Google's product cancelling is killing their reputation.

Google has been doing a pretty good job of killing their reputation on all fronts. Location sharing in phones that doesn't turn off, even when set to disabled, allowing third parties to read people's Gmail emails, etc. etc.

"Don't be Evil" went out the window a long time ago.

Cancelling their services is the least of their problems.

ROBUST PRIVACY LEGISLATION NOW!
 
I like it. Yes it can be a pain when they shut down something you use, but I can appreciate that they kill off products that aren't being used, did not work as intended, are going to be replaced, etc.

With the rate Google tries to innovate and\or gobble up innovators, they would have tons of mediocre and abandoned products leaching off of them. Better to just scrap the project and put the resources to the next best thing than waste money supporting it in idle mode for the rest of forever.
 
I really wish they kept rolling out the fiber all over the country but that is understandable at least. Too much red tape and cost to deal with it.
 
I like it. Yes it can be a pain when they shut down something you use, but I can appreciate that they kill off products that aren't being used, did not work as intended, are going to be replaced, etc.

With the rate Google tries to innovate and\or gobble up innovators, they would have tons of mediocre and abandoned products leaching off of them. Better to just scrap the project and put the resources to the next best thing than waste money supporting it in idle mode for the rest of forever.

Yeah, you cannot be an innovative company if you aren't willing to try new things.
Sometimes, those things do not work. It's better to acknowledge that, and move on, than hang on purely out of pride/subbornness/etc.
 
I like it. Yes it can be a pain when they shut down something you use, but I can appreciate that they kill off products that aren't being used, did not work as intended, are going to be replaced, etc.

With the rate Google tries to innovate and\or gobble up innovators, they would have tons of mediocre and abandoned products leaching off of them. Better to just scrap the project and put the resources to the next best thing than waste money supporting it in idle mode for the rest of forever.


Would you feel different if you just spent a bunch of money to outfit your house with one of those product lines, only to have it completely disabled because it requires an external service to operate, and google decided to shut it down in less than a year? Completely disabled since it cannot operate as a standalone product... I think I'd be pretty pissed about that, and that's why I don't buy any products that can't operate completely isolated from the internet.
 
The problem is not that they are shutting down some innovative product that didnt work, the problem is that most of the products were poorly thought out replications of existing products. This is the real problem inside google they have a culture of creating tons overlapping products and not dedicating themselves to something. Look at chat alone. How many years has it been and google STILL doesnt have just one chat platform like imessage that works well. The irony of it is this mess of chat clients means that its hard for them to gain traction with chat. These sort of things NEVER should have made it past management. Management should have immediately shut them down and said go make gtalk better stop trying to make new shit. My guess is that they have a culture of promotion that incentivizes people to be able to claim they launched a new product instead of a culture that rewards making existing products the best they can be and dominating market share.
 
The only one that could affect me is Chromecast Audio, but i rarely use it. It really doesn't do what I want. One of these days I'll work on getting my Synology NAS to use alexa to stream audio and see how that works, but my guess is it won't do what I want either.

I'd really like something that plays lossless audio without gaps between songs that has a decent phone app to play the stuff. For now, I generally end up using lossy files from my phone, which is less than ideal.
 
Google has been doing a pretty good job of killing their reputation on all fronts. Location sharing in phones that doesn't turn off, even when set to disabled, allowing third parties to read people's Gmail emails, etc. etc.

Yea I noticed the location thing myself before I read articles about it too. I just tend to keep Location "on" on my phone these days because turning it off it eats way more battery (google services), using "energy saving" location option makes my phone's battery last significantly longer.
 
This isn’t the main thing killing their reputation. Between serious privacy concerns and supporting the PRC while turning down US government projects - they’ve done a good job of putting their reputation in the dumpster at this point.
 
I think i would add their "slick" "minimalist" interfaces in their apps screws them over.
I know I have opened some apps of theirs only to see it, not understand shit, and close it.
Learning google apps has for me turned into a trial, error thing. Touch here touch there... Or use it without knowing oh it could do this or that, only to discover way after.
Their 'cleaness' translates into less or no visual hints into what you can do, and this in turn to me limits what the app can do, since you really can't have more advanced actions if you can't barely navigate basic funcions as is with their slick minimalist interfaces.
 
They are a monolith few want to compete with. They buy out all the upstart competition with new ideas. There is no more tech innovation. Just Google F'ing around.
 
