Ask HN: Will Google ever launch a successful new product again?

[CM30]

Because I'm struggling to think of anything in recent years, and most of the things they do try to launch tend to flop, even if the initial idea is pretty good.

Meanwhile, all their successful products and services have been around a while now. Search was 1997, Blogger was 1999 (not initially by Google), Gmail was 2004, YouTube and Maps were both 2005, Google Docs was 2006 and both Android and Chrome were 2008. So where's the next big hit? Is one even possible with Google's attitude of "if it doesn't succeed in a few months, kill it"?

What is likely to be their next successful story out of the things they worked on recently?

[superfrank]

I think you're overlooking some decent wins because they weren't world changers for general consumers.

For hardware, I think all of the following could be considered a success:

- Pixel phone

- Chromecast

- Chromebooks (as school computers)

For software:

- Youtube TV seems to be a massive hit.

- Google Classroom has a lot of users in the ed tech space.

- Just in my social circle, I'm noticing more and more people using Google Photos in the past few years (even iOS users). I think might be due to growing usage of Google One.

[marcammann]

The education space definitely relies on Google (was also big during the pandemic) and the tools are decent.

But I was definitely surprised about the mentions of Chromecast and Youtube TV, particularly YouTube TV. All of the cord cutters I talked to opted for Fubo, Hulu or DirectTV. Good to hear it sees adoption. Is there a marketshare analysis that you're aware of?

[divbzero]

I would also count the following as software successes:

2012 - Google Drive

2017 - Google Meet

[chasil]

For the moment, the Pixel phones are the largest family that supports an independent ROM that implements VoLTE.

A vast swath of LineageOS supported devices have been retired for this reason, and Pixels are the largest family remaining.

Oddly enough, if you want control of a device that minimizes Google's influence, then you probably want a Pixel.

[bkuehl]

Google Photos is that silent offering that wasn't a big deal initially, but just slowly grew into easily the best option to store your years of smartphone photo memories. I pay for it and will always pay.

Chromebooks were also the thing that started out slow, but now are pretty ubiquitous.

[mynameisash]

> Google Classroom has a lot of users in the ed tech space.

As a parent of a kid with ADHD and a Chromebook, I'm appalled at how wide open access to everything on the Internet is on Chromebooks. Trying to keep him on track when there's the constant temptation and ability to alt-tab over to YouTube means my wife and I have to be ever vigilant that he's actually working.

No, his ADHD isn't Google's fault, but they're designing and deploying tools for lots of kids who have impulse control issues.

[wordyskeleton]

Pixel Buds, particularly the new Pixel Buds Pro as well. They are fantastic.

[thebruce87m]

I wouldn’t consider the pixel a success until they truly fix the emergency call issues[1]. I wouldn’t recommend anyone buys one, and anyone who has one should demand action.

[1] https://reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/y039zn/i_compiled_...

Edit: Downvotes are a little confusing here, are people supposed to accept a phone that can’t make a call when you most need it?

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Google photos started inproving around 1 year ago (maybe two? With covid, it was a blend).

Bugs gone and new features popped up.

[CM30]

You're right, I definitely forgot the Pixel Phone, Chromecast and Chromebooks, all of which seem to be doing well enough to get regular support and a decent userbase.

[pragmatic]

Isn't it a bit of a stretch to call these “recent” though?

[agrimonyhal]

GCP

[rrdharan]

[infrastructure bias]

Kubernetes and TensorFlow should count, and are successful.

AlloyDB is IMO most likely to be successful (especially since AWS Aurora already proved the market): https://cloud.google.com/alloydb

Since this question seems to be much more about the consumer side, I think both Google Home and YouTube TV are independently considered successful though I have no doubt many people will chime in to note how much they hate either or both of those things.

[lake_vincent]

It's interesting how legacy companies are not making exciting consumer/commercial products anymore, but infrastructure and technical projects are booming.

Google TensorFlow and DeepMind, Microsoft WSL2, Meta AI, etc. Also worth mentioning the many quiet efforts to get quantum computing off the ground.

[formercoder]

I work at Google, but just want to say that AlloyDB is really cool.

