Ask Slashdot: Which Google Project Didn't Deserve To Die? 383
Nerval's Lobster writes "When Google announced the shutdown of Google Reader, its popular RSS reader, it sparked significant outrage across the Web. While one could argue that RSS readers have declined in popularity over the past few years (in fact, that was Google's stated reason for killing it), they remain a useful tool for many people who want to collect their Web content—articles, blog postings, and the like—in one convenient place. (Fortunately for them, there exist any number of alternative RSS readers, some of which offer even more features than Google Reader.) This wasn't the first time that Google announced a project's imminent demise, and it certainly won't be the last: Google Buzz, Google Health, Google Wave, Google Labs, and other software platforms all ended up in the dustbin of tech history. So here's the question: of all those projects, which didn't deserve the axe? If you had a choice, which would you bring back?"
Google Weather API (Score:3, Insightful)
How I miss thee...
Nexus Q (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know why they killed the Nexus Q.
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/the-google-nexus-q-is-baffling/ [nytimes.com]
If you’re having friends over, and they, too, have Android phones, and they, too, have bought songs from Google’s music store, then they can add their own songs to your Q’s queue.
Sounds interesting in theory. In practice, there’s a lot of spontaneity-killing setup. You have to go into Settings to turn on the feature. Then you have to invite your friend to participate by — get this — sending an e-mail message. Then your friend has to download the Nexus Q app.
If you or the friend then taps the name of a song in your online Google account, it starts playing immediately, rather than being added to the queue as you’d expect. A Google rep explained to me that you’re not supposed to tap a song to add it to the playlist; you have to use a tiny pop-up menu to add it. More bafflement.
Sounds like a great party addon!
Re:Nexus Q (Score:5, Informative)
> I don't know why they killed the Nexus Q.
Because it cost 3x as much as other devices that did a WHOLE lot more? And, as described in the bit you quoted, it was badly-designed? Seriously -- it was a $250 one-trick pony. ALL it did was let friends play music, and IF and ONLY IF they were using the exact right combination of things: Android phones, music in your account, etc. The only product deserving of a swifter death was the Microsoft Kin.
Google Groups (Score:5, Insightful)
Alas, poor DejaNews, we knew ye well.
Re:Google Groups (Score:5, Informative)
Second. While you can still search usenet using Google Groups, it's a massive pain compared to how it used to be.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, I hate the new GUI on there. I stopped using it. Is there another free web-based newsgroup to use like the old DejaNews and old Google Groups?
Re:Google Groups (Score:5, Funny)
Agreed. Although, I wish I could "delete" some of my (embarrassing) posts from the early to mid 90's. I was young and I needed the money!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
You are modded funny, but I seriously cringe when I think of some of my early 90's Usenet posts.
As for "I needed the money", I seriously considered an offer from a potential employer at one point until I decided I just couldn't do it. The job? Post photos of declothed women to a Usenet group. Had I accepted the job, my career might have gone along a completely different path!
Re: (Score:3)
I've seen my early 90's usenet posts. I more than cringe. I make light of it now because I'm older/wiser and less prone to actually putting my PHONE NUMBER in my sig (ug) among other things.
Re: (Score:2)
I miss Google Groups Digest Emails. :-(
They just stopped coming one day . . . with no announcement, I didn't even feel a sense of closure. ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
What got me away from Yahoo was IG - Interactive Google. I have a few widgets on my google.com/ig page and I use it as my home page. They're ditching IG and I am going back to Yahoo.
Lots of choices (Score:5, Informative)
Here are some of the ones that got killed by Google.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/map_of_the_week/2013/03/google_reader_joins_graveyard_of_dead_google_products.html [slate.com]
And now Google Drive is down... (Score:5, Informative)
In other news Google Drive is down. Most Chromebooks are rendered useless because of paltry local storage and reliance on the Google Cloud for storing important stuff.
http://www.slashgear.com/google-investigating-google-drive-downtime-18274444/ [slashgear.com]
Re:And now Google Drive is down... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And now Google Drive is down... (Score:5, Insightful)
"That is one of the many problems with relying on clouds."
