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Google's constant product shutdowns are damaging its brand
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.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Wednesday April 03 2019, @07:35PM (2 children)
I absolutely use duckduckgo, albiet with the understanding that google is always a !g away.
(Score: 3, Funny) by deimtee on Thursday April 04 2019, @12:54AM (1 child)
I use DDG because even without the G tracking, it is now on average a better search engine.
It's not better than Google was back when their pagerank search was new and amazing, but Google's results are now so full of ads and irrelevant crap that I can find stuff faster on DDG.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 04 2019, @03:45AM
I much prefer StartPage.com over DDG. But it seems DDG has become more well-known. Perhaps because of Android?