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Google’s constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand | Ars Techn


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Yup, it's why I have been moving all of my services away from Google.

 

 

It's only April, and 2019 has already been an absolutely brutal year for Google's product portfolio. The Chromecast Audio was discontinued January 11. YouTube annotations were removed and deleted January 15. Google Fiber packed up and left a Fiber city on February 8. Android Things dropped IoT support on February 13. Google's laptop and tablet division was reportedly slashed on March 12. Google Allo shut down on March 13. The "Spotlight Stories" VR studio closed its doors on March 14. The goo.gl URL shortener was cut off from new users on March 30. Gmail's IFTTT support stopped working March 31.

 

And today, April 2, we're having a Google Funeral double-header: both Google+ (for consumers) and Google Inbox are being laid to rest. Later this year, Google Hangouts "Classic" will start to wind down, and somehow also scheduled for 2019 is Google Music's "migration" to YouTube Music, with the Google service being put on death row sometime afterward.

 

We are 91 days into the year, and so far, Google is racking up an unprecedented body count. If we just take the official shutdown dates that have already occurred in 2019, a Google-branded product, feature, or service has died, on average, about every nine days.

 

Some of these product shutdowns have transition plans, and some of them (like Google+) represent Google completely abandoning a user base. The specifics aren't crucial, though. What matters is that every single one of these actions has a negative consequence for Google's brand, and the near-constant stream of shutdown announcements makes Google seem more unstable and untrustworthy than it has ever been. Yes, there was the one time Google killed Google Wave nine years ago or when it took Google Reader away six years ago, but things were never this bad.

 

For a while there has been a subset of people concerned about Google's privacy and antitrust issues, but now Google is eroding trust that its existing customers have in the company. That's a huge problem. Google has significantly harmed its brand over the last few months, and I'm not even sure the company realizes it.

 

https://arstechnica....ging-its-brand/

 

In case you all are wondering about my Google+ Archlinux group, we have moved to MeWe for now.

 

So far this year I have from:

  • Gmail/Inbox = Riseup.net(I can get you an invite if you want) using Thunderbird.
  • Drive = Nextcloud (self hosting cloud) and Pcloud
  • Google Music = Spotify and I am about to host my own using Ampache. I use I use AntennaPod for podcasts.
  • Chromium = Brave (I know that it is built on chromium but I like the features). I will fire up chromium if I need to be logged in for something.
  • Google search = DuckDuckGo (once in a while I will have to use google as it's better when troubleshooting technical issues)
  • Hangouts = Signal and of course IRC (as always)
  • Google+ = MeWe and Diaspora. MeWe has groups so my Archlinux group is there.
  • Keep Notes = Turtl (encrypted notes synced across devices and encrypted locally)

Most of these offer client-side encryption and are open source (except for spotify obviously ;)). Also, most can be found in the F-Droid (opensource) app store.

 

What non-google services are you using?

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Well that is because Microsoft tried to jump into a market that was already dominated by Amazon. They did the same thing with their Windows Phones, they tried to jump into the market when apple (well not really as apple has a low market share) and google already dominated it.

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Well that is because Microsoft tried to jump into a market that was already dominated by Amazon. They did the same thing with their Windows Phones, they tried to jump into the market when apple (well not really as apple has a low market share) and google already dominated it.

Your timeline is a bit off . There have been plenty of complaints about consumer services and goods that MSFT has abandoned but Ggle is in its own league when it comes to killing off products and services.
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Yup, it's why I have been moving all of my services away from Google.

 

 

It's only April, and 2019 has already been an absolutely brutal year for Google's product portfolio. The Chromecast Audio was discontinued January 11. YouTube annotations were removed and deleted January 15. Google Fiber packed up and left a Fiber city on February 8. Android Things dropped IoT support on February 13. Google's laptop and tablet division was reportedly slashed on March 12. Google Allo shut down on March 13. The "Spotlight Stories" VR studio closed its doors on March 14. The goo.gl URL shortener was cut off from new users on March 30. Gmail's IFTTT support stopped working March 31.

 

And today, April 2, we're having a Google Funeral double-header: both Google+ (for consumers) and Google Inbox are being laid to rest. Later this year, Google Hangouts "Classic" will start to wind down, and somehow also scheduled for 2019 is Google Music's "migration" to YouTube Music, with the Google service being put on death row sometime afterward.