Sadly, the main problem is the whole concept. While it might be a good idea, at some point in the future, that future is not yet here.
What major online service, e.g. iCloud (based on MS Azure), Amazon AWS, etc. has not gone down for a significant period in each of the last few years? I am having trouble thinking of one.
And before anybody says "Yes, but it's still more reliable than your own servers" I call bullshit. My own servers have not been down at all in the last few years.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
AWS has actually been pretty good if you actually do a proper deployment. I can only think of one time when they had multiple availability zones down at the same time. If you don't deploy across multiple availability zones, then it is just like any other hosted service. I often use it that way, too, it just isn't the magic fix-it-all system if you don't use it like it is intended.
Re:And now Google Drive is down... (Score:5, Insightful)
From a company point of view, cloud services are about as horrible as it can get because we're talking the loss of real money. Yet that ghost hovers over oh so many board rooms it just is not funny anymore. It usually comes with its buddy, Software-as-a-service. Normally encountered shortly after one of the tie racks comes back from lunch with one of the sales drones from such a provider.
Sure, it looks nice at first glance. We store our stuff "somewhere" and someone else takes care of it, and the best part of it is that it's really dirt cheap. Plus we can fire all those techies, or if we already did and outsourced our storage, we can cut that noose we hang on and gain a lot of flexibility. And it's great until (not if, until) something goes wrong.
Anyone here really had NO downtime in their company in the last, say, three years due to computer or network troubles? And if you think getting your stuff back in order is a hassle with your ISP, try the same with a cloud provider. What you saved in months of cloud services is lost in the few days your employees will sit around and do no meaningful work.
Re:And now Google Drive is down... (Score:5, Insightful)
And from a company point of view, I can also produce statistics on how many of our systems we ourselves screwed up with no help from the cloud. People screw up. Hardware fails.
The difference with the cloud is that you've added two additional horribly complex systems (the network and the external servers) that can also be screwed up by people or fail for various reasons. You've also added the latency required to access the remote service. On top of that you've added multiple entry and exit points for data coming into and leaving your network, with extra key exchanges needed, and a different security environment to either be audited or blindly trusted.
In exchange, you get to avoid the up front costs of installing a few servers, and the ongoing costs of managing them. Instead, you simply pay someone else on an ongoing basis to buy and maintain their own hardware with your money. And if they raise their rates, or go out of business, or buy cheap servers, or hire stupid people, or smart lawyers, guess what? You're only a lot worse off than you were before.
It's a pretty cloud when it's way up in the blue sky. But it's nothing but fog when it's in your face.
Re:And now Google Drive is down... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is more reliable then your own servers generally, Not more always more reliable then your server personally.
A lot of companies have their servers running on Desktop System under their desk plugged into the wall, with a single hard-drive. Or have their systems in a server room but there are the low priority servers that are not part of the main architecture, because what they do, do not justify the cost. So if you have a cloud system you get a cheap server, to do a low/mid priority task. Say running your website, or email. Something depending on your organization can afford to be offline for a period of time.
So you personally may be a good administrator, or you may have been lucky that they didn't go down. It isn't that could is better any individual system for uptime, it is just better on the average.
Re: (Score:2)
And Google isn't addressing the for ALL Blackberry users.
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/maps/PDx5fW-SiFI/77dIbvuMR5sJ [google.com]
Re: (Score:2)
It's also worth noting that Chromebooks aren't actually useless without Drive... It'd be more accurate to say they're suffering from reduced functionality, or if you really want to go for sensationalism, say they're "crippled". It's also worth noting that the outage is affecting only some users. My account seems to be perfectly accessible from my office and my remote server, so I'm going to assume that "most Chromebooks" are functioning just fine for most purposes.