In short the article talks about Google and the many many products they have cancelled, many of those just this year.
I agree this is eroding confidence.. and I think too Google doesn't even know how much is affecting them.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/04/googles-constant-product-shutdowns-are-damaging-its-brand/

Not sure why this erodes confidence, this has always been part of their MO. They have never wavered from their strategy and outlook on products. Their philosophy is to keep trying new things, put them out into the wild and see if they catch on or if they fail. Almost everything they do is in perpetual "Beta" for a long time before it becomes an official product.
 
#1 thing Google did to make me mad? They gutted Google Finance. It used to be VERY handy, now its basically useless.
 
Google has been doing a pretty good job of killing their reputation on all fronts. Location sharing in phones that doesn't turn off, even when set to disabled, allowing third parties to read people's Gmail emails, etc. etc.

Yea, not to be a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist, but I have been working on deleting all google services, ditching android, and moving to a new email provider. Im getting tired of Google and Facebooks BS. But google docs...damn you if everyone else on this planet wants to collaborate on google docs...
 
Yea, not to be a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist, but I have been working on deleting all google services, ditching android, and moving to a new email provider. Im getting tired of Google and Facebooks BS. But google docs...damn you if everyone else on this planet wants to collaborate on google docs...

What are you going to move to from android that you feel is better privacy-wise? The only other real option is apple, and you're kidding yourself if you think they don't collect/sell you data just as much.

And I ask because I am in the same boat of distrust, but I've already moved completely away from most major online SAAS services. I run my own server rack at home, with my own pfsense box, ad domain, exchange server, nextcloud etc. I use keepassXC for password manager, synced to my devices with nextcloud so I completely control where the DB is hosted and who has access. But I still don't have a replacement for android..... My pixel 2 is out of warranty so I may just flash that with AOSP, which should have none of the tracking nonsense or bullshit apps like FB (which i don't use) built it.
 
Wait, they're going to kill Google Play Music or just rebrand it as YouTube Music?

The company runs like a person with ADHD. They fixate and develop something quickly, but get figgity and distracted, so they never finish it.

Years ago they killed the Google Journal note taking app and essentially handed the market to Evernote. Now, Google Keep is pretty good and serves a decent lower-featured alternative (the search is so much better versus Evernote, it's not even funny). But I can see where this article is going, why invest time using this app when the chances are it'll just be killed off in a few years.

What's frustrating is that they're killing programs. They're not just saying "we'll only develop security patches from here on out," they're just turning them off and forcing users to jump ship.
 
What are you going to move to from android that you feel is better privacy-wise? The only other real option is apple, and you're kidding yourself if you think they don't collect/sell you data just as much.

And I ask because I am in the same boat of distrust, but I've already moved completely away from most major online SAAS services. I run my own server rack at home, with my own pfsense box, ad domain, exchange server, nextcloud etc. I use keepassXC for password manager, synced to my devices with nextcloud so I completely control where the DB is hosted and who has access. But I still don't have a replacement for android..... My pixel 2 is out of warranty so I may just flash that with AOSP, which should have none of the tracking nonsense or bullshit apps like FB (which i don't use) built it.

I will admit, for the time being I am on apple. Moreso as I trust imessages rather than traditional text messages. The fact they are sent encrypted using data, rather than traditional SMS makes me feel a bit better. I know apple is now pushing all this privacy marketing, which I think is just that, marketing. On the other hand, it seems LE has had a much harder time cracking iphones (Ie san bernadino terrorists). Also, Apple has less of a stake in monetizing data, as hardware makes up a significant portion of their income. It seems monetizing data is Google's 'baby'. I too am doing other things to increase privacy.

Always on VPN hosted outside of the '9 eyes' surveillance countries, gmail => protonmail (swiss based encrypted mail), Gdrive => nextcloud on a swiss server, dumped FB, scrubbed as much info as I could from public databases, changed phone number, run bitwarden password manager with U2F, dumped windows 10 for linux, Firefox with ublock and other addons (still problematic).

Maybe someday Ill learn how to run my own servers etc like you mention...
 
I will admit it’s kept me from using a lot of google services full time.

Privacy - yeah, I’m concerned but I also realize that my “profile” is going to get picked up and sold regardless unless I unplug and wear my tinfoil hat.

