News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by divbzero on Friday November 18, 2022 @02:27PM (#33660652)
I would also count the following as software successes:

2012 - Google Drive

2017 - Google Meet

Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by aussiesnack on Friday November 18, 2022 @02:35PM (#33660784)
> 2012 - Google Drive

The Linux version is lagging a tad: https://abevoelker.github.io/how-long-since-google-said-a-go...

Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by jeffbee on Friday November 18, 2022 @02:44PM (#33660924)
By a huge margin the two biggest Linux clients of Drive are Android and ChromeOS. "Actually linux" is literally 5+ orders of magnitude smaller. Google maintains and updates 99.999% of Linux drive clients every month.
Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by aussiesnack on Friday November 18, 2022 @03:09PM (#33661313)
I (and Google's comment, and the quoted link) am referring to deskop Linux, as is perfectly obvious.
Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by jeroenhd on Friday November 18, 2022 @03:21PM (#33661471)
For what it's worth, Anbox/Waydroid can run the Android-based GUI quite well. The Android subsystem doesn't integrate too well with native applications, but for things like basic sync and even document editing it works, at least.
Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by aussiesnack on Friday November 18, 2022 @03:31PM (#33661616)
In truth I'm not really looking for a solution. I was snarking really. I was a consistent user (and paid for Google One) until they removed the Google Photos integration, which killed much of the point of it for me.

Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by typon on Friday November 18, 2022 @02:36PM (#33660817)
Zoom's audio + video quality is so much better than Google Meet that I almost feel like companies that use it are getting paid by Google to use it? I have no other explanation.
Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by maliker on Friday November 18, 2022 @02:39PM (#33660846)
Vice versa. Companies paid for a gmail + meet bundle that came in cheaper than gmail + zoom.
Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by devinl on Friday November 18, 2022 @02:50PM (#33661037)
I've been on hundreds of calls for both and have personally had far more issues with zoom than google. I also prefer Google's UI and security model, and Google's pricing is better for companies using gmail.
Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by aantix on Friday November 18, 2022 @03:07PM (#33661289)
Quite the opposite. I used Google Meet a few years back and it was terrible. Not even close to being a Zoom replacement.

But recently we've been holding standups with Google Meet, to give it another try and since it was already bundled with Google Business, and I've been very impressed with the lower latency.

Conversations feel closer to "natural" - I feel like there's less talking over each other.

The UI has become polished.

I was pleasantly surprised.

Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by divbzero on Friday November 18, 2022 @03:24PM (#33661520)
I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by based on my recent usage. I also like that Google Meet is built for the browser by default—no need or pressure to install a desktop app for calls.
Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by asimpletune on Friday November 18, 2022 @02:30PM (#33660710)
Also google voice
Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by crummy on Friday November 18, 2022 @02:39PM (#33660852)
I think Voice is great but it seems a bit abandoned from Google
Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by guyzero on Friday November 18, 2022 @03:08PM (#33661296)
The feature set has not changed much since launch but it's definitely not abandoned.
Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by Fatnino on Friday November 18, 2022 @03:38PM (#33661754)
The feature set has been reduced from the days when voice was still it's own company called grand central.

I had more than one phone number but some time after Google came in they said pick one and the rest have to go.

Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by asimpletune on Saturday November 19, 2022 @03:12AM (#33668161)
You can actually have more than one number still. I do at least. This happens if you add a number by porting your USA cell phone number to google voice. This gives you the option to keep both, although it’s $20 and you have actively elect to make your original google voice number permanent.
Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by dangus on Friday November 18, 2022 @03:05PM (#33661247)
Meet and Drive are big successes in the enterprise space. Google successfully made Workspaces a compelling alternative to Microsoft’s business productivity suite.

I think with that in mind, the fact that Google doesn’t develop their own Slack clone to fit into Workspaces is completely bananas [edit: they actually did do that this year].

Other new product successes listed in this thread are things like Chromecast that only make Google money indirectly and/or represent an essentially meaningless slice of their revenue.

Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by MivLives on Friday November 18, 2022 @03:10PM (#33661319)
They have one it's called spaces. we have it set up as a back up to slack. It's not that spaces (shutdown 2016ish), it's a subfeature of google chat.
Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by dangus on Friday November 18, 2022 @03:24PM (#33661508)
Oh interesting, I never explored in there. Indeed it looks like a Slack clone. Seems to have support for interactive apps similar to Slack as well.

Of course, it still took Google all the way until this year to roll it out.

Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by MivLives on Friday November 18, 2022 @05:55PM (#33663897)
I'm curious if my company will ever fully ditch slack. Meet got good enough that we sorta ditched Zoom. And they keep adjusting our slack tier.
Re:Ask HN: Will Google Ever Launch a Successful New Product ... by JamesianP on Friday November 18, 2022 @03:05PM (#33661261)
As I understood it, Google Drive was mainly just the storage that was previously free with Google Docs (from 2006 or something).