Honestly, I think he was right. Google has a really bad image problem right now where lots of people don't want to get involved with their projects because Google will most likely kill the project just like Reader and Glass.

See my couple of wasted Google Glass devices that will never see an Android update again. Do you think I'll ever buy a Google Android product after they wasted $3k of mine? Do you think I'll buy any more of their tech device blunders like cars or thermostats or other devices? Likely not. It's well established they'll just drop them soon after release anyway.

They are getting the same reputation for software services. There are lots of startups that would have been happy with Reader's usage numbers besides, so they aren't even making decisions everyone would agree are good kills.

With my Android apps, any time someone sends me a bug report or a complaint, I refund them immediately and thank them for the feedback. Does this make me the most money? Hell no. But I have a lot of friendly users who email me constantly with improvements and who aren't mad I'm ripping them off or screwing them over. That's worth a lot too. Google is saving money to screw over users with this Google Code decision and it's definitely not one I agree with.

> Honestly, I think he was right. Google has a really bad image problem right now where lots of people don't want to get involved with their projects because Google will most likely kill the project just like Reader and Glass.

Again, these are two very niche projects. Reader was a niche within a niche. Glass was an experiment that a tiny subset of the population ever even touched first-hand. It never even reached a "1.0".

As early adopters and as technologists, it's easy for us to get upset when our favorite pet project gets killed. But in the end, Reader failed to get any kind of traction beyond its niche. Glass ran into a buzzsaw of negative perception, legislation, and media twisting, in addition to technical challenges. The lessons learned from Glass will be applied to present and future efforts.

Killing reader was a bad idea imo. Yes, it was niche but it was social, attracted influencers and measured relevance.

Glass is clearly very much alive.

Killing reader was a terrible idea. That cut my daily google usage in half and was obviously a key social and relevance asset.

Glass is still very much alive.

> Killing reader was a terrible idea. That cut my daily google usage in half and was obviously a key social and relevance asset.

It sucks for our niche, but ultimately Google Reader was a product that didn't have any appeal beyond said tiny niche. The original goal was to make RSS more accessible beyond technologists, but it failed to reach any kind of mass appeal. Some of this was more to do with RSS/Atom feeds having some ergonomic issues that weren't solved before the social media frenzy took hold.

Failure is when results don't meet expectations, which is what happened to Reader. I don't fault them for closing it, despite it being inconvenient for me to switch. What does a for-profit company have to gain by dumping time and resources into a failure whose window of opportunity has passed? Some goodwill from a tiny, miniscule subset of their userbase?

If you joined Google's Glass Explorer program (twice?!) expecting anything but a beta-level device with a short shelf life then more fool you. I don't think they could have been any more explicit about the goals of their program.

I think his point stands though, that Google cannot be trusted to keep services going. This will adversely affect their appeal in many minds, including mine. I have used Google since about 1998 (?) and you'd be amazed how many products have come and gone in that time.

Apologies for the rantiness of the post below, it isn't meant aggressively, just more frustration at no apparent direction seen within the Googlesphere.

The removal of features that people use with no warning and non-implementation of features immediately after release is really really annoying. It makes their stated goals ("index everything") meaningless/temporary/untrustworthy, and dissuades me from buying services from them. Freeloaders use their products a lot (I do!) but I would think twice about ever ever ever paying for software from them, or for a service because you have no idea when it'll shut shop. Even products they still produce appear to be completely disjointed (see the Play Books app on Android and the complete disparity found with their web interface...)

Here's a list of annoyances in products they've released to much fanfare, then apparently just not bothered developing anymore:

1. Google+, yes all of it. And I use it! (where is it going now that Gundotra has left?)

2. Maps: My Maps now isn't integrated into the Android app (they spun it off??), Latitude is gone, Google Local is gone but apparently still there (you can read reviews but hidden and secret GUI controls are now the order of the day for working out how to do anything in Google Maps)

3. Google Drive desktop client: will it ever tell me how far it has got in uploading a massive file? The web client does, the desktop one doesn't. Surely that's an OBVIOUS feature in a filesync utility. Don't ask about their promised Linux version. Couldn't they write it in Go or something?

4. Google Hangouts Android client: the forced update from Talk with the removal of features (is someone actually online? a presence feature seen since MSN Messenger that somehow escapes Google's notice)

5. Google Chrome OS: why is it even here? There was much talk of being stiff competition to Windows and OSX but it's like an Etch-A-Sketch toy operating system. I think TinyCore Linux does more?