But I don’t use gmail as primary email, won’t consider their home control stuff, the new cloud gaming service is laughable, not considering their cord cutting service, etc. Primarily because any of it has a very high likelihood of just going away tomorrow.
 
Would you feel different if you just spent a bunch of money to outfit your house with one of those product lines, only to have it completely disabled because it requires an external service to operate, and google decided to shut it down in less than a year? Completely disabled since it cannot operate as a standalone product... I think I'd be pretty pissed about that, and that's why I don't buy any products that can't operate completely isolated from the internet.

Wait... What? Your Juicero offers sour grape flavour? :p
 
I know apple is now pushing all this privacy marketing, which I think is just that, marketing.
It's not just marketing. Aggregate user data are encrypted, any stored data are only on Apple's servers, and not sold to 3rd parties. Apple uses sound statistical methodology to analyze those data while guaranteeing privacy of disaggregated data. If you want to read up about it, google "differential privacy."
 
It's not just marketing. Aggregate user data are encrypted, any stored data are only on Apple's servers, and not sold to 3rd parties. Apple uses sound statistical methodology to analyze those data while guaranteeing privacy of disaggregated data. If you want to read up about it, google "differential privacy."

True, i think its subject to change if their hardware sales start to drop, or the market forces change. Hopefully that doesnt happen! I will read more into it, thanks for the info!
 
True, i think its subject to change if their hardware sales start to drop, or the market forces change. Hopefully that doesnt happen! I will read more into it, thanks for the info!

True, it is, in a very real way one of only 2 reasons I'm still in the Apple Ecosystem at this point.

I don't like a lot of their choices/directions/but it's about the only mobile/computer ecosystem that is stable, isn't not monetizing my personal data, and well integrated.

(The other reason? Bone-idleness honestly, I've been in the IOS ecosystem for long enough that I'm lazy and don't want to 'pull-the-bandaid' off to migrate to Android. And with all the "Being Evil" that Google's doing lately, I don't see a reason to)
 
True, i think its subject to change if their hardware sales start to drop, or the market forces change. Hopefully that doesnt happen! I will read more into it, thanks for the info!
The interesting thing about differential privacy and aggregating data in the way Apple does it is that it can't be disaggregated. It's encrypted on their servers so the raw data can't be re-identified and differential privacy ensures individual data that are leaked or published can't be re-identified, either.

It's more than that, though; Apple can't point a laser at individual data and get at it even if they wanted it. It's more than simply safeguarding your data from prying eyes, but also circumscribes what Apple is able to learn about *you* as an individual. Two different problems in the world of collecting, analyzing, and using/selling such data: what others can learn about you and what a corporation knows/can learn about you. That is, we want Google's data to not be leaked but even when that's certain there is still the nasty affect of Google knowing all about you and what you do--even when that's not sold off to someone else it's still a potential issue and invasion of privacy.

Differential privacy is a rigorous mathematical definition of privacy. In the simplest setting, consider an algorithm that analyzes a dataset and computes statistics about it (such as the data's mean, variance, median, mode, etc.). Such an algorithm is said to be differentially private if by looking at the output, one cannot tell whether any individual's data was included in the original dataset or not. In other words, the guarantee of a differentially private algorithm is that its behavior hardly changes when a single individual joins or leaves the dataset -- anything the algorithm might output on a database containing some individual's information is almost as likely to have come from a database without that individual's information. Most notably, this guarantee holds for any individual and any dataset. Therefore, regardless of how eccentric any single individual's details are, and regardless of the details of anyone else in the database, the guarantee of differential privacy still holds. This gives a formal guarantee that individual-level information about participants in the database is not leaked.

The definition of differential privacy emerged from a long line of work applying algorithmic ideas to the study of privacy (Dinur and Nissim `03; Dwork and Nissim `04; Blum, Dwork, McSherry, and Nissim `05), culminating with work of Dwork, McSherry, Nissim, and Smith `06.
-- https://privacytools.seas.harvard.edu/differential-privacy
 
The World's Largest Advertising Company (and small tech spinoffs) has a reputation that can be damaged? Weird.
 
It does seem that they are killing things left and right. Of course the only great loss is panoramio. But that doesn't change the fact that nobody will rely on their products as who knows when they'll fancy shutting them down.
 
