[HN Gopher] Google is shutting down Stadia ___________________________________________________________________ Google is shutting down Stadia Author : vyrotek Score : 1415 points Date : 2022-09-29 16:17 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.theverge.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com) | aaronbrethorst wrote: | lol, props to Google for refunding the costs of the hardware, | games, and DLC, though. | | I might've actually bought one, except that I didn't want to be | stranded with an outlay of hundreds of dollars for a bricked | streaming device. If I'd known up front that they'd have refunded | my costs (or even a percentage of them) if they shut down the | service in some timeframe, I'd have totally bought one. | pkulak wrote: | I actually bought one of their controllers, and it's quite | nice. I'm pumped it's free now. Works great on Linux. | josefresco wrote: | Same. If they told me "we'll refund you 100% if we shut down go | nuts" I would have gone nuts as the service was solid. The | funny thing is it would have helped their "uptake" numbers and | might have stalled or prevented the shutdown! | dleslie wrote: | This was a concern with early adopters of Steam, as well; and | Valve made it clear that if Steam were to shut down that | purchasers would have an opportunity to download their | purchases. | | Of course, this was long before they sold ephemeral digital | things like trading cards and stickers, and before many games | were heavily dependent on the continuation of online | services. | wing-_-nuts wrote: | >This was a concern with early adopters of Steam, as well; | and Valve made it clear that if Steam were to shut down | that purchasers would have an opportunity to download their | purchases. | | I didn't realize this. I'm looking to build a pc in the | coming months, and the fact that valve has a plan in place | is comforting | lmkg wrote: | > Of course, this was long before they sold ephemeral | digital things | | But by that point they had established themselves. They | earned trust before selling things that required that | trust. | goingAvalanche wrote: | The thing is that nothing is bricked \o/ | | I end up with a Chromecast and a gamepad that are both | compatible outside of Stadia and played a few games, all of | that for free. | scottyah wrote: | Same here. If they intended to use this buyback as a strategy | so next round we're more comfortable buying into their project: | it's working. | Zamicol wrote: | Exactly! Google doesn't get this. Google has a commitment image | problem. As a consumer I've not seen them address this with the | seriousness it deserves. | | Since they won't commit to their products, their customers are | reluctant to commit as well. | asdajksah2123 wrote: | Yeah, I'm not using any new Google products unless it's for a | one off use. | | And I'm reconsidering the existing services I'm dependent on | as well. | | GMail, for example. While I have no doubt GMail will continue | to exist as long as email exists, Google's spam blocking (not | just filtering...blocking, where the email doesn't even make | it to the inbox), has become far too aggressive. And the | frequent UI changes are becoming unsustainable. | | Also, the nagging suspicion that Google is having silent data | loss issues across their products is not helping either. | cheriot wrote: | Google, where large engineering projects meet with half assed | businesses. | kwertyoowiyop wrote: | Well, who won the pool? | codyogden wrote: | Great question! Two people actually guessed correctly (not | posting their names for privacy), but the average date across | for all users (October 6, 2022) was surprisingly close to the | date they announced it would be shutting down. | | https://whenwillgooglekillstadia.com | monkeydust wrote: | Takeaway - next time you decide to buy a google product and have | choice through their store or 3rd party retailer, best to go | through their store! | gw99 wrote: | I think the best thing is wait 5 years and see if they are | going to shitcan it or not... | hotdamnson wrote: | Google search when? | BiteCode_dev wrote: | If you are looking for an alternative, I'm currently using | shadow.net for my games, and so far the ping is decent (I do have | fiber though). Mind you, I'm into single player titles, I | wouldn't advice trying out overwatch or lol on this. | | But for 30 euros a month, I got a machine with a full functional | windows system and a good GPU from the tip of my laptop. | | Not perfect, but it does the job for me. | julienreszka wrote: | I think you meant shadow.tech | BiteCode_dev wrote: | Indeed :) | radar1310 wrote: | Shocking news, Google shuts down something. | oumua_don17 wrote: | Around 6 months back, I withdrew from the offer stage to join a | Stadia team; dodged a bullet I