[kro]

Flutter also comes to mind

[wanderingstan]

As a user, I can say that Google home has become a dumpster fire after starting out rather well. I’ve sworn off buying any future Google hardware.

[plorkyeran]

Kubernetes isn't a product.

[grepLeigh]

My most basic definition of a product is:

Something I can insert money into, which solves a more expensive problem.

Kubernetes and TensorFlow are extraordinary technologies - and very important to the work I do daily. I don't think they're products though, certainly not successful products.

[burkaman]

Google Cloud launched in 2008, but subproducts within it launch all the time. I don't use Google Cloud, but presumably some of these must have been successful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cloud_Platform#Timeline

Google Home/Nest is 2016 and has been fairly successful.

Google Fi is from 2015 and still seems to be going strong, I use it and am happy with it.

Chromecast launched in 2013, I think that has to be considered a success.

[jmyeet]

Let me ask you a question: why does it matter if a new successful product comes from an acquisition or is homegrown? Everything on your list other than Gmail and Chrome (which relied on Webkit FWIW) were acquisitions.

Some acquisitions just mean billion of dollars spent for nothing and these get a lot of attention. Remember when AOL bought BeBo for $850m? But every acquisition is a gamble. Most won't pay off but some will, spectacularly.

Like in 2022 can you really believe that Google paid less than $2 billion for Youtube? Is that not the biggest bargain of the century? Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion. Were it a separate company, at least until the last couple of years, it probably would be worth 100x that.

Most ideas don't turn into billion (or trillion) dollar companies. Expecting a company to do that multiple times is like expecting to win the lottery twice. Taking a $1 billion company and turning it into a $100+ billion business is itself a massive success. I'm not sure why the homegrown product is assumed to be somehow more virtuous.

[megaman821]

I would love to see Tech Journalist Sentiment vs Tech Company M&A to see who got it right more often. I distinctly remember tech journalists lambasting Facebook for spending so much money on Instagram.

That said Google should bring back Google Labs. They are tarnishing their main brand by cancelling so many projects. Tell people anything that graduates to the main Google brand gets at least a 10-year support cycle.

[soperj]

> which relied on Webkit

Which relied on KHTML.

[jimt1234]

> ...is like expecting to win the lottery twice.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/10/28/delawa...

LOL

[pmontra]

Actually Google didn't create YouTube. They bought it in 2006, 18 months after it was born. To be fair they grew it fairly well.

[joshuamorton]

It merged with the already existing Google video. Both made important contributions to the resulting product.

[crconover]

I feel like Google Photos is a pretty incredible product.

[aussiesnack]

> I feel like Google Photos is a pretty incredible product.

It was until they removed the Google Drive integration.

[whitewingjek]

There are many other products especially privacy focused, ente.io[1], PhotoPrism[2] that look interesting but as of this writing they can't touch Google Photos in many respects, which is why my wife and other family members still use it heavily. It's probably the only reason I'm still holding on to my google account.

[1] https://ente.io/

[2] https://photoprism.app/

[nyrulez]

They still don't have folders and have ignored years of feedback. The only reason I don't use it.

[loudmax]

They might, but not under the current management.

The product that stands out to me is Stadia. As a technical achievement, Stadia is impressive, but Google managed to maximize all of the downsides to fully online gaming and minimize all of the benefits. No amount of engineering is going to save a company if the management is deluded or consumed with infighting.

One could also look at their history of undermining their own social or communication networks by throwing up a series of incompatible clients like Chat, Hangouts, Allo, or Duo. Same for Buzz, Orkut or Google+. Any of these could have been successful if they just stuck with it, but their behavior makes it extremely clear that we should expect these to be very short lived.

There are major business opportunities out there and Google is in a sound technical position to capitalize on them. But this would require a a degree of foresight and backbone that's absolutely anathema to the current management culture.

[wollsmoth]

I'm pretty happy with Youtube TV, which I think is relatively new.

I think with the size they don't have a lot of interest in running "small" businesses even if they have some traction. Something like Stadia was maybe just wholly unprofitable but maybe had some benefits if they developed remote gameplay tech that might be re-used in another product someday or offered as apart of their cloud offerings.

