Google kills yet another product ...

BRiT

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No, it's not Stadia. This time.

Google recently announced plans to kill off Google Cloud Print, as Ars puts it simply because they're just not interested anymore.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/google-is-killing-google-cloud-print/

It's almost December, but Google's 2019 product bloodbath isn't done yet! The latest product to receive a death sentence this year is Google Cloud Print, an excellent printer-to-cloud bridge service that launched in beta in 2010. According to a new Google support page and emails sent out to GSuite Admins, Cloud Print will die December 31, 2020, at which point it will no longer be supported, and "devices across all operating systems will no longer be able to print using Google Cloud Print."

MOD NOTE: Feel free to use this for future Google product deaths or general discussion around product success vs product failures as they span mobile, pc, and consoles (for now).
 
Why does it matter though? Google is trying to make money. How did that make them money? Their goal is to make you open a web browser. If a product is not doing that they are not so interested in the end.
 
No, it's not Stadia. This time.

Google recently announced plans to kill off Google Cloud Print, as Ars puts it simply because they're just not interested anymore.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/google-is-killing-google-cloud-print/

It's almost December, but Google's 2019 product bloodbath isn't done yet! The latest product to receive a death sentence this year is Google Cloud Print, an excellent printer-to-cloud bridge service that launched in beta in 2010. According to a new Google support page and emails sent out to GSuite Admins, Cloud Print will die December 31, 2020, at which point it will no longer be supported, and "devices across all operating systems will no longer be able to print using Google Cloud Print."

MOD NOTE: Feel free to use this for future Google product deaths or general discussion around product success vs product failures as they span mobile, pc, and consoles (for now).
I also received an email about Google Translator Tool Kit that will also die 4th of December
 
The annoying thing is that Google keeps making awesome stuff that are EASIEST to use / start, and it's God knows which ones will be killed.

Sure Microsoft is catching up (with office web version, etc) but Google's apps are simply too many and varied.

I have fuzzy memory of heavily using their "location sharing" capability, the awesomeness of Google hangouts, Google photos' "automatic video editing with a bit of manual touch", etc

But all of them goes to the chopping block.

Heck, I don't even understand why they killed hangouts.

It was the best IM ever. It works with SMS, works on phone, on web, heck.. On GMAIL.COM!

But they never market it, nobody heard of it, and they killed it
 
Why does it matter though? Google is trying to make money. How did that make them money? Their goal is to make you open a web browser. If a product is not doing that they are not so interested in the end.

I think it matters as customer losing confidence in Google. People are even asking if Google's really serious about Stadia so they won't kill it in maybe two years.
Of course, it's not that a company shouldn't kill a service which is probably not good enough for their business, but in Google's case it's a bit too much to the point that there's a web site called
Google Graveyard.
 
Why does it matter though? Google is trying to make money. How did that make them money? Their goal is to make you open a web browser. If a product is not doing that they are not so interested in the end.

What if you use it to print money?
 
I think the big problem is that Google makes so much money off of advertising and data mining the users of their services in order to advertise to them that if any of their other initiatives doesn't allow them to see a similar monetary gain, it becomes hard to justify to the board of directors and their share holders.

Hell, they even created a parent company to try to shed the image that they only make money off of advertising (it's still almost the entirely of their revenue) and to try to promote their non-advertising (user datamining) businesses.

But it's hard for anything new to compare favorably to the revenue that their advertising initiatives generate, so they eventually get killed off if they either done generation a significantly large amount of revenue or failing that, if they can't be leverages for a significantly amount of user datamining.

Basically, Google is a victim of their own success in the advertising and user data mining space. It makes it difficult for share holders to support initiatives that don't generate significantly large amounts of revenue after a few years and/or contribute significantly to their core advertising and user datamining business.

And that's starting to catch up to them as they start and cancel more and more initiatives (products and services).

Regards,
SB
 
Yes but if the other products help with advertising they last.

Personally I try to avoid Google when possible and have for ages. I think a large reason people are upset is that people subconsciously tend to want a tribe. So they latch onto a company to cheer for, Apple, Google, Nvidia whatever. Then they feel betrayed when the company acts like a profit seeking entity. I don't mind google/alphabet, but I also think they are too big and powerful so that is my reason to try and avoid their services. I watch YouTube though so I am not doing too much.