guess. | rajeshp1986 wrote: | Just when Netflix & Amazon are increasing their focus on gaming | market, Google is shying away. This is an epic failure on the | Google management. | Aaronstotle wrote: | I remember in fall of 2018 some co-workers getting hyped about | Stadia and I told them that given Google's track record, they | will probably abandon it in 4 years. | | At some point, I think Google should stop launching products that | are going to be dead within 5 years, why should anyone get | excited about anything they do? | tonymet wrote: | this is especially bad news given the growth in games stremaing. | nVidia, Amazon, sony, microsoft and even Logitech are all growing | streaming products. It was Google's game to lose. | drstewart wrote: | Add it to the pile | cmrdporcupine wrote: | Well, that's kind of sad, if predictable. I worked with the team | that built the controller firmware. They worked their asses off. | And I personally worked on and finished up / optimized / | productionized the the stream receiver component for Stadia that | lives inside Chromecasts. | | Might be the last remaining piece of public facing code I worked | on @ Google (assuming it wasn't rewritten after I left), and now | it will be buh-bye. | throw_m239339 wrote: | Ge-Force now customer here, in my opinion, a better business | model than Stadia. | pfortuny wrote: | People: remember IBM. It used to be completely indestructible, | like a _given_ in any office... | [deleted] | sgtnasty wrote: | I really liked Stadia, it worked well for me and played lots of | AC and Destiny. Never had much of an issue and things worked | well. Im bummed, but not surprised. No one seems to mention the | real potential of cloud gaming: which is massive worlds and | players on the same "server"; and I mean MASSIVE, the likes home | PC's would never have enough power/graphics/memory/storage to | handle. | julienreszka wrote: | Have you tried shadow.tech? What did you think about it? | sgtnasty wrote: | Never heard of it, I am currently subscribed to Statia Pro, | GEFORCE Now RTX, and MS Xbox Ultimate. Because I am 100% into | game streaming. Its the future. But GEFORCE Now is the best. | I have high hopes for Xbox. | activitypea wrote: | How was Destiny PvP on Stadia? | 0x457 wrote: | So, Destiny PvP is segregated by input type: controllers | against controllers and kb/m against kb/m by default. | | Destiny has different matchmaking types: Connection-Based | Match Making and Skill-Based Match Making. Destiny also p2p | network model. | | CBMM was always a breeze to play as long as you can "git | gud". SBMM was often a nightmare because you get matched with | players all over the globe. | | I played Destiny on nearly every streaming platform except | for shadow, I can say that Stadia made SBMM more consistent | because, well, p2p within google DC is much better than all | around the country or globe. Win some lose some kind of | situation here. | | I mean, yeah, it's nothing like playing on my PC with 144hz | monitor, but it's very much playable. | sgtnasty wrote: | Lets just say I would only play Iron Banner, and do above | average. Its NOT for competitors looking for 4k @ 144hz . | tonymet wrote: | this is especially bad news given the growth in games streaming. | nVidia, Amazon, sony, microsoft and even Logitech are all growing | streaming products. It was Google's game to lose. | nafizh wrote: | Sundar Pichai is like the anti-Satya_Nadella. Since taking over | Google, the company has only gone downhill but they haven't | realized this, heads will only roll once they get hit over their | search and ad dominance, by that time it will be too late. | dekhn wrote: | Think of Sundar as being like a nicer version of Steve Ballmer. | He only existed to help the company grow as fast as possible in | terms of revenue and market share. It seems likely Ruth Porat | will replace him soon and then Google's transition to evil will | be finally complete. | Laremere wrote: | Random assorted thoughts as someone who worked at Google at the | time of launch (but not on Stadia), and now works in the game | industry proper: Props to the engineers, the technical base was | there. It really just worked. You could load a AAA game on a | Chromecast, and play it. Unfortunately, it didn't work perfectly: | From some users it didn't work at all (bad when this was someone | reviewing the platform), and for serious gamers the input lag was | noticeable on games where it mattered. | | Others here are saying Stadia should've been the Netflix of | gaming. Here's the thing though: Netflix isn't even the Netflix | of Netflix anymore. The streaming industry is now split between | the large content producers each having their own platform. | Netflix survived this only by becoming a content producer | themselves. Smart people at the