A chromebook is a terminal to the Web. It's
Re: (Score:2)
And the "devil's advocate" is at it again, and already moded informative! Strangely, if you read the comments, and not only the Chris Burn's story, you'd see that the only thing that isn't working is http/https access. But never let the facts get in the way of an anti-google rant, right?
BTW, your posting story is really very interesting, only pro-ms and/or anti-google posts, mingled with some (moded insightful) rants on how the anti-ms camp is destroying slashdot.
Going back to the issue at hand, for me goog
Re: (Score:3)
It's not really down, it's just hungover from too much St Patrick's celebrating this weekend...
Google Shill? (Score:2)
Noting that Google Drive is down and as such it tends to cripple the Chrome Books (and anyone else who makes significant use of Google Drive) makes the parent a Microsoft Shill? That kind of sweeping statement makes YOU sound like a Google Shill.
Re: (Score:2)
The statement is just sensational. The quick run through their comment history makes them a shill.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not a shill. I'm just a sell-out.
I want to be able to do whatever I want whenever I want however I want, and I understand that I might just have to pay something for that privilege, but I'd rather not. I see it as a good thing that I can get free services, and I'll speak well of things that work well for me. It's ancillary that the ads will better match what I might actua
Re: (Score:3)
Personally, I'm inclined to disagree. I think Apple should take their metric fuckton of cash and buy DropBox, then put the DropBox team in charge of iCloud.
iCloud suffers from the same foibles as Internet Explorer and GNOME. It's not really smooth enough, but it's so tightly integrated into the core system so deeply that removing it is practically impossible. I'd rther see DropBox bring their reliability, ease, and compatibility into iOS, rather than rely on the community of app developers to voluntarily in
"Do no evil." (Score:5, Insightful)
My favorite Google project was the idea that a company built brand loyalty by refusing to do evil, manipulative and underhanded things.
Ten years later, Google is doing those things. They're getting more aggressive with ads and invading personal information; they're cutting out useful projects that don't immediately monetize; they're trying to manipulate us into being better cash cows by signing up with our cell phones and handing over more ad-friendly information through Google+.
I don't begrudge them the right to make a profit. They were doing that, and continue to do so, without any of these manipulative activities. I just want the "do no evil" project to come back because that was a Google, Inc. I could believe in.
Don't be, not don't do (Score:5, Informative)
Correction: it was "don't *be* evil" [google.com] (emphasis added). There is a subtle semantic distinction between doing some evil and actually being evil. Such hair-splitting is probably what lets Google managers sleep at night.
More from the link:
Nice words they've got there.
Re:Don't be, not don't do (Score:4, Insightful)
No, there isn't. Evil is as evil does.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The Google projects are there for good, to test the limits of what can be done through a web or mobile based interfaces, but google is not a charity. It is not going to offer free products that do not support the core mission, to collect user data and
Re: (Score:2)
This. And its why i am inclined to look into going to the next underdog. When i adopted Google, Gmail and Android, they where the underdogs. Right now, it seems Microsoft is my underdog ecosystem of choice. Its even actively campaigning against privacy intrusions, however they still do not practice what they preach.
Re: (Score:2)
iGoogle (Score:5, Insightful)
How I'm dreading November 1st when iGoogle will be retired...
http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2664197 [google.com]
Re: (Score:2)
me too
anyone have a good suggestion for a replacement
i would love one that also supports iphone, ipad, etc.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:iGoogle (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup, that's the one I was going to post. It's been my homepage for years. It's a nice simple web based RSS aggregator that I could get to from anywhere.
Re:iGoogle (Score:5, Funny)
Yup, that is the one, iGoogle. My default page for the last 5 years or so. Why they would retire that is beyond understanding, it attracts a ton of users at a relatively low cost. I am trying to do without the page at the moment, and find that I consume *much* less of Google's services as a consequence. I even started appreciating Bing and Live Maps as viable alternatives, who knows, my next phone may even be a WP8 device! (shrudders).
