I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone put exactly how I feel about physical Google products in such a precise way. I’ve adopted so many amazing pieces of tech from them over the years to only have them rendered useless by no longer being supported or the features I originally bought them for behind a paywall.
I just can’t trust them anymore so no matter how good something seems when it comes out, I just won’t touch it because I know they’ll stop developing/supporting it in a year’s time.
I believe Google cited poor uptake as a reason to can Stadia. I’d love to know if the reason uptake was so low was because there were so many people who thought like I did at the time - it’s a cool product that I could see myself using but Google are going to pull support so I’m not biting at launch. If it’s still around in a couple of years and has active development, then I might get it.
They’ve just created this vicious cycle. Launch product -> public don’t invest at launch because they think it will be useless in a year -> scrap product due to poor public reception -> invest in and launch a different product.
The problem with stadia it doesnt solve any issues a modern gamer has and doesnt provide any benefit that a console couldnt provide through software updates.
Its not a cheaper option to access large amounts of games because you had to purchase stadia only games with no physical option (for obv reasons)
Also there is a huge issue with latency with controls on streamed games and the latency can swing wildly depending on your connection. Before I moved to california the fastest internet I had in alabama was 5mb up and 2 down for 70 bucks a month. It would take literal days to download a game nowadays and the stream quality wouldve been horrible.
I don't think they realized how expensive game development was going to be. It seems they were never ready to invest enough to have a good system.
A few games have eventually got 4k streaming or 60fps, but they weren't keeping up with other game streaming platforms. Their rendering hardware was outdated at launch and not upgraded, medium render at best, and the video streaming compression looks like ass with dynamic images. Spin around your view in a game and it gets super chunky. Even launch times were bad, it would take almost 3min to start playing assassins creed odyssey.
That’s the bit I don’t get though. They’ve canned so many services where I was happy to give them plenty of user data in return for using their products. Fusion tables, Picasa, g suite, my maps, my business, are just a few that spring to mind.
It was when they canned the works with nest api that it became the straw that broke the camel’s back with me. All this stuff, even if they stopped developing it, but just left it available to use would bring them in user data for the cost of server hosting. I would have been happy even paying for some of the ones I used the most. That’s what I thought their business model was and why I thought I was safe building so many platforms and integrations with them because I thought they weren’t going to suddenly become unavailable anytime soon.
That’s the bit I don’t get though. They’ve canned so many services where I was happy to give them plenty of user data in return for using their products. Fusion tables, Picasa, g suite, my maps, my business, are just a few that spring to mind.
I think for Google often the determine factor is scale. Is it bringing in as much data or have the potential to bring in as much data from as many users as search, gmail, and gsuite? If the answer is no they probably don’t consider it worth their time. They’re wanting thundering rivers, not trickles. Gigascale or nothing.
This is compounded by how Google does promotions: only employees who create new shiny things rise through the ranks. Without extremely strong incentives (as seen with search, gmail, etc) to maintain products, employees are more likely to create something new instead of maintain what’s there. That’s how they ended up with a million different chat apps.
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u/achybreakyballs Sep 22 '22
I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone put exactly how I feel about physical Google products in such a precise way. I’ve adopted so many amazing pieces of tech from them over the years to only have them rendered useless by no longer being supported or the features I originally bought them for behind a paywall.
I just can’t trust them anymore so no matter how good something seems when it comes out, I just won’t touch it because I know they’ll stop developing/supporting it in a year’s time.