major video game publishers have | seen this trend, and to the extent streaming is going to be a | thing, want to skip to running the platform themselves. | | The launch was a mess. They said it'd be available at a certain | time, but that's when they started a slow roll out. This didn't | meet gamer's expectations, where good launches just turn on a | game. The lesson here is that if an engineering process (eg, | Google's usual practice of slowly rolling it out to make sure it | doesn't fall over right away) is going to drive the user | experience, clearly communicate that. | | The suite of launch games appeared to check the boxes of a good | launch lineup, but didn't actually. They had major AAA games on | launch.... that were all out elsewhere for awhile. They had big | games launching on the platform early on....except actually they | were delayed leaving a drought of content. They had a good number | of games to carry them through the first year... but no "platform | sellers" which would on their own get users to try out the | platform. | | The target audience was misdirected. It feels like they tried to | get the core gamer crowd, which are those who would be the | harshest critics and have the least benefit (they have their own | systems already). | | Their commercials were a bit much, and failed to explain what the | platform actually was: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6Wy_pWscsk | | The landing page, on boarding process, and value proposition | where an absolute mess. You could outright buy a game and play | it, but they didn't really tell you that. They had a Netflix like | subscription where you got games, but it was a weird system where | games would rotate onto the subscription but you could keep them | as long as you were subscribed. The on boarding process also | immediately tried to get you to sign up to the trial for this | service, which fed the impression that this service was required. | The subscription also increased the resolution of the games you | were playing, but only sometimes and there was no way to know | what resolution games were actually being rendered at. | | Phil Harrison has now overseen the launch of the Playstation 3, | Xbox One, and Stadia. He should be unemployable as an executive, | and be weary of anyone who does employ him. | | Stadia hilariously lacked a search feature for nearly 2 years. | From Google, you know, the search company. | | From my time at Google, I saw many people who understood the | business of video games. Lots of great insight there. However, I | only saw one person (there were likely others I didn't interact | with) who understood video games themselves, as a form of art and | entertainment. They were on that development team that Google | canned, as the first sign that Google was giving up on Stadia. | JansjoFromIkea wrote: | cool, so I get a free USB controller and a chromecast? | | should've ordered a couple more when they were 20 euro or | whatever in that case... | vincnetas wrote: | If they refunding then it does not matter what was original | price. | JansjoFromIkea wrote: | ah yeah I know I'm just being stupid. I wouldn't have | remotely considered getting them at full price though; I did | consider getting a second at 20 just to give my mother a | chromecast and my brother a gamepad at the time though but 20 | somehow still seemed too much. | | actually, considering how much I use both I'll just give them | the ones I have now... | politician wrote: | So, having read 100s of comments in this thread and understanding | the sentiment about Google's track record, I find myself | wondering whether and why I might hire Google employees for | software development jobs. It's a strange question, right? It's | not their fault that these products fail and are shut down, but | on the other hand, ex-Googlers are more likely than average to be | from teams that failed and were shut down. I find it a bit of a | stretch to believe that management is 100% at fault for 100% of | the products in the Google Graveyard. | ohashi wrote: | It seems like a self fulfilling prophecy for Google products. | They have a reputation for killing them off, so users don't want | to invest and get committed to them. Then the products don't | match their expectations and get killed. It just further fuels | the cycle. | | At some point I wish Google would take a stand and believe in | some products. If they said we have a 10 year commitment to | making Stadia a success and will not close it before that, no | matter the cost. I might be willing to consider giving it a try. | I don't want to buy into something that's going to just get shut | down, especially when there are high costs involved. | ChildOfChaos wrote: | Absolutely devastated about this. | | I love Stadia. I bought it for a friend last Christmas