Re: (Score:3)
As for WP8, I have a Lumia 920 (got it on release day) and enjoy it thoroughly - it's not just not bad, it's actually good (my opinion of course).
What about my.yahoo.com? (Score:3)
I have been a long time my.yahoo user. When iGoogle came out, I tried it, but liked my.yahoo.com better.
I haven't heard people mentioning them here as a replacement for iGoogle. Why is that?
Re: (Score:3)
Exactly this! I'm still using iGoogle, and I haven't decided on an alternative homepage, but when I do, it won't be from Google.
Google Code Search (Score:5, Insightful)
RIP
Google Health (Score:3)
This needs to happen again, before it gets owned by some shady proprietor.
Speaking of which, where's Google Vote?
Re: (Score:2)
We notice you have high blood pressure, your provider suggests you eat tofu, Tofu is on sale at shoprite today. Even if google SAID they wouldn't use the data for that purpose, do you really believe that at this point?
Assuming they do that using the same rules they currently use for GMail ads (e.g. scanning by machine only, not by humans), I don't see a problem with that. If tofu is a product that would help you, why not ads for tofu?
It sounds like you're saying that it's okay for Google to know you have high blood pressure, but only as long as they pretend they don't know.
the original google search engine and clean page (Score:2)
....
but why couldn't they bring back the clean page search engine (they could keep the new search algorithms for pagerank, or revert back) that they used to be before they became the ad-sense and ad-word selling advertising behemoth? An actual search engine rather than a categorizer and tracker of all of our searches, and web-site travels, and telephone calls
Re: (Score:2)
how else would they make money but by advertising? you voluntarily use google and they make you part of advertisers market. simple as that. don't like it, don't play. but they owe you nothing, cutting off a free service doesn't constitute being evil, just sensible.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I reached a point where they didn't support one of the features I came to love in search syntax, and I switched to duckduckgo. I give it a B- on searching, but an A+ on features and privacy.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd really like to get back to a time where if you searched for a keyword in quotes, it was guaranteed to exist in the text of that page. I often find myself on pages that not only lack the exact query, but Google's cache lacks the query too, so you can't blame it on pages changing during inbetween updates.
No Google, I don't care if you think I misspelled it, that's what the quotes are for. No, I don't care if it's in the meta tags either. Give me my exact query in the text of the page, or nothing.
I liked iGoogle (Score:2)
Difficult choice (Score:2)
I'm still in doubt between "Google Flying car" and "Google Holodeck".
Oh wait... it seems we can only choose from a list of boring office applications.
Hey We Get It But... (Score:5, Interesting)
Listen, I understand that Google's services are free and they are a business and need to do what they feel is necessary to make money; however, I am not sure why some of these went away.
Let's take for instance the fact that Google has killed off their RSS discovery plugin. I was a die hard Google Reader person and made the move to Feedly when Google Reader was killed. Killing Google Reader may have made sense to them; after all, they were supporting traffic and crawling feeds, and doing all those things that take money, time, engineering resources, and bandwidth. No worries there. But killing off the RSS plugin? I just can't fathom how that matters.
Leave the damn tool out there for people to use. It really doesn't harm anyone if it's something that works and can continue to work client side.
But I digress. Yes, Feedly (or any of the tools that will ultimately replace Reader) could make their own but killing it off in some misguided attempt at pushing users to use G+ (what I assume is their reasoning for it all) is just going to drive people farther away from Google's tools.
No, G+ (or any social network for that matter) does not operate in the same way Reader (or any RSS reader) did. I don't give a fuck what other people find interesting for the most part; I want to be able to pick and choose and provide that content back out to people on those networks, not the other way around.
Make your money in the way you see fit but I hope they're not surprised when there is a backlash against those changes. Oh and open source the damn RSS app and even Reader so people can continue on w/o Google's backing. That would fit the "do no evil" mantra.
Re: (Score:3)
Except, giving out personal information doesn't actually *cost* me anything, so to me, it *is* free.