 

We are 91 days into the year, and so far, Google is racking up an unprecedented body count. If we just take the official shutdown dates that have already occurred in 2019, a Google-branded product, feature, or service has died, on average, about every nine days.

 

Some of these product shutdowns have transition plans, and some of them (like Google+) represent Google completely abandoning a user base. The specifics aren't crucial, though. What matters is that every single one of these actions has a negative consequence for Google's brand, and the near-constant stream of shutdown announcements makes Google seem more unstable and untrustworthy than it has ever been. Yes, there was the one time Google killed Google Wave nine years ago or when it took Google Reader away six years ago, but things were never this bad.

 

For a while there has been a subset of people concerned about Google's privacy and antitrust issues, but now Google is eroding trust that its existing customers have in the company. That's a huge problem. Google has significantly harmed its brand over the last few months, and I'm not even sure the company realizes it.

 

https://arstechnica....ging-its-brand/

 

In case you all are wondering about my Google+ Archlinux group, we have moved to MeWe for now.

 

So far this year I have from:

  • Gmail/Inbox = Riseup.net(I can get you an invite if you want) using Thunderbird.
  • Drive = Nextcloud (self hosting cloud) and Pcloud
  • Google Music = Spotify and I am about to host my own using Ampache. I use I use AntennaPod for podcasts.
  • Chromium = Brave (I know that it is built on chromium but I like the features). I will fire up chromium if I need to be logged in for something.
  • Google search = DuckDuckGo (once in a while I will have to use google as it's better when troubleshooting technical issues)
  • Hangouts = Signal and of course IRC (as always)
  • Google+ = MeWe and Diaspora. MeWe has groups so my Archlinux group is there.
  • Keep Notes = Turtl (encrypted notes synced across devices and encrypted locally)

Most of these offer client-side encryption and are open source (except for spotify obviously ;)). Also, most can be found in the F-Droid (opensource) app store.

 

What non-google services are you using?

https://thehelm.com/pages/shop is not on your list? for some things, free doesn't seem worth it to me.

 

I am not so heavily invested in these sort of things, most of my stuff is still on my stuff :)

For searches my order is Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google.

email i use my isp and hushmail.

online storage, oneDrive. but not much of my stuff is there, basically things i want to have occasionally on my phone or laptop.

backup service - backblaze.

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securitybreach

Well that is because Microsoft tried to jump into a market that was already dominated by Amazon. They did the same thing with their Windows Phones, they tried to jump into the market when apple (well not really as apple has a low market share) and google already dominated it.

Your timeline is a bit off . There have been plenty of complaints about consumer services and goods that MSFT has abandoned but Ggle is in its own league when it comes to killing off products and services.

 

I never mentioned anything about that, I was only referring to Liz's comment about books (and phones).

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Yup, it's why I have been moving all of my services away from Google.

 

In case you all are wondering about my Google+ Archlinux group, we have moved to MeWe for now.

 

So far this year I have from:

  • Gmail/Inbox = Riseup.net(I can get you an invite if you want) using Thunderbird.
  • Drive = Nextcloud (self hosting cloud) and Pcloud
  • Google Music = Spotify and I am about to host my own using Ampache. I use I use AntennaPod for podcasts.
  • Chromium = Brave (I know that it is built on chromium but I like the features). I will fire up chromium if I need to be logged in for something.
  • Google search = DuckDuckGo (once in a while I will have to use google as it's better when troubleshooting technical issues)
  • Hangouts = Signal and of course IRC (as always)
  • Google+ = MeWe and Diaspora. MeWe has groups so my Archlinux group is there.
  • Keep Notes = Turtl (encrypted notes synced across devices and encrypted locally)

Most of these offer client-side encryption and are open source (except for spotify obviously ;)). Also, most can be found in the F-Droid (opensource) app store.

 

What non-google services are you using?

 

MeWe looks interesting. I'd definitely be interested in a RiseUp invite. Been looking at alternative email and Tutanota was in the lead so far.

 

Others:

  • Drive = Box.com
  • Google Music = Nope, local storage for music. Stream from Soundcloud sometimes.
  • Chromium = Firefox
  • Google search = Startpage, DuckDuckGo, Searx
  • Hangouts = Slack, Telegram (mainly for Ingress community stuff), also have a Discord a/c
  • Google+ = position vacant
  • Keep Notes = Zim wiki locally

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