and we | have been using it this year to play games together, she has a | Macbook which cannot play a lot of PC games and the Stadia model | works a lot better for us. | | Despite the lack of AAA titles, it had everything we wanted to | play, we just started playing overcooked on it. Now I do not know | what we will do. | | Geforce now will require a subscription + the game and I believe | this doesn't work anywhere near as well on her connection. | | We've also been doing playthroughs of Life is strange together, | due to the new feature where they let you watch another player | play. | | Stadia was absolutely perfect, Google absolutely messed this up | and i've got a bunch of games i won't get too lined up. | | It was fun while it lasted. | p1necone wrote: | Looks like Overcooked 2 (but not the first one) runs on Mac - | buy it on Steam and then you can use GeForce Now or the Macbook | depending on what's more convenient. | dafelst wrote: | Though it does need a subscription, Xbox Game Pass plus their | cloud gaming works very well, plus gives you a huge library of | games to choose from. | encryptluks2 wrote: | Game Pass is horrible. It has to be the worst service I've | ever used. | ChildOfChaos wrote: | i'm going to look into it, but I'm not sure my friends | connection holds out very well somtimes, geforce now didn't | work too well (although this was about 2 years ago), but | Stadia was perfect. | | Plus it's a bit expensive, particularly when you are not an | xbox user, 2x subscriptions could be pricey when all we want | to do is play a handful of games. Might even work out cheaper | to buy a Switch or something in the long term. | Reason077 wrote: | This is a bit sad. | | Stadia was pretty cool while it lasted. I was a Stadia subscriber | for a while. Great technology, but (mostly) crappy games. The | store was also pretty lame with just a huge list of (mainly | B-list) titles, and no indication of whether something was good | or not. | | With a better game library and a better store, Stadia could be a | winner. Shame they didn't just partner with Steam! | spatulon wrote: | A lot of AAA games presumably got ported to Linux so that they | would run on Stadia. Were those efforts funded by Google? I | wonder if we saw more proper Linux game client releases as a | result, and whether we'll see fewer Linux ports in the future. | outworlder wrote: | That was the best thing about Stadia. Cyberpunk ran on Linux on | day one, probably because of that. | | Don't forget Valve though. They don't have as much power as | Google, but they have done way more. The Steam Deck (as long as | it lives) will help. | coldpie wrote: | > Were those efforts funded by Google? | | Yes[1]. One clue (among hundreds of others) that Stadia was | already dead months ago was when the ports dried up, indicating | that the project had lost internal funding. | | [1] https://gamerant.com/google-spent-millions-stadia-ports/ | Taylor_OD wrote: | Remember like three weeks ago when some news about this came out | and they were like no we promise we are not shutting it down? | | Glad they are doing refunds though. | jedberg wrote: | Google's reputation for not supporting things long term is | finally starting to affect them in noticeable ways. | | Developers didn't onboard because they were afraid it would get | shut down. It got shut down because no one onboarded. | coldpie wrote: | I remember every single article when they first announced | contained at least a few sentences wondering when Google would | shut Stadia down. Because it was a Google project, Stadia was | doomed from the start. | serial_dev wrote: | On the other hand, I also remember all the hype that it | received (though maybe I live in a tech-obsessed bubble). | "OMG, it will change everything you know about gaming". All | my colleagues were so convinced that it was a technical | breakthrough (maybe it was, I dunno), and that everyone will | be playing with it because it is simply so amazing and | revolutionary. | | My opinion was "yeah, cool, but I just don't see it". It was | very annoying when these coworkers judged me, thinking I am | simply too stupid to realize how amazing this is... | Animats wrote: | Google only knows how to do one business. Ads. Any Google | product that isn't ad-supported dies, with very few | exceptions. | | Note that Google Cloud Services lose money. "Google Cloud is | now approaching a $16 billion annual revenue run rate, but | Google's ad business is likely to subsidize it for the | foreseeable future."