All your favorite dead products from the past are back:
Google held its I/O conference earlier this month, and for longtime Google watchers, the event felt like a seance. Google CEO Sundar Pichai stepped on stage for his keynote address and channeled the spirits of long-dead Google products. "I'm hearing... something about an Android tablet? And a smartwatch?" he seemed to say.
By my count, "resurrecting the past" accounted for around half of the company's major announcements. In all of these cases, Google would be in a much stronger position if it had committed to a long-term plan and continuously iterated on that plan.
Unfortunately, the company doesn't have that kind of top-down direction. Instead, for most of the resurrected products, Google is trying to catch up to competitors after years of standing still. There's a question we have to ask for every announcement: "Will things be different this time?"
[...] Some of the biggest tablet news coming from the show was that Google is truly committing to tablet app development again. The company announced it would bring tablet interfaces to over 20 Google apps, and it showed off screenshots for most of them.
[...] Google also announced a new tablet, the Pixel Tablet, with a release scheduled for the very distant date of "sometime in 2023." It's a widescreen, large-looking tablet, and regular phone apps will not look good on it. [...]
Google has been working on a resurrection of Wear OS, with Samsung in tow as a major partner. As part of this new partnership, Samsung is dumping its Tizen OS and bringing its hardware to Wear OS, starting with the Galaxy Watch 4 launch in August 2021. [...]
With I/O came the next part of this plan: the Pixel Watch is real. This is Google's first smartwatch hardware despite the company technically making a smartwatch OS for the past eight years. [...]
Google Wallet is back! Google's payment system is deep into the Google failure cycle and is now running on rebrand No. 4 after previously being known as "Google Pay." It's only natural to run out of ideas for your fourth rebrand, so this is the second time Google has used "Google Wallet" as a product name. [...]
Google also showed off an augmented reality headset at I/O. It was explicitly not a product, but rather a sneak preview of a prototype the company is working on. Of course, Google started this whole AR goggles idea a decade ago with the launch of Google Glass in 2012. [...]
Like most Google products in the Sundar Pichai era, what will really matter for all of these resurrections is if Google continues to care about them for several years. Way too many Google products seem to have a one-year roadmap. The company pins 100 percent of its hopes on a project's initial launch, and the product is canceled if it isn't an overnight success. [...]
So what's the likelihood that your new Pixel Watch will be still getting software updates five years from now?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday May 24 2022, @09:15PM (5 children)
I think it depends on how many times they can cancel and then reintroduce and then cancel and then reintroduce the pixel watch in a five year span.
10 INTRODUCE PRODUCT
20 CANCEL PRODUCT
30 GOSUB 10
40 RETURN
50 END
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday May 24 2022, @09:37PM (2 children)
Just apply a little balm and you're all set!
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24 2022, @10:38PM (1 child)
Don't say that in an airport
(Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Tuesday May 24 2022, @10:51PM
It's okay, I've got a little balm in my carrion.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 3, Touché) by beernutz on Tuesday May 24 2022, @10:04PM (1 child)
What IS the call stack size limit of a google product? 8)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday May 24 2022, @10:53PM
We'll find out when it hits the RETURN statement and the stack unwinds.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25 2022, @12:18AM
Will the battery last that long?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25 2022, @01:02AM (1 child)
I use Google Voice to text from my laptop (hate tiny keyboards/keypads). It wasn't mentioned in tfa, so maybe they will just leave it alone?
The code could use some bug fixing, as it is, it only seems to stay up for a few days before the browser tab has to be closed and Voice opened fresh. Weird bugs start happening, for example, after a few days I can no longer delete a text--that's a sure sign it needs to be started fresh.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25 2022, @05:40AM
I used GV with microg until recently when it stopped working. So, they are definitely doing something with it. I think it is a profitable product, so will probably stick around, but maybe some of the free bits will disappear?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25 2022, @01:53AM
The Google turd has been circling the bowl since management school
clones were installed by Wall Street.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25 2022, @02:23AM
Tablet, watches, ... and other products that had been in existence for "decades" only became excessively big because Apple spent billions on lifestyle marketing...
You're an Advertising company that controls like 90% of the interweb's economy, Google. Just grab any old shit and force the web that's dependent on you to shill it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pTamok on Wednesday May 25 2022, @07:09AM (3 children)
Google/Alphabet has no history of long-term product support. They are not even saying "It's different this time. I'll change.", like a cheating husband. It takes years to build a good reputation, and one event to destroy it. Google/Alphabet have not put in the work to deserve any credibility on claims of long-term support. It's OK to be fooled once, twice maybe, but continually letting them fool you would be illogical.
I'd love to be shown to be wrong. I have a very strong suspicion that any hope is forlorn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25 2022, @06:18PM (2 children)
Like they dropped Maps, Docs, and that wasteland that is GMail...
I agree that Google has abandoned so many projects that I'm hesitant to adopt ANYTHING new that they put out (which yes, makes it a self-fulfilling prophesy). But saying they have no history of long-term product support is probably a step too far on the hyperbole meter.
/pedant
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Wednesday May 25 2022, @08:04PM (1 child)
Maps, Docs, Mail, Calendar, Photos, Android, Keep... and Search.
Now compare that to the 267 killed products [killedbygoogle.com]. Ok, not all of them were relevant, but many were used by a lot of people that were left in the cold.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Mykl on Wednesday May 25 2022, @11:18PM
Calendar is about to (effectively) be killed by removing the ability to use CalDAV connections. This means it will no longer be possible to incorporate your Google Calendar into the default iOS calendar app, MS-Outlook on the Desktop or many other services - it's Google's app or nothing.