
Google Is Shutting Down Google Helpouts, Its Expert Video Chat Service - kshatrea
http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/13/google-pulls-its-helpouts-mobile-applications-from-the-app-stores/
======
simon_weber
Too bad; I've enjoyed running my free CS/programming Helpout [1].

Besides the decline in user growth that Google mentions, here are the major
problems I saw while using it:

* hosting a free Helpout meant dealing with constant no-shows [2]. I started charging $1/hour and then refunding it to folks who showed up.

* attendees of free Helpouts were rarely prepared

* the scheduling system was very limited (especially compared to Google Calendar)

That said, when everything worked, it was an amazing experience.

[1]
[https://helpouts.google.com/103350848301234480355/ls/a344f06...](https://helpouts.google.com/103350848301234480355/ls/a344f06e06d4d5db)

[2] [https://simon.codes/2013/11/07/google-helpouts-first-
impress...](https://simon.codes/2013/11/07/google-helpouts-first-
impressions.html)

~~~
igorgue
How are you gonna do it now? I have a friend who I help but I really don't
have time.

Also, why did you do it for free? I've found when I help somebody for 10 mins
or so it usually gets me in the mood of programming my own stuff.

~~~
simon_weber
> How are you gonna do it now?

I'm not sure.

Ideally I'd have a site where I can put my email and encourage folks to write
me. This has worked better than video chat for me, since:

1) folks rubber duck [1] themselves while writing, so they ask better
questions.

2) it's asynchronous, so we don't have to find a matching slot in our
schedules (and don't commit to an amount of time beforehand)

I've redirected all my Helpouts schedule requests to email recently and it's
worked well.

> Also, why did you do it for free?

I just never considered charging. I don't think I could do so and feel good
about it with the amount of free help I've received (irc, SO, hacker school,
college...).

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging)

------
Chinjut
As prophesied in the top comment (by user24) right here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6248771](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6248771)

~~~
netinstructions
This makes me think of the launch of Google Domains[1]. One of the top
comments was "What happens when Google sunsets this product?" which is a great
question we should all be asking before investing resources (money or time)
into a new Google product. Maybe even more so the ones that are labeled as
beta. We should also be skeptical of their customer service, because as many
of the comments show[2] users are wary of this too.

I made the choice to use Google Domains last week for a pet project because:
1) Google has been good at letting users get their data _out_ of their system,
and they give a long notice of impending sunsets and opportunities to migrate
away. 2) Google specifically called out email, phone, and chat support for
this new product.

So far I've been very happy and they addressed a few of my particular needs.
But I do worry about lock-in or wasted time.

Maybe one of the questions I'd ask upset Helpout users is how much time was
spent "wasted" or if any of it was useful. Perhaps Google was trying to _help
out_ everyone (make them more skeptical of Google products, learn from their
mistakes, etc.) by sunsetting Helpouts! ;)

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7934146](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7934146)
[2][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7933870](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7933870)

~~~
dragonwriter
> This makes me think of the launch of Google Domains[1]. One of the top
> comments was "What happens when Google sunsets this product?" which is a
> great question we should all be asking before investing resources (money or
> time) into a new Google product.

Nothing really special about "Google" here.

Any product from any company runs the risk of (1) the company failing, taking
the product with it, or (2) the company canceling the product. The more a
company is committed to mitigating (2) by maintaining products that aren't
profitable, the greater risk (1) is.

~~~
jfoster
Actually there is something special about Google for that service. It's not
their core business.

Unlike other registrars who would typically be happy with being profitable &
having typical growth, Google may be unsatisfied with such a result and
consider shutting it down. Namecheap will keep their business open even if
they have a soft quarter.

Further, a service for domain registration will struggle because it's targeted
at an audience with heightened awareness of Google's tendency to put their
products & services onto the chopping block. They've created a chicken & egg
problem for themselves; they will shutdown their products because they don't
get enough traction, and they don't get enough traction because everyone
expects them to shutdown.