[1] AWS makes money in that business, but | Google does not. | | So, don't depend on Google Cloud for anything critical. Only | a few months ago, Google was saying they were not going to | shut down Stadia. So, any PR statement about Cloud not | shutting down can't be believed. Stadia, after all, was a | cloud service. | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | I wouldn't touch GCP even with a 3 meter stick. And using | it in any project is just out of the question. No. | ignoramous wrote: | I think folks can finally accurately model what Google is | going to kill... GCP surely wouldn't be on that list? ;) | | > _You can pretty accurately model what they will and won | 't do with this one unusual insight that they're a | business... But "It's a Google product" is a weak signal | about whether it's going to get killed, and there are many | stronger signals. Let me know when they kill Ads and | Cloud._ | | -u/geofft https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30353025 | sofixa wrote: | Of course GCP is losing money, have you seen their rate of | investment in new datacenters and services? That shit is | extremely expensive. AWS was losing money for many years | too, they're at entirely different places. | newaccount2021 wrote: | _fat_santa wrote: | Google's reputation is dooming GCP. On the one hand you | want to say "GCP is way to big for Google just to kill" but | you never know, which makes the decision to use AWS all | that much easier. I honestly wonder if Google will stick it | out and make GCP a true competitor to AWS or if they will | just kill it in years time. | pwinnski wrote: | Amazon publicly stated that they ran their _own_ business | on AWS, and however much of an exaggeration that might | have been, it gave people the confidence to try it out. | The reasoning was clear: if AWS handles Amazon-scale | business, they can surely handle my smaller workload. | | Google is starting with a handicap, in that they have a | very strong reputation for killing products that don't | meet unknown high standard of performance/revenue. I | mean, the term "Google Graveyard" is popular, although I | prefer Killed By Google[0]. To counter that handicap for | GCP, they need something that stands out as much as | Amazon's initial claim, and I haven't seen it. It seems | clear that Google isn't running their own infrastructure | on GCP. If anything, the hope seems to be that they've | spent _so much_ money on GCP, _surely_ they wouldn 't | shut it down after all of that? | | But of course, the bright sparks at Google are aware of | the Sunk Cost Fallacy as well as anyone else, so... yeah. | I have trouble trusting it. | | 0. https://killedbygoogle.com | jlarocco wrote: | > Amazon publicly stated that they ran their own business | on AWS, and however much of an exaggeration that might | have been, it gave people the confidence to try it out. | The reasoning was clear: if AWS handles Amazon-scale | business, they can surely handle my smaller workload. | | I think even more important than the scalability, it | implies AWS isn't going away as long as Amazon is in | business. | eknkc wrote: | I deployed stuff on GCP but we moved to AWS after | stability issues and horrendous support experience on | GCP. | | And that was easy because we did not commit to any GCP | exclusive services (because they tend to shut down all | thr time). On AWS we prefer using things like DynamoDB | and that further locks us into AWS. | | GCP is a joke. | cpsns wrote: | I mean if I had to bet development time and a | product/service that has to run for years I wouldn't bet | it on GCP, precisely because of Google's reputation. | | I'm confident AWS will exist in a decade, I'm not | confident GCP will. I would never recommend a dependency | on a Google service, especially not one that matters | where there's potentially millions of dollars on the | line. | singron wrote: | Cloud has had over 135-153% YoY revenue growth every | quarter since they started reporting Cloud revenue 11 | quarters ago. It's amazingly consistent high growth. | | TAC (traffic acquisition costs) have exploded over this | time frame. If you subtract TAC from Services revenue, the | growth is merely good. Cloud revenue also seems a lot less | sensitive to the recent economic downtown so far, but we'll | really know after Q3. | | The operating losses for Cloud are also shrinking quickly. | Building data centers should be capex, but I'm guessing | they count R&D as opex, which makes the losses higher now | even though it will pay off later like an investment. They | could probably start to have operating income any time in | the next 3 years. | kwertyoowiyop wrote: | It was always strange that Google would decide to dabble in | the brutally expensive and competitive games market, of all | things. | apozem wrote: | "Brutally expensive and competitive" is right. Look at what | Microsoft had to do after losing the Xbox One / PS4 | generation. They've spent almost a decade building out a | radically new subscription service. That's before the $100+ | billion they've dropped on studios for content