Bullshit; It costs you your privacy. Try to keep in mind, the term "cost" does not necessarily equate to fiscal transactions.
The fact that you're OK with losing your privacy in exchange for services does not make it any less of a cost to you.
The one they didn't kill (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not dead, but it's no longer free. I work with three volunteer organisations - they're not charities but social groups geared towards helping expats get settled in my city. Membership management, event planning and budgeting, publications and flyers. All were easy to collaborate on with Google Apps, but even the (seemingly) small subscription fees are a burden when we're explicitly non-profit and loosely organised. We could have two active users one month, ten the next, so no single pricing plan option is appropriate without serious overhead and/or possible overspend.
Very unfortunate.
Re: (Score:2)
This.
I registered for Google Apps shortly after it came out. I have my own domain, so having Google handle mail for my domain was fantastic. My needs are pretty basic (one user, a few aliases, really good spam filtering, IMAP, good webmail) and I've been with them for years.
I recommended Apps to anyone who had their domain and wanted to use Gmail with it.
Charge for business users? Sure. The price is quite reasonable. Offer a discount for non-profits or universities? Great. Still, it'd be great if they still
Better search (Score:2)
Google Public Data (Score:2, Interesting)
IMO, google public data is a prime candidate to get the axe. we rely on it for our visualizations here at work. i vehemently argued against using this service because google can axe it at any time. it provides no discernable income for google (no ads appear anywhere), it has virtually no support whatsoever so it seems to function basically as a loss leader for google.
i argued for using a product such as tableau which may cost some upfront cash but is also less likely to dissapear than a free google product,
Latitude next? (Score:2)
Seeing how Google is taking their sweet time to fix Latitude for Blackberry users, is it the next product to be axed?
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/maps/PDx5fW-SiFI/77dIbvuMR5sJ [google.com]
Gizmo5 (Score:3)
consolidation into google plus? (Score:2)
Google Answers (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Mod Parent UP. Google answers provided as simple forum for leveraging experts to research information on complex topics. Users would pay from $2 to $200 based on the complexity of the research. The researchers were independent contractors that would provide a thorugh analysis of the given topic. I was impressed with the quality of work and I'd often look at the threads and topics that were generated to learn about a particular topic that I was interested in. There is a site available that the google an
Re:Google Answers (Score:4, Interesting)
SageTV (Score:3)
I'm still pissed that they bought up SageTV and appear to have done absolutely nothing with the technology. One of the better comprehensive PC-based DVR/media streaming systems destroyed. Even with zero updates and little support for 2 years, I still use it. The HD300 is still an excellent media streaming box.
Google Labs and Google Sets (Score:3)
For the uninitiated, Sets allowed to you enter 2 or 3 things of some type and it would return a list (15) of other things of that type. The example they used was to enter the titles of a few Tom Cruise movies and it would return a bunch more. In real world usage you could use it to identify alternative makers of various products, or alternatives to any number of things (programming languages for example) or even things where you don't know how the terminology that describes how they are related.
I'm just wondering when they're killing search. (Score:2)
After all, search is *so* nineties. Social is where it's at now, init?
AppInventor (Score:2)
Google Knols (Score:3)
In November 2011 Google announced that Knol would be phased out. Content could be exported by owners to the WordPress-based Annotum. Knol was closed on April 30, 2012, and all content was deleted by October 1, 2012. Between these dates the content was not viewable, but was downloadable and exportable
CalDAV (Score:3)
And suddenly Google Calendar turned useless to me...
Federated Protocols (Score:4, Insightful)
RSS, Federated XMPP, and Google Wave are all federated protocols that Google's not working with anymore. We need better federated protocols to catch-on (by being well supported) now that email is looking ancient.
Everyone has an email address because anyone can run an email server, not because a handful of mega-tech companies elected to work together. Email has no central point of censorship or ad-scanning. The same isn't true for any discussion page, twitter, social media, etc.
