One more entry for https://killedbygoogle.com/
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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Technology
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Honestly no one should trust Google with anything anymore. I fully expect them to take everything away at any moment
I regret moving my phone number to Google Voice because at this point I fully expect Google to someday kill the service.
Be sure you keep using it. I only used mine for voicemail, and they finally decided they wanted the number back. I started to send a text every few weeks, but doesn't seem to have been enough for voice to just receive them.
To be fair, I did have the opportunity to claim the number again.
It has reached the point that any new product they launch I ignore.
Tomorrow's headline: "Google Graveyard Beta Shuts Down"
Followed by "Google shuttering Android development as it sells stake off to Apple Inc"
So... what Google services are actually safe to build on and won't get killed by some bored middle manager?
Android, advertising and maps (this last one is a bit of a stretch)
One thing I don't understand about this situation is that they took what was almost certainly a profitable service and abandoned it. Meanwhile, they have services like Gmail and Maps which can't be profitable, in my opinion, and just shove resources at them. They're way too set on user data and advertising. It's a shame
I imagine gmail and maps provides good data on user preferences and activities, which is perfect data for advertisers. Track where they go and who they communicate with.
That's definitely what they're after, if you ask me. But if you ask them, they'd claim your privacy is protected...
they took what was almost certainly a profitable service and abandoned it
They oftentimes make a decision like this when their internal math tells them that the resources they put into domains could make them more money if they were put in another product. If you consider the opportunity cost, it could make sense to Google to make a change like this.
From our perspective, it's crazy, but it's easy to forget the huge scale of the money they are dealing with.
services like Gmail and Maps which can't be profitable
They aren't profitable, neither is Photos, but they are considered essential applications that keep users bought into the google ecosystem and are necessary for android to remain competitive.
Using that argument, domains could be used to upsell customers. Oh you want a domain? You know what? We'lll give you a year of gmail business (whatever that's called) for half the price! Or maybe you fancy a 100$ Cloud Services voucher?
That way you can lock in customers.
But what percentage of their userbase wants to use them for domains. I'm sure it was profitable, but I doubt they were making as much on that as they could elsewhere. A service making them $50 million a year might not be enough for them to decide to continue with it when they are regularly dealing with products that make hundreds of millions or even billions from. It might just not be worth the effort.
I've used Android since the early days (I think as early as KitKat?) and I've been thinking about switching to Apple in recent years. I'm just tired of privacy being a line that's crossed over all the time. So if they want to retain more customers they need to start treating our data with respect
The open nature of Android allow you to be the owner of your data. Using Graphene OS is even better than the best iphone ever.
Gmail is probably squeezed in on the servers running GSuite (the business version of Gmail). And I imagine it's very profitable from small/mid even large businesses.
Same with maps.
There will be companies that have tracking and planning software built ontop of maps, and for these uses it requires API keys.
General users using it for free will provide great information and data (eg, detecting/tracking traffic jams), but their usage probably "fits" around the paid usage
I imagine the ones the middle managers use internally are safe.. that is, the main Workspace apps (I think that's what they're called now? you know... Docs, Sheets, Forms, Slides, Calendar, Chat).
And the few Cloud services that are actually running things like YouTube (Spanner, ... actually I think that's the only publicly available one)
Chat has been replaced every 2 years for the last 12 years. Voice, hangouts, wave, etc.
I feel like Wave was ahead of its time and they should bring it back.
Yeah, but I think the current iteration of Chat is the first one to be offered as an enterprise product, and the first one universally used internally (even some SRE teams are now using Chat by default instead of IRC). I could be wrong - there are some that are before my time.
That said, specific features within Chat seem to come and go quite frequently. In particular, don't rely on any particular threading model...
How long has it lasted? I can't wait to see what SS terrible domain management tools look like.
9 years, not too bad for a Google project, most don't last that long
Why does it feel like yesterday 👴
Very frustrating I have a .page domain which I can't move to Cloudflare because its a Google specific TLD. So I guess I'm stuck seeing what Squarespace's tools look like.
Well that's annoying
Fuck!! Where are you guys moving your domains?
I'll be moving mine to Cloudflare
Same. I’ve moved all of my domains there that they support. Paying cost for them is nice.
I will give cloudfare a try.
I've found porkbun to be decent and cheap.
Cloudflare. Already have some there and it’s cheaper.
Porkbun
I moved my .dev to NameSilo to live with the rest of my domains, since luckily that's allowed now. See here for the list of options if you have any Google Registry domains (.dev, .app, .new, etc.). Make sure to uncheck "Show preferred partners only" if you don't care which ones have given Google more money or whatever that means.
FWIW the comms I've seen suggest Squarespace has agreed to actually offer standalone domains as part of this deal... I doubt that's binding in the long term though, and they'll certainly want to get people to use their signature site builder product.
I know Google Cloud Domains (previously separate from Google Domains) is being deprecated too, but I don't know if those domains are also automatically moving to Squarespace. Seems weird if they do that, since it would drive people directly to one of Cloud's main competitors... but they're driving people away from Cloud anyway with this so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I personally prefer namecheap and cloud flare for domains. I often route stuff through cloudflare anyway so if they have the tld I want I will just purchase from them.
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