So WTF is up with Google this time?
4What does any of this mean in relationship to their current and previous (killed off or re-purposed) products?
Why is it that mighty amazing Google cant create some semblance of a coherent interoperable messaging/chat/conferencing/social/human-networking suite of products, stick w them, and make them good?
Btw that image snippet I loaded is all I’ve read re this new announcement. I’ve given up trying to figure out what google is doing in these application areas, so perhaps I completely misunderstand what they’re announcing.
If I’m totally confused and wrong here, fine and dandy. I must be within my largish SNAFU interval for today.
/image snafu
- 5 comments, 11 replies
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Whereas Google+ was targeted at the public at large, Currents is designed for enterprise application. It’s like social media for internal business communication rather than friends and family.
@ruouttaurmind
Yeah but
There sure are a lot of corpses of Google apps along the way.
/giphy yeah butt

@f00l @ruouttaurmind nice butt!
@f00l
Absolutely. But they are not alone in this. Apple and Microsoft have their share of technologies which cost millions to develop, only to be abandoned. Many in very short order. Remember Microsoft Expression? Windows Home Server? How about Xbox DRM? The Kin?
Then there’s Apple’s entry into the home game console market with Pippin. 3D Touch? Deceased. What about that $8,000 TAM? (This space is reserved for Home Kit and HomePod which are on life support in the intensive care unit and can’t possibly have long to survive)
One word: Gmail. This is a prime example of what happens when Google finally makes a product mostly usable, then continues tinkering in the quest for continuous improvement. They bollocks it up on a recurring cycle. Google tinkering = inevitable train wreck.
@ruouttaurmind
I know that google and Apple and M$ and others have tried and then killed off all sorts of stuff. I know you’re dead on re that.
Re google: I seem to remember (what appears in my fairly lame memory to be) so many google apps and projects occupying some corner of this functionality/usability space, that I quit trying to understand wtf they were doing.
Decided I’d wait until they produced something coherent and good that ppl actually used. Until then:
/giphy bother said Pooh

It all gives me a bit of a headache.
@f00l @ruouttaurmind
They probably have too many idle IT people and need to keep them busy doing something, anything so the competition doesn’t get them and thus all the insider stuff they know about google locked up in their head (I am sure google, and other companies, would like to do a brain wipe when key personnel leave). If it ain’t broke don’t fix it is probably something they haven’t paid attention to in a while.
@f00l @ruouttaurmind You’re forgetting the best social media platform of them all: Apple Ping.
https://killedbygoogle.com/
@SSteve Google Play Music soon to be added to the list.
@SSteve not enough is said about the loss of Picasa, the greatest photo editing application ever. EVER.
@SSteve
Re Google music: sigh.
Not enough subscriptions, or migrated into YouTube?
Re that long list:
Wish there was some info on whether a given service was well-adopted or well-reviewed; why Google said <whatever> was going away; and what outsiders’ best guesses are as to the real reason <whatever> got killed.
Re communication apps and services getting axed:
Presumably some of them will be rolled into whatever comes next.
presumably some sort of data preservation re comm apps will be offered.
Google’s apparent fickleness (in my mind) about comm apps getting promo’d then offed makes me not eager to trust them going forward.
I don’t, as a user or admin, want to have to understand and adapt to Googles ever-changing plans re comm apps, esp when it’s hard to see the reason for google’s lack of purposeful consistency here.
Makes me kinda not wanna trust them much within that region of the app cabbage patch.
I guess I don’t need them creating even more PITA’s for me than I already create for myself.
Else I’m just being whiny.
In which case, forgive if so motivated.
Or not.
: )
I prefer Currants to currents.
/image ribena

@OnionSoup
Wit’ ya.
/giphy current currants

Google is not interested in making useful apps. They make waaaay more money selling your information to other companies for marketing and domestic spying.
@Meh_is_Meh
True.
We kinda mostly get how Google’s income stream and their future income prospects work.
We know that Don’t be evil is something that happened
a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away
/giphy Star Wars text crawl

I have an anatomical explanation: when a bureaucracy reaches a certain size, the kneebone no longer connects to the thighbone.
From there, it’s natural for the organization to grow multiple knee bones. One for the thigh bone and one for the leg bone. There may even be a surplus of knee bones. They will vie for supremacy! Defeated knee bones can be repurposed into redundant elbows, or extra hand phlanges, or even part of the organization’s brain.