HTTP is mostly decentralized (except DNS & SSL) and is the basis of today's Internet. Decentralized protocols make the world grow. Axing them kills progress.
Google Voice (Score:3)
It might not be officially dead, but it may as well be. I would have paid money for it, but it's been unreliable, flaky with getting texts to other carriers, and hasn't been updated in years now. I can't even make IP voice calls from voice.google.com, I have to go to gmail.com to make a call from my Google voice number. There is no way that I would use my google voice number as my main number with it's issues, and it doesn't look like that is ever going to change now. It's a shame, it was the product for me, and I would be recommending it to all my friends and coworkers who travel internationally.
Re: (Score:3)
most people doesn't use RSS, it's obscure geeky thing
What do most people use for the use cases for which geeks use RSS?
Re: (Score:3)
Nothing.
Re:quit whining over loss of free services (Score:5, Informative)
Granted I didn't really use RSS much either until iGoogle (another killed service, hooray) because I wanted an interface that was customizable and dense. I have since moved to netvibes because it's as good or better than iGoogle (and 100x better than Reader) at tons of dense feeds visible at once.
Really I don't know why reader is being lamented so much. It had a stupid, wasteful interface and wasn't very customizable. I've tried a couple times to make something useful of it but it's always been inferior.
Re: (Score:2)
Sync.
They killed every other option for syncing feeds/read status because they were free and very good. Now we need to scramble to create new options and get platform support.
Your interface comments are your perspective only. I loved it, it was extremely efficient.
Re:quit whining over loss of free services (Score:5, Insightful)
He's right. Most people don't use RSS. The same way most people don't visit web pages other than Facebook and Twitter. It's hardly a justification for dismissing a protocol. RSS is a primary functionality of the web, now. It's offered on almost every website. It's the backbone of almost every podcast program.
The tech media and self-promoting personalities would tell us that they've long since replaced RSS with Twitter and Facebook and that's where they get all their links and news. I call bullshit on that. They seriously log into a website 24x7 and sift through all the trivial garbage their friends post for the few pieces of signal among the noise? Most of the people I know who use facebook have nothing to do with the news or industries I'm in or care about and seeing my stream full of their posts about NASCAR, network television shows, and Kim Kardashian amidsts the occasional ignorant political rant would serve me in absolutely no way.
RSS is my window to the world. I choose what sites I care about and I get their content delivered directly to me, quickly, stripped of any extraneous bullshit from their site. It's the kind of service that simply won't likely ever be replaced, because it is so simple and fulfills an important role.
As for Google Reader. Whatever. I used it for years and it was the best way they had to keep me associated with their services. Perhaps even more than my gmail account. However, I don't care that they got rid of it. Google is worth like half a trillion dollars. Just because they don't see a future in it, financially, for themselves -- that doesn't mean it isn't worth it for everyone else. Look at all the little guys out there. They don't need half a billion users for their RSS clients and infrastructures to be a success. They only need a tiny fraction of that. Google's choice to ax this is fantastic. It would be like Blizzard axing World of Warcraft -- an act that would breath fresh life into a genre that it is sucking the air out of. It would encourage others to step in and take their place and compete and innovate.
Already, we see plenty of these guys competing and offering new services and ways of interfacing with RSS. Syncing, different clients, magazine interfaces, clean stripped down interfaces. All sorts of stuff. And, hey, I bet some of them won't be utterly fucking broken the way Google was (where it would just not let you ever delete some entries in your feed, even after several years) -- and if they are, they'll probably have some form of god damn customer service so you can actually talk to a human about how their shit is broken.
PS: This move isn't going to get me to use G+ any more, either, Google. The only thing I need social networking for is work and that's what LinkedIN is for. I use G+ in the same way I use Facebook -- as a placeholder for my name so someone else can't take it and nothing more.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:quit whining over loss of free services (Score:4, Interesting)
What do most people use for the use cases for which geeks use RSS?
