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What if Google starts doing it?

7 points| bhashkarsharma | 12 years ago |bhashkar.me

7 comments

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[+] ancarda|12 years ago|reply
I'm not taking any risks. I'm in the process of moving my email back to self-hosted email from Google Apps. IMO the biggest problem with Google is they have too many products. They seem to behave like "well, our search engine works so our other products must too!".

Rather than producing a few world-class products, Google produces hundreds of mediocre products that only seem world-class because they have the shiny Google logo on them.

Honestly, Google is probably doing the right thing cleaning up all these products, but they'll just introduce new ones. Meanwhile, my confidence and attitude towards Google erodes every day.

[+] kbenson|12 years ago|reply
Rather than producing a few world-class products, Google produces hundreds of mediocre products that only seem world-class because they have the shiny Google logo on them.

I would argue that if you limit their competitors in the space to free versions (for products which Google offers free), they ARE world class.

The problem is in the intervening years since that, competitors have also gone free, or prices have dropped enough that it's easier to make a comparison between the Google free product and the competitor with a nominal fee.

Honestly, Google is probably doing the right thing cleaning up all these products, but they'll just introduce new ones. Meanwhile, my confidence and attitude towards Google erodes every day.

You get what you pay for.

[+] codeka|12 years ago|reply
If you're not going to trust that Google will keep a service around for 2+ years, why would you try some random startup to be around in 2 years time?
[+] bhashkarsharma|12 years ago|reply
That's a valid concern. I'm not asking to go with a totally unheard-of outfit, but we can take a call depending on the particular use case. For instance, as a note-taking app I've stuck with Evernote for 2+ years now, and I don't see a reason to switch to Google Keep. I love the single-sign-on and all the auto-integration goodies that come as a part of Google suite, but that is not what you are always looking for.