This isn’t the main thing killing their reputation. Between serious privacy concerns and supporting the PRC while turning down US government projects - they’ve done a good job of putting their reputation in the dumpster at this point.
This. They are willing to develop censored search and AI for China but won't touch USA Govt stuff. Talk about betraying your country to help a hostile foreign power.
 
Haven't really used any of their side products since they killed off igoogle.
 
This is one of the reasons why I don't want any silicon valley company making my future car. There is no such thing as product support for more than 2 or 3 years. Responsibility? That's a foreign word for titans like google, apple, nvidia, etc. Look at how nvidia is lobbying legislation to make autonomous companies not responsible for future failures. An automobile has a support life expectancy of 15 years for parts and service from the oem. I forgot which entity enforces this but I think it may be Society of Automotive Engineers. Regardless, I don't have faith in any of the tech companies for actually standing by their autonomous product. It's sad to have to think like this, but take a look at how apple is handling their faulty macbook keyboards and display assemblies. They refuse to acknowledge any problem. No recall, nothing. They are literally looking the other way and not doing anything. If this is how they handle non-critical, simplistic consumer electronics, how do you think they will handle mission-critical electronics involving control of a moving multi-ton projectile with wheels? That's right.
I'll keep my Jeep, thank you.
 
This is one of the reasons why I don't want any silicon valley company making my future car. There is no such thing as product support for more than 2 or 3 years. Responsibility? That's a foreign word for titans like google, apple, nvidia, etc. Look at how nvidia is lobbying legislation to make autonomous companies not responsible for future failures. An automobile has a support life expectancy of 15 years for parts and service from the oem. I forgot which entity enforces this but I think it may be Society of Automotive Engineers. Regardless, I don't have faith in any of the tech companies for actually standing by their autonomous product. It's sad to have to think like this, but take a look at how apple is handling their faulty macbook keyboards and display assemblies. They refuse to acknowledge any problem. No recall, nothing. They are literally looking the other way and not doing anything. If this is how they handle non-critical, simplistic consumer electronics, how do you think they will handle mission-critical electronics involving control of a moving multi-ton projectile with wheels? That's right.
I'll keep my Jeep, thank you.

I dont' think Google is going to make cars, they're just going to provide software to car manufacturers, and i think, it's a certainty that they'll be required to provide security and safety updates for the life of the car. I don't think anyone (regulators, car manufacturers or customers) will tolerate less. Now they could make self driving software a service with an annual fee, but unless it's really low, I think that would inhibit adoption of self driving cars.

But even if Google or Apple made cars, they'd still have the same constraints. But no worries, despite what a guy at ford told my brother 4 years ago, it doesn't look like the big buys are going to have self driving cars in the next 2 or 3 years.
 
I dont' think Google is going to make cars, they're just going to provide software to car manufacturers, and i think, it's a certainty that they'll be required to provide security and safety updates for the life of the car. I don't think anyone (regulators, car manufacturers or customers) will tolerate less. Now they could make self driving software a service with an annual fee, but unless it's really low, I think that would inhibit adoption of self driving cars.

But even if Google or Apple made cars, they'd still have the same constraints. But no worries, despite what a guy at ford told my brother 4 years ago, it doesn't look like the big buys are going to have self driving cars in the next 2 or 3 years.

I wouldnt count on that, one of the most important issues in any industry is that it is hard to hold your place in the industry if you dont have vertical integration in many cases. The best way to hold on to that is to produce the end product.This scenario repeats over and over.
 
I wouldnt count on that, one of the most important issues in any industry is that it is hard to hold your place in the industry if you dont have vertical integration in many cases. The best way to hold on to that is to produce the end product.This scenario repeats over and over.
Google has no expertise in manufacturing cars. AFAIK, they just modify existing cars to make them driver less. It makes more sense to just do the software. That's what they're experts at.
 
Google has no expertise in manufacturing cars. AFAIK, they just modify existing cars to make them driver less. It makes more sense to just do the software. That's what they're experts at.

You're right. I believe it even the first cute-looking google self driving prototype car was manufactured by ford and google probably did the control and sensor software. Regardless, I really do hope the software makers are forced to be responsible for the autonomous car software they make.
Autonomous vehicles, even dumb slow ones, would be great for many things, especially giving the elderly population a bit more mobility. There are too many 90+ grandparents on the road who really should not be, either because they dont want to give up or can't afford a daily taxi-like service.
 
Neither did Elon must and they also had no expertise in phones or operating systems.
 
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