Email notifications.
I'm astounded at how people want to get emailed anytime anyone on their Facebook friends list does anything. Their email inbox is effectively their RSS reader.
Re:quit whining over loss of free services (Score:5, Insightful)
Nearly everyone I know used Reader.
It's not an "obscure geeky thing". It's a great way to follow multiple websites. You don't need to be a geek to figure it out or benefit from it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously, only "geeks" read blogs.
smh
Re: (Score:2)
"most people doesn't use RSS, it's obscure geeky thing"
Seriously, only "geeks" read blogs.
Right.
Everybody else uses them as source citation, but never actually reads them.
Oh, how I wish I were kidding...
Re:quit whining over loss of free services (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually a lot of people pay for Google these days. My work account and my ISP account are both by Google and are advertisement free.
Also - plenty of people listen to podcasts, which are mostly compiled via RSS. As a matter of fact that was my primary use of Google Reader - I used it to listen to podcasts and whatever computer I happened to be sitting down to without having to worry about syncing anything. All the ones I listed to were in the list and ready to go.
Re: (Score:2)
most people doesn't use RSS, it's obscure geeky thing
and i suppose you will also say that most people no longer use or need the shift key either...
Re: (Score:2)
google users are the *product* for google's advertising revenue. google doesn't owe anyone free service, it does owe its customers (advertisers) market large enough to be viable.
That usage of personal information in exchange for providing services? Yea, that kinda makes it not a "free service."
But I do agree that no one really has a "right" to access somebody else's equipment... so long as part of the loss of said access also entails the prohibition of said equipment owner from using the personal information given in exchange for the "free service." I.e., if Google wants to shut Gmail down they're welcome to, but then they aren't allowed to use my Gmail info to profit from.
Fair exc
Re:quit whining over loss of free services (Score:5, Insightful)
You're like the person in old story who had a rich man come to the front door with $1,000 every month. the person was happy and said "thank you" each time. One day the rich man went to the person's neighbor instead of his house, and gave the neighbor $1,000. The person was angry, and yelled "Hey, where is my money!!??" Do you see the issue now? *You* are the one being an asshole and an ingrate. You were given something good free of charge for years, and now can only bitch.
Re:quit whining over loss of free services (Score:4, Insightful)
You're like the person in old story who had a rich man come to the front door with $1,000 every month. the person was happy and said "thank you" each time. One day the rich man went to the person's neighbor instead of his house, and gave the neighbor $1,000. The person was angry, and yelled "Hey, where is my money!!??" Do you see the issue now? *You* are the one being an asshole and an ingrate. You were given something good free of charge for years, and now can only bitch.
Wrong; it was a covenant: They got my personal data so they could sell me to advertisers as a precisely targeted demographic, and in return I got a useful tool. In addition, they got a certain amount of exclusivity in the marketplace, because anyone else trying to build this type of useful tool would have a hard time beating "free". They broke their end of the bargain; now I'm on the lookout for better tools that beat "free" by a long margin, by selling me a service rather than selling me to advertisers. Gmail, for example, is right out as of the immediate now. I would prefer an email address I can be reasonable sure will stay the same for the next decade at least.
Re: (Score:2)
You're like the person in old story who had a rich man come to the front door with $1,000 every month. the person was happy and said "thank you" each time. One day the rich man went to the person's neighbor instead of his house, and gave the neighbor $1,000. The person was angry, and yelled "Hey, where is my money!!??" Do you see the issue now? *You* are the one being an asshole and an ingrate. You were given something good free of charge for years, and now can only bitch.
The problem with your anecdote is, in the story the rich man drops off $1000 and leaves with nothing. In this case, Google is the rich man, and he's not leaving empty-handed.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, there is something off about that rich man. He is being an asshole. Over the years, he managed to INVENT and CREATEa particular relationship and expectation, and then he breaks it on a whim. It's like shipping aid to a hungry country for a decade, thus undercutting and destroying its indigenous farming industry, and then abruptly ceasing that aid leaving people to starve.
