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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: 2, Insightful) by imperious_rex on Thursday April 04 2019, @01:24AM (2 children)
Google 2019 is certainly a far cry from Google 2004. Remember Google Labs? They used to have a bunch of experimental things going on, some of them were wacky, but some were pretty cool (remember Froogle, their online shopping search engine?). I never used Google+, so I don't miss it one bit. But I agree, this constant killing of services is hurting Google's rep. Why use a Google service at all if its just going to get killed off a few years down the road? The only service of Google that I really enjoyed using was Google Finance. It was simple, clean and great for researching potential stock buys. But 2 years ago they quietly pulled the plug on Google Finance, forcing me to get by with Yahoo Finance instead. It's not as slick or clean, but it largely gets the basics done. I currently don't use Google for search anymore (thanks Duck Duck Go!) and and only use GMail and Google Maps. I really hope they don't kill off GMail.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Thursday April 04 2019, @01:48AM
They have been ruining Gmail as much as they possibly can for years to make it worse to use. All it takes is for Google to get bored of it and it's gone.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Thursday April 04 2019, @08:07AM
Google Maps has changed a lot as well - I prefer OSM [openstreetmap.org] for most things now. In some ways it is not as good, but OSM deliberately don't develop their online maps much, as their intention is not to grow use of their servers*. The huge advantage of OSM is that scripts, XHR, and images are served only from openstreetmap.org, and it works when access to the piwik web analytics subdomain of openstreetmap.org is blocked. Google's extensive use of scripting and web analytics bogs down my machine, and it is not easy to block without compromising functionality.
Some of the Google Maps capability is eye-catching, and useful (being able to drag routes when planning is nice) - but, the version I see (when I turn off uMatrix and uBlock Origin) still doesn't give house number/lot number/block numbers, and is plastered with marker symbols advertising businesses, and after 5 seconds of waiting for thing to finish updating, I get bored.
*OSM tile usage policies are here [osmfoundation.org]. Note: "OpenStreetMap data is free for everyone to use. Our tile servers are not." Full set of policies set by the Open Street Map Foundation are here [osmfoundation.org]. For clarity, the legal aspects [wikipedia.org] of the use of OpenStreetMap data have been controversial, and OpenStreetMap data are now licensed under the Open Database Licence [wikipedia.org] rather than the previously used Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence (CC BY-SA). The transition was not without friction.