I guess they'll eventually jump in on the upcoming AR war, but it might be hard to beat the offerings from Meta and Apple. Maybe they'll have the Android of AR?

[dangus]

Just a reminder: not every company has to have a startup mode of operating where new products are important to the success of the company and the satisfaction of its customers.

Exxon, State Farm, Keller Williams Realty, Five Guys, Morton Salt, your local dive bar, so many successful businesses out there have introduced almost nothing in terms of a new product in decades or sometimes even centuries.

[olvy0]

Exactly, I don't fully understand this mindset of always inventing new products when there are existing products. I'm more or less happy with their existing products which I do use (mostly gmail, drive, Android and youtube (kinda)). I would be very happy if they just continue to make them better, fix bugs, and slowly innovate inside the existing ones without breaking them too much.

[benlivengood]

Probably? Unless ads, cloud computing, and android all die at once there will be money to pay for some new R&D, and success is relative. Is 10M customers success? 100M? 1B?

Maybe an even better question is will Alphabet ever launch a massively profitable new product.

I figure AGI is on the table with both Deepmind and Brain pumping out new SOTA models every few months.

[sambooka]

Flutter has been great for me. Still think it would have benefited from focusing on only mobile/desktop and fixing some of those Github issues instead of web support. As a backend developer working on simpler apps it's been great. It's a product I would be more than happy to pay for.

[tootie]

GCP was also 2008. But like, that's a shit ton of successful products across a lot of verticals to come out of one company. And they've done a stellar job at keeping those products at the cutting edge and relevant to their users. YouTube in particular was a niche product for cat videos when it was acquired and now it's a huge revenue driver that has at least much of a cultural presence as Twitter or Facebook.

I think they'll continue to struggle in the consumer realm until they massively upgrade their marketing and branding. Android is the "cheap" option compared to iPhone. People don't show off Google-branded products the way they do with Apple and maybe never will. If they ever plan to try social again, it should be spun out of YouTube.

[zh3]

Launch - or acquire?

I'm sure there's a list somewhere of what's actually homegrown and what's bene bough (youtube, streetview, doubleclick, ?).

[SuhitAgarwal]

I surely hope so, Project Fuchsia shows a lot of promise and there are also rumors of the return of Project Ara, so who knows

[MivLives]

Google Fi and Google Fiber both seem to be chugging along. I know Fiber isn't expanding but they also didn't shutter either.

I don't know, I kinda like when big companies just throw stuff at the wall. They have the talent might as well experiment. If it doesn't work and it was actually something that had potential, a smaller company could make something similar avoiding some of google's pitfalls. After Google killed off the rss reader, how many other companies doing rss suddenly got an influx of people. I wouldn't be using the old reader now if it weren't for that.

[jeffbee]

But other than sanitation ...

Google Photos was launched in 2015. Drive in 2012. App Engine in 2008. Many many other changes that you will obviously derogate as incremental even though they are real achievements.

[CrypticShift]

During the last decade, Google has overextended itself in new ventures. This thread is full of "successful stories" from that era. there is sooooooo much potential for maturing what is in there already, and I think this is their mindset for the time being.

What I'm really curious about is: if zuck has his metaverse fantasy and musk his twitter conquest, what about Brin and Page? All I remember from recently is some "Airy" stuff (literally):

      Sergey Brin’s airship startup grows rapidly (https://www.ft.com/content/ae625a25-d2ac-4bca-9508-a5f0d3c7dd09)
      Larry Page's electric air taxi startup is winding down (https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/22/tech/kittyhawk-larry-page/index.html)

[theandrewbailey]

That depends on whether there's a critical mass of Googlers dedicated to the product who want to see it through to success, not only initially, but in 10-20 years. You'd think that Reader wouldn't take much effort to keep going, but no one was interested.

[jeffbee]

This is not accurate. There were tons of people who would have willingly developed it but Vic Gundotra did not tolerate products that had social aspects and were not part of Google+, so he had it murdered.

[johannes1234321]

It's not about a mass of googlers interested in it, but about leadership being interested in such a small consumer product.

[pcthrowaway]

Google Podcasts is pretty good, and definitely more recent than the ones you listed.