It makes me think of the Little Prince... http://home.pacific.net.hk/~rebylee/text/prince/21.html [pacific.net.hk]
"What must I do, to tame you?" asked the little prince.
"You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me-- like that-- in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day..."
The next day the little prince came back.
"It would have been better to come back at the same hour," said the fox. "If, for example, you come at four o'clock in the afternoon, then at three o'clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o'clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you... One must observe the proper rites..."
"What is a rite?" asked the little prince.
"Those also are actions too often neglected," said the fox. "They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all."
So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--
"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."
"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you..."
Re: (Score:3)
Re:support for odf in Google Docs (Score:5, Informative)
Support for the open document standard (.odf etc.) in Google Docs should never have been removed
How so? I can still download documents as ODT. I might be missing something since I don't use google docs all that much.
Re:support for odf in Google Docs (Score:4, Interesting)
Support for the open document standard (.odf etc.) in Google Docs should never have been removed.
Say what? I can import and export OpenDocument files in Google Docs just fine.
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.muktware.com/4529/why-google-killing-open-document-formats [muktware.com]
There Seems to Be a Disconnect Here (Score:5, Insightful)
The translate API was axed because it was too popular.
I think there's a serious fiscal-minded disconnect between Google and Google fans/consumers. Google appeared to give several services for free to users. The first being search. And when they monetized big time on ads by selling users' eyeballs, only the businessmen and engineers seemed to realize that.
... likewise you can say how great something was for the end user all you want. It doesn't mean it's going to survive. There is an old notion that good products survive because they sell and while that still applies to physical products, people are having a hard time transitioning that notion to software. Because it's not true when you think about it like Google's cash cows.
... where, in the petition, was the promise to pay a nominal yearly fee to use Reader? Or are we stupid enough to petition for publicly traded businesses to lose money? Where is the petition to have banks hand out $1 each time you visit them?
...
Now, when they find they cannot monetize on an decent implementation of a news reader or an API of translation tools (surprise, surprise) they do a cost benefit analysis and decide that they are losing money and -- like any business -- pull the plug. People bitch and moan (myself at the front of the line) but you have to realize that what's good for the consumer isn't always good for the business. If Starbucks offers free 12 oz coffee day or 7 Eleven does a free 32 oz slurpee day, you can't go back the next day and scream in outrage that they have baited you in and now switched it on you and discontinued your favorite product (that was conveniently free)
I found the Google Reader petition particularly amusing
Of course there's this weird notion on Slashdot that ad based revenue on the internet is a very bad thing [slashdot.org] and that the internet was better before it [slashdot.org] and there's some mythical better revenue model. And here we are on Slashdot, a site that (as far as I can tell) makes its money/breaks even on ads
I think this question should be "What acceptable revenue model would have saved these services or turned them into cash cows?" Keep in mind that if tracking your users is part of maximizing your profit to offer these services then you're facing pitchforks and torches -- I mean look at the stupid "scroogled" Microsoft mud slinging ads.
Re: (Score:2)
But yeah, Google 411 was awesome, I used it frequently. There is a Bing 411 (believe it or not) which works similarly, though I haven't used it much and couldn't say whether it still exists.
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't bring any of them back. The only services from Google that I really use are Gmail, Maps and the search engine (includes image search).
The thing is: Google is a bit too large imho. Them killing off a product that lots of people used just creates more room on that market, or perhaps it creates a new one altogether. Now, Google Reader competitors don't have to compete with Google Reader anymore, only among each other. Now, other people may be succesful. This idea sounds good to me.
I don't hope that Google ditches all these projects so much, don't get me wrong. I just think there's a nice upside to all of this. :)
This is it right here. If Google decides to leave a market it just removes what was probably a lousy de-facto standard (like Reader, come on, there are a dozen better ways to do RSS now) and forces people to go find the good stuff.