This is a really helpful comment and I like the nod to transparency. Thank you! Not sure we could get quite so concrete publicly (there are lots of unknowns and wouldn't want to make commitments we can't keep), but aligning goals between the business, team, and users/customers is a great idea and something we can improve on.

Also, is Area 120 the new Google Labs? I thought they killed off the whole Labs thing a couple of years ago? (The irony is not lost on me here.)

I'm a stranger on the internet and even I can feel the burn.

Good luck.

Products come and products go, this is not unique to Google. Killed By Google is cited as some sort of proof, but that goes back to _2003_, and does nothing to talk about whether the product was replaced with something new that users were transitioned to.

Then you have a company like Microsoft that keeps things around in perpetuity, but sometimes to the chagrin of users who want new features added or you get incongruent UX (you can still find plenty of very old apps in Windows 10). And this is fine too, but it's not a meme and so never comes up.

It's not a meme. It's a very real problem that prevents people from wanting to invest in Google services. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy too when people don't use these services, then they get shuttered for low usage.

Google has a huge amount of work to do to earn the trust they've burned, and responses like this damage the cause further. You've cemented firmly in my mind that staying the hell away from this and anything Google has to offer is the right choice, as they clearly don't take this problem seriously and won't even acknowledge it.

I really think you should reconsider.

>Then you have a company like Microsoft that keeps things around in perpetuity, but sometimes to the chagrin of users who want new features added or you get incongruent UX (you can still find plenty of very old apps in Windows 10). And this is fine too, but it's not a meme and so never comes up.

I'm not exactly the biggest fan of MS, but our company has saved tens of thousands of dollars in software costs because we could use old software designed for Win XP/7 on Win 10 w/o re-buying the software from the vendor. (Biotech s/w costs can get super crazy, esp with 21CFR validation)

It's also a consequence of the business models that Google has explicitly chosen, i.e. your employer has chosen to incur this reputation.

While products come and go is true, it's more a matter of scale on why this reputation exists.

I know I personally have been burned by the platform I was using going out from beneath me. That memory comes up each time I am considering between an AWS (where its never happened to me), azure, and google cloud solution.

Not sure where the "elite" or "450k/year" is coming from as well in the parent comment. Perhaps give that comment another chance to see what they are actually saying?

Disc: Googler.

OP brought up another point about Google being a 20 year old company so you are ought to see lot of products being shut down over the time. While the reply had nothing to do with that but instead resorted to ad hominem attack.

Unlike me, he has absurd wealth. I’m lucky if I hit $200k after 3 years tenure at Amazon.

Definitely not a resourcing issue, entirely an organizational culture and philosophy decision to be made.

Google saying “if we get X users we won’t cancel it” both sounds like a hostage note, and doesn’t matter because we fundamentally don’t trust Google. Without that trust, it doesn’t matter why they say, since it won’t be believed.

Once the distinction between products with long-term commitment and experimental products is super clear with a uniform icon/logo then there'll be less disappointment and upset future customers

I'd say they should use the same logo whether it's an area120 project, an experimental chrome extension from YT team, some research experiment, some VR experimental app, etc.

further, we're never going to get sustainable businesses out of google because they don't have the patience relative to their search and advertising behemoths. these kinds of projects are designed to keep the more adventurous developers in the fold with golden handcuffs, to both reduce existential threats to google and as a held front in the developer wars against other tech companies. lastly, constraints spur ingenuity (business and technical), and google engineers are just too comfortable for that.

all that (and more) means that google is simply not in the business of creating new businesses, no matter the rhetoric. unless something drastic changes, there's no reason to invest in any new google development.

Feedly picked up 3 million new users in the two weeks following Google shutting down Reader. Based on that alone I would never trust Google not to shut down a product that seems popular and well-used.

Literally the only thing that would change my perception of Google's short-termism would be if they don't shut down any products in the next 10 years.