I'll stop now because it's coming up to lunch time and I'll get indigestion.

I am a big fan of Android, but their incessant removal of features within their core apps and then rereleases of similar-but-ever-so-slightly-different apps ever year at I/O is getting wearisome.

Although you are correct, it's more a matter of perception / PR image. If we are looking at Google that shuts down pretty popular projects (Reader, Code, and now G+ seems to be shifting) or pretty innovative projects (Wave, Glass) then how should we feel about becoming dependant on/involved in Google products? What if Gmail switches to paid-only model? What if the next-big-Google-thing will be closed down after a year, again? What if free Google Apps will close down, and only paid version exists? What's the point of getting involved into any free Google stuff? What's the point of using Google at all?

> Although you are correct, it's more a matter of perception / PR image. If we are looking at Google that shuts down pretty popular projects (Reader, Code, and now G+ seems to be shifting) or pretty innovative projects (Wave, Glass) then how should we feel about becoming dependant on/involved in Google products?

You just listed a bunch of projects that failed to get traction or lost mindshare battles. I expect an innovator to move on from failures, which is what all of your examples are. Reader: Failure, Google Code: Failure, G+: Failure, Wave: Failure. The reasons for each failure differ, but said reasons are irrelevant to this discussion. The fact is that Google attempted something, maybe enjoyed a little bit of success, but the results didn't meet their expectations. Rather than continue running these things with skeleton crews (to what effect?), they've done the right thing and closed them down.

The only exception is Glass, which was an experiment that already is impacting other current and future products. It never had a guaranteed future. It never reached consumer "1.0".

> I expect an innovator to move on from failures

That's great if you are an investor or employee, but if you are a user it kind of sucks.

Google just needs to be up front about it (and maybe they are): We make no commitment to supporting this application or maintaining it as is. We might make radical changes, we might shut it down. If we do shut it down, we'll warn you at least 9 months ahead of time.

I'm not going to invest much in those applications, but others might.

I gotta be frank here: If you expect anyone in the tech world, Google or otherwise, to support a non-paid product past the point it's obviously declining in user base (IE obvious to not just internal users, but to external ones), for more than a few years, you are just not going to use anyone's products ;)

Google code is mostly irrelevant to this calculus, because it was not ever meant to make money for anyone, but i think you are a little harsh here.

Don't get me wrong, as a user, I would love to have the stuff i want to use supported forever. But it's unrealistic.

The problem is that Google represented itself as an altruistic supporter of open-source. People trusted it because it deliberately cultivated the impression of being more responsible than the default 'duh capitalism' mentality it now represents.

Google is suffering the reputational damage it deserves - not because it is now behaving any differently from other corporations but because it has betrayed the promise that it would.

> Google just needs to be up front about it (and maybe they are)

Nobody launches a new product and guarantees "If this doesn't work out, we'll keep it around indefinitely on life support". You don't start a new effort expecting failure. If it doesn't end up working out, it'll be closed down. Google's failures are just a lot more public than whatever side business many of us may take a stab at.

This isn't unique to Google. Failures need to be learned from and culled. We as a small business/startup oriented crowd should understand that more than most. I've had to kill off more projects than I'd like to admit because I didn't want to spend the time/money on what I perceived to be failures.

Not that failure is bad. Like Google, I've learned a ton from my unsuccessful projects.

In fact, many vendors, especially in the enterprise market and physical goods, stand behind what they sell through their products' lifetimes. As I mentioned elsewhere, IBM supported OS/2, a marketplace failure, for ~16 years. Buy a washer from Sears; even if that model doesn't sell well, they will support yours.

Consumer and 'free' software is the exception, and it's a recent exception with rapid release schedules. It's just shifting the costs from the vendor (maintaining old products) to the consumer (changing/upgrading).

> Consumer and 'free' software is the exception, and it's a recent exception with rapid release schedules. It's just shifting the costs from the vendor (maintaining old products) to the consumer (changing/upgrading).

It's important to note that in many cases, the vendor pays for what is otherwise a free service (Reader, Wave, G+). In the case of some services, they may gather some data from which they can profit from, but that doesn't always pay the bills.

So yes, the customer may have to switch services or upgrade, but unlike enterprise software, they aren't paying four to six figures to use said services.

I don't think "free" has anything to do with it. In fact, the reason this is not a big deal is specifically because there exist at least 2 superior free options.