~~~
saalweachter
Eh, startups 'pivot' all the time. Fun fact: Mongo, formerly 10gen, was
originally a cloud/web-hosting service. They pivoted to just publish their
database, which is cool, but if you were one of the early customers it kind of
leaves you high and dry.

~~~
mehrdada
Well, not all companies are get-big-quick-fast-and-sell-or-die Silicon Valley
VC-funded "startups". Many registrars have been around for years and making
decent money doing that and are likely to be around for time to come.

~~~
saalweachter
Iron Mountain was a mushroom farm for 20 years, until the mushroom market
crashed and the owner needed another use for his abandoned iron mine. Tandy
Leather took a brief detour through consumer electronics, purchasing Radio
Shack and selling the Tandy computer, before eventually going back to leather.

~~~
jfoster
It took a mushroom market crash to ruin Iron Mountain. Was there a crash in
people seeking help with stuff between Google launching & shutting down
Helpouts?

The point is that Google didn't need Helpouts, Google Wallet, Google Reader,
Google Checkout, etc. They have a core business. If one of those products had
been their core business, they likely would have kept going. Each of the
products they shutdown is typically profitable to some degree, or could be
made profitable. Google shuts them down because they've have too little
traction for Google to stay interested, but if they were companies in their
own right, they would likely continue.

------
mojuba
> The Helpouts community includes some engaged and loyal contributors, but
> unfortunately, it hasn't grown at the pace we had expected.

(from helpouts.google.com)

Google feels more and more like a company that suffers from gigantomania (a
nice service "hasn't grown at the pace we had expected" \- so it should be no
less than Google Search?) on the one hand, and inability to bring new products
to the market on the other.

I have a theory that there is no such thing as bad idea. Any initial idea, be
it seemingly good or bad in the beginning, requires refinement, development
and a lot of solid work. If you look at any successful product or service
today, the initial idea wouldn't have necessarily be qualified as good. It's a
thousand of new derivative and auxiliary ideas that make the original one
interesting and eventually also successful.

So according to this theory, if a company shuts down its own products one
after another, and screws up others that used to work well - that company is
clearly malfunctioning. In case of Google it doesn't seem to be bad
engineering, in fact Google can be considered one of the top few companies in
the world in terms of technical quality. It seems to be more on the product
management side.

Google, you need to change, fast. I have a feeling your countdown timer may
have started already.

~~~
munificent
> If you look at any successful product or service today, the initial idea
> wouldn't have necessarily be qualified as good.

Confirmation bias. You aren't looking at the 100s of _un_ -successful products
and services out there.

~~~
mojuba
I am looking, and many of them seem like good ideas. Others are bad. So what?

~~~
dragonwriter
> I am looking, and many of them seem like good ideas. Others are bad. So
> what?

Upthread you said:

> I have a theory that there is no such thing as bad idea.

You seem to have just rejected that theory.

~~~
mojuba
Let me then rephrase my hypothesis (of course technically it can't be a
theory): any sufficiently novel initial idea, whether good or bad in our
perception at first glance, can be brought to success by amending and
developing it.

~~~
bronson
So, according to your hypothesis, guaranteed success requires only two things:
novelty and hard work.

Are you serious?

~~~
mojuba
I am serious about one thing: there is no such thing as bad idea. Any of the
Google's discontinued products weren't a failure. It's Google's product
management who failed, not the products.

------
jackreichert
This happens a lot, before using any service by Google I tend to ask myself,
twice, "if they shut this down, which they might very well do, what is my
backup plan?" Honestly, it's hard to make a good case to rely on them for much
outside of their core products.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I did a focus group hangout with a Google staff member many months ago, and
under the NDA I signed, and I can't discuss which product it was for. Most
importantly, the staff member asked me what's stopping me from using their
service over a competitor's service.

I replied, "I know they'll still be supporting/providing the service 1-2 years
from now".

~~~
emehrkay
How scary is the "Google could easily enter that market" line now-a-days?

~~~
toomuchtodo
I think in B2C markets, its definitely a fear. Witness how many people use
Gmail because its free. But B2B products? I'd have no fear of Google coming
into my market. I'd be more worried if it was Amazon, Apple, or Facebook to a
lesser extent.