So far they bought nest after I got a thermostat and they are buying fitbit. When they purchase other companies and kill them it is more annoying because you cannot avoid that. When they kill a service they created them out is less problematic from my perspective. I won't get involved in Stadia and if they kill it I won't care.
 
I don't mind google/alphabet, but I also think they are too big and powerful so that is my reason to try and avoid their services.

They are the only pushback Apple sees, complete Apple dominance would make the computing software/hardware world a very boring place.
 
They are the only pushback Apple sees, complete Apple dominance would make the computing software/hardware world a very boring place.
Perhaps yet I use no apple products at all so I cannot agree completely. In the phone space perhaps you are correct though and that is a shame since in the US market Android options stink if you ask me.
 
Perhaps yet I use no apple products at all so I cannot agree completely. In the phone space perhaps you are correct though and that is a shame since in the US market Android options stink if you ask me.

Meh, currently using an iPhone 6s. And while I do like the stability and that it still gets updates (for good and bad), I get annoyed at some of the functional decisions that Apple chose for iOS. To the point where I try to do as little on the phone as I possibly can.

Booted up my old Windows Phone for the first time in ages as I was migrating my phone service and I was surprised by how good the OS felt and how much I missed the Windows Phone UI. /sigh. iOS is just butt ugly and less usable in comparison, IMO.

Anyway, I'll be trying out Android here soon-ish as I got one from a Amazon Black Friday week sale. I'm prepared to be disappointed, but we'll see how it goes. I hope it'll be more functional than iOS for me, however.

Regards,
SB
 
Meh, currently using an iPhone 6s. And while I do like the stability and that it still gets updates (for good and bad), I get annoyed at some of the functional decisions that Apple chose for iOS. To the point where I try to do as little on the phone as I possibly can.

Booted up my old Windows Phone for the first time in ages as I was migrating my phone service and I was surprised by how good the OS felt and how much I missed the Windows Phone UI. /sigh. iOS is just butt ugly and less usable in comparison, IMO.

Anyway, I'll be trying out Android here soon-ish as I got one from a Amazon Black Friday week sale. I'm prepared to be disappointed, but we'll see how it goes. I hope it'll be more functional than iOS for me, however.

Regards,
SB

As a Mobile Developer I hate iOS with a passion. iOS 13.2 broke a lot of stuff for no reason at all. Their own Apple Sign In solution literally broke Facebook Login right of the bat. Was it on purpose to inflate their Apple Sign In usage numbers? Plus don't get me started on the ridicule of 13 versions later the keyboard still pops up on top of whatever the app has on screen, including the place the user wants to type. It falls to the developer to fix something that should have the default behaviour of moving the app screen up, just like it does on Android. And many other things. iOS sucks balls.
 
The problem from my perspective is that we have millions and millions of people buying phones but there is very little real choice. I cannot get a good camera, replaceable battery and SD card. Why in the world is that impossible to find. Phones should not be disposable items. Google killed their project for a user serviceable phone but that is what I want. Why get a thin phone and put a giant case on it when for the same size final product I could have screws and easily replaceable parts. I have an old windows phone as well and it had an SD card, good camera for the time and price and was comparatively inexpensive. Now I have a 3a and the camera is great, but that is all I can really say positive about it. Otherwise just generic. I wonder how good fair phone camera is. That would be the phone I want. It has everything to check the boxes, and they plan to let users use other phone OS.
 
So the fair phone 3 uses the same camera module as 3a...so it is just the software that makes the 3a so much better. I looked at xda, but it doesn't look like anyone has bothered with trying to get the software to work and the chip in the fair phone may be too anemic to run it well but dang it is so close.
 
So the fair phone 3 uses the same camera module as 3a...so it is just the software that makes the 3a so much better. I looked at xda, but it doesn't look like anyone has bothered with trying to get the software to work and the chip in the fair phone may be too anemic to run it well but dang it is so close.

You can try one of the many none root ports of gcam here (at your own risk). You might find one that works.

https://www.celsoazevedo.com/mapa-do-site/
 
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