting.

Since they're so large, that creates a discrepancy between the stability you
would expect from an established company, and the "kill your babies" culture
they clearly have.

Past behaviour predicts future behaviour, and so people start to notice that
and lose trust, which is a problem when you start asking for significant
investments from your customers (e.g. Stadia or Nest).

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paulryanrogers
> Since they're so large, that creates a discrepancy between the stability you
> would expect from an established company, and the "kill your babies" culture
> they clearly have.

Curious why they don't spin some of these out, or sell to, independent
businesses. Reader looks like it could have at least been profitable.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Curious why they don't spin some of these out, or sell to, independent
> businesses. Reader looks like it could have at least been profitable.

Probably because of self-competition and proprietary shared dependencies;
Reader, IIRC, was killed partially because it was incompatible with the way
some of it's internal infrastructure dependencies were being evolved to
support other services with more promising business prospects; it couldn't
practically be sold off as is (and even if the infrastructure was forked, the
people _maintaining_ it wouldn't go with it, since they were being retasked.)

And lots of Google products that are killed are killed in favor of other
Google products with overlapping markets, so selling them off would mean
Google would be fueling competition to the services it wanted to focus on.

In many cases, I suspect _both_ factors apply to individual products.

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alienallys
This is the reason I'm sceptical of signing up for Google Stadia. People are
heavily betting it would fail, and Google being Google will be quick to
shutdown when it sees that.

~~~
tzakrajs
Google would need to solve speed of light problems for Stadia to be
successful. It's not that people are betting against Google, they are betting
on their understanding of physics.

Stadia is going to be the luke warm product that OnLive was and then Google
will shutter it. AT&T also tried to do this kind of service in limited markets
with fiber optics to the home, servers near the last mile, and a partnership
with nvidia for rapid decode/encode. Didn't stick. Why will Google be
successful?

~~~
sidibe
Light travels 186 miles per ms and a company like Google can put machines all
over the place. The speed of light is really not an issue compared to other
network overheads which can be improved.

~~~
tzakrajs
Again, AT&T tried this and there was still noticeable lag.

~~~
SmirkingRevenge
Nvidia's current service (in beta) does really well. Google's project stream
demo went really well for many people. But obviously, one's experience will be
contingent upon internet providers, ultimately.

So... Stadia, along with all other current and future streaming services, are
going to really suck for a lot of people.

But... they are going to be really amazing for a lot of people too.

Best-case latency should be as low or lower than the latency many play with on
their consoles.

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rograndom
I saw this at a the Google booth at trade show right around launch. There was
a big panel with information and a 1/3 page take-away with the same
information. I tried talking to people at the booth about it but they could
only help with with AdWords and didn't know much about the other product apart
that there was a flyer I could take.

Filed it away as "interesting if it actually gains momentum" and promptly
forgot about it until a couple of months ago when a co-worker saw the same
booth at another tradeshow and said we should look into it. Saw no further
information online than what was at the booth, but made a ticket on Trello to
try to contact someone.

Guess I can take that ticket off now.

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Ultramanoid
At this point, using any service from Google makes no sense, really. On top of
many other reasons, zero trust in the service surviving ( or just reaching ! )
a two year period at least.

Obligatory : [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/04/googles-constant-
pro...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/04/googles-constant-product-
shutdowns-are-damaging-its-brand/)

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JaimeThompson
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.

~~~
izacus
It seems to have worked for many years now with Google reporting record
revenue pretty much every year until now.

Why do you think switching to a model where Google bleeds money on
unprofitable products will help anything?

~~~
arcticbull
That's a false dichotomy. Just because a system is profitable doesn't mean it
will be moving forward or that there aren't more effective operating models
out there. Long-term success of a company relies on its ability to adapt. IMO
this kind of development cycle has worked up till now, but moving forward, I'd
hope they're much more thoughtful and methodical about what they choose to
launch and how as it is in fact hurting their brand.

~~~
izacus
And yet your post (and downvotes) still don't really answer the question: What
kind of basis/proof/data is the idea that Google should change it's massively
profitable strategy based on? Which metrics besides "gut feeling" or "I don't
like it"?

~~~
arcticbull
It’s a good question, but one I could think of is something relating to
success of new products. Ideally you never launch an outright flop, Apple’s
had maybe 2 or 3. You can take their strategy and “be right most of the time”
or you can reinforce the importance of product market fit and understanding
instead of spaghetti model. There’s always an opportunity for research and
understanding prior to development, and hiring people who have launched
similar successful products. That doesn’t require a pivot just a bit more
investment early on and the return can be tracked as a function of success of
new products.

~~~
scarface74
The only major flop that I can think that Apple has had in the last decade is
the trash can Mac Pro and that market is so small for Apple it didn’t really
affect revenue that much. I think the HomePod may be a flop.

But the difference is that the products that flopped aren’t platforms that
people came to depend on.

~~~
arcticbull
The iPod Hi-Fi was another, and lest we forget Ping, RIP.

~~~
scarface74
I did say in the last decade. The iPod Hifi was discontinued September 2007. I
can list many failures before then - the MacTV, the 20th anniversary Mac, the
entire Performa line, the Pippin, the Mac clone program, the Apple III,
eWorld, Newton, Cube, System 7 Pro, OpenDoc (and CyberDog),....

~~~
arcticbull
You’re definitely right that the Hi-Fi was earlier, I considered it in the
iPod era but you are nonetheless correct. Ping expired September 2012 ^_^

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woranl
Also killed by Google
[https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)

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dragonwriter
Well, one of it's blog management tools: this one was an India-limited beta
tool that connected to Blogger or WordPress, but Google also seems to have
blog management tools with some overlap built in with Blogger, and with Site
Kit by Google for WordPress.

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andrewshadura
They're also shutting down Google Trip replacing it with a website
(google.com/travel) which is less capable (e.g. you cannot add reservations)
and there isn't at the moment any mobile app replacement.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Never used Trip and don't know how it works, but
[https://www.kayak.com/](https://www.kayak.com/) lets you store flight/hotel
reservations and sends you notifications about them. Also has mobile apps.

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dreamcompiler
Every time I see a new Google product I think "Oh good. Another Google manager
got promoted. Won't hurt me at all as long as I avoid that product."

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Kye
Blogger and Feedburner will probably be the last Google services to shut down.
Despite perennial portents of doom for them, they're used heavily on Google's
own blogs and get major updates every 1-2 years.

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ocdtrekkie
Googlers were amongst public Google+'s most prolific users, and Google+
commenting was the way comments were handled on all of these Google blogs
right up until the shut down. Internal use does not protected Google products
from their fall.

~~~
jdofaz
Agree with your point but google+ wasn’t shutdown, just isn’t free now. You
can still use it with your organization if you pay for gsuite.