~~~
mattmanser
Be fair, I started using Gmail all those years ago because it was awesome. And
although it's stagnated and they're about to fuck up the desktop UI by
"Materializing" it, it's still pretty good.

------
blueintegral
I offered help with electronics projects and had maybe a dozen sessions. I
charged the default $1/minute and really enjoyed it, because I got to hear
about all kinds of cool things people were working on, and I got the
satisfaction of helping them, and it helped pay for my own projects. I'm kinda
bummed they're shutting down.

~~~
FlailFast
Me too. I did free math tutoring for a while and it was a such a good feeling
when I helped folks understand a previously difficult concept. Had a big
problem with random cancelations, which made scheduling really difficult and
made me less enthused to Helpout. Still, I'm sad to see it go.

------
cannonpult
This is the first time I've heard of Google Helpouts

~~~
devanti
same. never heard of them before

------
DanBlake
Anyone looking for a alternative should check out
[http://liveninja.com](http://liveninja.com) which is the largest and most
refined player in the space.

~~~
r00fus
Helpouts had tons of advisors for home/kitchen remodeling which I simply don't
see at liveninja.

Which is unfortunate - I was thrilled when I found that on helpouts, but now
that I'm actually starting a remodel project it's unfortunate that I can't get
basic help for relative cheap costs.

Google really needs to do some tying of their services together - not in a
Google+ kind of way where it's unwanted, but if, for example, they had
helpouts to bolster Google product support and pushed some of that massive
interest/traffic into the service, it might have found its mark sooner.

~~~
jyiin
Try [http://fountain.com](http://fountain.com). There are a lot of home /
kitchen experts available.

------
filmgirlcw
I'm in no way surprised. I thought this was a questionable idea when it
debuted and it never struck me as something that could actually grow into
something popular.

Part of the issue, I think, is that Google as a company fundamentally does not
understand content. (YouTube is the one exception here and even with YouTube,
the way the whole YouTube partner program works, the way the ad side is run
and other aspects make it clear that they still really don't get content --
they just happen to have a great platform and a few people trying to convince
people who make more than them to think outside the algorithm).

It was an interesting idea but marred with poor execution and a dwindling
Google+ audience.

------
eyeareque
Google and Googlers for that matter always want to work on the newest cool
thing, maybe something that has been done before. If you're a developer at
Google would you rather work on maintaining something like Google helpouts or
Google voice? Or would you want to work on the next big thing? I know what I
would want on my resume.

The downside is that Google seems to abandon things. I feel like they need to
have a better exit strategy since some people really like the products they
put out to pasture. I liked how they outsourced Google wave for example.

~~~
eyeareque
edits: "maybe something that hasn't been done before"

"How they open sourced Google wave"

------
noarchy
The first clue I have to there being a problem is that this is the first time
I've heard of Google Helpouts. I use a wide assortment of Google products, but
never heard a thing about this one.

------
gz5
What if Google took the "enable" approach, instead of the "content owner"
approach:

\+ Enable existing expert communities (and developing ones) to add voice and
video consultation via libraries and APIs that leverage WebRTC</p>

\+ Enable choice of Google ID or other IDs

\+ Enable choice of Google Payments or other

\+ Enable record and streaming options via YouTube

I know the above doesn't have the same short-term business model upside as
Google Helpouts did, but, then again, would Helpouts still be around today if
it took the enable path?

~~~
BrainInAJar
Google's profit model isn't to enable, it's to collect & warehouse massive
amounts of sensitive user data.

------
graeme
I tried this. Among other things, I do LSAT tutoring. I don't think I saw a
single inquiry.

People have specific places they go to look for LSAT tutors, and google
helpouts wasn't one of them.

