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An article on the slow death of Google by Lauren Weisman

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wraith808:
Love him or hate him, I think that Lauren Weisman says some pretty compelling truths in this article.

Google is dying. It may be possible to save the patient, but it’s also quite possible that Google has already passed the point of no return, especially with the array of forces now attacking it from all sides and from within. Since this situation has been largely enabled by unforced errors committed by Google itself, the prognosis can only be described as bleak.

Unfortunately, I have strong doubts that Google is capable at this time of making the kinds of “lifestyle changes” that would be required to truly save themselves. I would love to have these doubts proven to be incorrect.

A company named Google and its parent Alphabet will continue to exist for the foreseeable future, but for all practical purposes the Google that we all know appears to be in a kind of terminal decline, even as the money continues rolling in for now.

--- End quote ---

more at https://lauren.vortex.com/2018/10/08/the-death-of-google

rgdot:
I don't know about the bleakness of the article but one example of change without regard for quality but only with regard to change and adding 'features' is the new gmail that was forced unto users last month. I am seeing issues like this and for something as basic as email, gmail no less, this is frankly crappy and ridiculous (attached is taken from tweet to @gmail)

If dumping G+ frees up resources for realistic (G+ was never going to be a FB killer) projects it is a good thing, not that it will but one can hope.

An article on the slow death of Google by Lauren Weisman

IainB:
The seeds of this "failure" were probably germinating and detectable in the Google Wave Developer Preview at the Google I-O 2009 presentation.
I recall reporting that I had analysed the transcript of that presentation and counted all the instances of the signature meaningless BS/buzzwords in it and it didn't look good:
In the transcript there are a number of what I refer to as BS/buzzwords, clichés and alarm triggers, including, for example:
Word/cliché
excited
unbelievable
great
cool
[laughs]
amazing
No. of occurrences
      6
      2
      5
    10
    24
      5
-IainB (July 02, 2013, 10:03 AM)
--- End quote ---

Google were presumably paying exceedingly good money to the actors responsible for that abortive software development and for making that empty presentation. The audience obligingly applauded on queue.
It was déjà vu for me and the actors were history - apparently all gone.
But, for that to happen at all in the first place, you arguably really needed to have been making/tolerating serial execution errors somewhere upstream. That - to my mind - would have been representative of some kind of endemic corporate systemic failure. Never mind the quality, feel the width. I think that's often likely to be a sign of out-and-out desperation.

Shades:
As a concept Wave was more interesting than Google+. At least in my mind it was.

Still, solutions like Slack "borrowed" more from Google Wave than most will like to admit.

With Wave Google experienced the Microsoft "curse"...having the right idea at the wrong time, accompanied by a sub-par implementation/API/etc.

wraith808:
But, it's not just G+.  It's endemic to the way that they do everything now.  It reminds me of Yahoo right before its fall.  Yahoo had it all to lose but did because of several factors and similar unforced errors.

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