Unfortunately there's a reason teams and people get put on "Double Secret Probation". If consumers find out the team might get shut down they start relying on them less, at which point the probation becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

It got out that one of my favorite restaurants was going to lose their lease for new construction, and didn't have plans to relocate. I moved shortly thereafter and never checked up on them. What actually happened is that the construction project got delayed over a year, and the restaurant stayed, but anyone who didn't live in the immediate vicinity didn't hear about that. Any time I told someone it was still open, the response was happy, but complete surprise.

They opened a kind of a cafe with just a fraction of their menu closer to my house, but the location wasn't great (It's worth paying someone to sit around a potential location for hours on multiple days to see what foot traffic is like. If you're across a high traffic street from a high foot traffic area that doesn't mean you'll see foot traffic) and I'm sure by then the rumor of their demise had affected revenue. So bad location and the food wasn't quite as good as at the old location. Probably staff turnover.

That slow avalanche took three years to shutter the company, and they probably would have been fine if they'd managed to stay out of the local paper.

At this point it's standard fair for Google, in my opinion, a large reason this ended up being unsuccessful was that people were worried it was going to be shutdown.

Oh I’m totally on Team Popcorn at this point, I’m more talking about “hey kids, copying a Google is not the ticket to success”.

Being caught saying “don’t worry” just damages their brand more. What they really need is to declare some things as sacred cows. But you can’t do that after you’ve already lied using the same phrasing.

I can’t believe that I’m defending Google, but this time at least they offered credit or refunds for any purchases. Google not doing this in the past has made me extremely hesitant in paying for new Google devices that feel risky. This will alleviate that worry a bit

It's a very common problem in software that we target 'better' instead of 'good'. Or as we used to call it, "sucks less." It doesn't help that we keep trying to 'disrupt' domains that had no software or had software written by people who know how to write critical systems.

It does sound like they're trying to do better, but it was a long time coming and this still isn't good behavior.

I don't see how this is bad in the consumer's perepctive. Those that didn't use it lose or gain nothing. Those that did use it get their refunds. They don't care about the dev side.I don't think it's bad behavior to shut down something no one watns.

The exec communication with the devs is unfortunate, but a separate matter.

"Stadia is not shutting down" admits no "careful parse.

I mean, HN is read more often then memegen/ I guess they know now.

> When asked what changed from the week prior, Harrison admitted nothing had and told those on the call, “We knew.”

I encourage you to consider looking for work at a company which respects you; you’re worth it.

TBF, if Mcdonalds paid people 100k at age 23 to flip burgers, employees would put up with a lot more BS as well. And that salary for a google newgrad is low balling.