LSAT is more specific than some other niches, but I imagine this same problem
occurred in most areas.

~~~
lbotos
The biggest problem is they needed to be the "Backend" here. If they just got
a cut of the 30% LSAT/SAT sites and those sites simplified their stack it
would be a win all around. Look at AirPair, Their core product was their
network using hipchat and Hangouts to accomplish the goal. If sites could
leverage this technology (read: google marketed it as such, a technology, not
and end product) I'd suspect some of those sites would have leveraged it.

~~~
graeme
I put it on my site, but no one used it. It was on the sidebar of every page.
People just clicked on the "tutoring" page instead.

I'm not sure it would have worked for LSAT/SAT at all. People seem to want to
talk to a human before they book a lesson, since they're expensive.

In theory, people could find it very useful to consult an expert for five
minutes. But in practice the sort of people who would want to do that don't
even look for a tutor. The typical tutoring students wants hours. If the
client is a parent, then they're looking to hand off the problem to an expert.
(For almost all SAT tutoring, the client is a parent.)

Could you see this working outside of a technical niche?

------
Sniffnoy
I was surprised to find that this isn't among Gwern's 10 Google services most
likely to be shut down[0], but I think it may just be too recent to have been
included; I don't know that he's ever re-run the analysis.

[0]
[http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns#predictions](http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns#predictions)

~~~
gwern
Hangouts was launched 4 November 2013, so it came after I finished it. I did
ad it to my followup list for the 2018 update when I evaluate the predictions
and update the data to take a second look at the model results, but the
followup list is stashed as a comment in the page source so unsurprisingly you
didn't see it.

------
tzm
Plot twist: No need for Helpouts when Hangouts become embedded within search
results.

------
oafitupa
If you use Google products, you are gonna have a bad time.

Find alternatives and become free. You don't need to replace everything at the
same time, you can do it one product at a time.

------
whiddershins
Google Helpouts was the greatest thing ever when it first launched, for me,
from a hiring helpers point of view ... I got amazing help solving some coding
problems for a reasonable price ... really saved me from a terrible jam I was
in.

But over time it seemed like less and less "helpers" were available, so
obviously it wasn't working for everyone else.

------
BorisMelnik
No need to be negative, but this was a failure from the beginning. I tried a
number of times to "helpout" but was not accepted. I'm no industry expert, but
I do have some things to freely offer and thought it was weird that I had to
wait and wait and wait to become accepted and by the time that happened, I was
no longer interested.

------
weitingliu
Codementor is alive and growing - we are an open marketplace for on-demand
developer help and longterm mentorship. Anyone is welcome to apply as mentors.
Once you are approved, you can set your rate however you'd like.

Check us out: [https://www.codementor.io](https://www.codementor.io)

------
classdo
Try ClassDo ( [https://classdo.com](https://classdo.com) ). There are teachers
and students from 140 countries. It's also featured on the Wall Street Journal
[http://on.wsj.com/1yhzGCK](http://on.wsj.com/1yhzGCK)

------
murbard2
The service was a good idea, but it probably needs to be decentralized to
avoid a central party bearing legal liabilities.

Run by Google, it was killed by all the regulation surrounding the sale of
services. Can't give medical advice, can't get payments in Europe, etc.

------
bambax
Google Answers was great because it was text based and asynchronous; Google
Helpouts was not so great because it was video based and (mainly) synchronous.

Why didn't they put more resources into Answers? And what were their
expectations for Helpouts?

------
perseusprime
Can they atleast open source this technology? I can use it for my business.

------
vincvinc
Just wondering: why not spin off a separate company to continue the service?
Because they don't want to lose the engineers working on this? I guess that
seems more important to the company?

------
drippingfist
If you're looking for an alternative you should check out www.vexbook.com -
the calibre of people is higher. It's over Skype or Facetime so it works with
any smartphone.

------
ryannevius
Is this service anything at all like HackHands?

------
bingobob
it should be moved over to youtube and market in a different way.

Google really need a product realigning on a few things.

------
__dev_unull
I wonder what this means for startups like fluentify.com

------
r109
#GoogleFAIL

------
rememberlenny
I misread this as Google Hangouts.