to fill out | said service. | Rebelgecko wrote: | Ironically, I bet if that Stadia would've done much better if | it had launched with the promise of "if we do shut it down, | we'll refund all your purchases" | pavon wrote: | Or at least use a business model that didn't require your | customers to put complete trust in the fact that you wouldn't | shutdown, when you have a reputation for killing projects. | | I'm not a hardcore gamer and have a pretty weak desktop by | gaming standards. If this was setup like an all-you-can-eat | subscription, or an al-carte rental, I would have jumped on | it in a heartbeat, and if it went away, oh well, I got what I | paid for. | | But the fact that that you had to "purchase" individual games | made it a complete non-starter for me. If I purchase | something, I want to actually own it, forever, not have | temporary access to it at the whim of the publisher/service. | I don't trust any online service to stay active indefinitely, | and Google doubly so. | odessacubbage wrote: | what's also important here is that people are very invested | in the ownership of their games, probably more so than they | are of their films/their music. 'your games' are | intrinsically tied to your saves in those games; your | characters, your items, all the bullshit grinding you did | once and _never_ want to have to do ever again. in a very | real sense, "You" are in your games in a way that isn't | true of movies or music or the other formats of media that | have been relinquished to the cloud. | vesinisa wrote: | Yeah actually, same here. When Stadia launched I really liked | it. The subscription was free for like 3 months. I've not | owned a gaming PC in years, but really enjoyed playing | Serious Sam and almost completed it. When the free period | ended I could've purchased few of the games I most liked but | ultimately decided against it because I knew by that time it | was inevitably going to be shut down so giving Google any | money was a fool's errand. | matrix_overload wrote: | That could have put them to unlimited risk. Let's assume they | _currently_ got $1M in revenue and spent $500K on | maintenance. They can either refund everyone (buying goodwill | for $500K) or book a $500K profit and piss people off. | Currently, the estimated value of the goodwill is above | $500K, so they are proceeding with a refund. | | But it could have been different. They could have got $10M in | revenue, then most users would have moved to competing | platforms, while still playing previously purchased games on | Stadia. This could have left them with a choice between | $1M/year running costs to keep the lights on vs. $10M to | purchase goodwill that is only worth $1M. | permo-w wrote: | can you imagine marketing or finance allowing a statement | like that through? | paxys wrote: | I would 100% have signed up and bought games if I was assured | that I'd get my money back if the service was shut down in | under, say, 3 years. | dmoy wrote: | That's kinda why I keep buying on steam, because they (at | least ostensibly) will un-DRM games for download if they | ever shut down | mey wrote: | My steam account is 18 years old. I can still easily | download Braid, a game released in 2009, and I apparently | played in 2014, install it on my Steam Deck and be | playing it again in ten minutes. Considering it has cloud | save support, there is a not small chance that my saves | may even be intact. | | It's that endurance in the platform that has me coming | back. I have faith that Valve as a company is in it for | the long haul to act as a game store platform and honor | my digital purchases. It's allowed me to put several | thousand dollars into them. | dham wrote: | It's really the endurance of Windows more than anything. | I can play stuff on Windows 11 mostly the same as I did | on Windows XP. I can't play any game from Steam on Mac | more than a few years old. | imran0 wrote: | It's fascinating that I can just click and run a game | compiled in 1996 (WINQUAKE) in Windows 11; but my ubuntu | installation breaks after not touching it for two months. | zerocrates wrote: | Proton offers some of this effect also: Wine/Proton is | pretty good at playing lots of old Windows stuff, in some | cases better than actual Windows is. | anotherman554 wrote: | You have no idea who Steam's CEO would be in a scenario | where they were shutting down, so you certainly have no | idea whether that CEO would un-DRM anything. | DRW_ wrote: | They can really only remove the DRM on games that use | Steam's own DRM, there are plenty of games on Steam that | use third party DRM that they couldn't really do much | about. | | However, on the flip side, there are also a good amount | of games on Steam that are totally DRM free and Valve | wouldn't have to do anything for those games in the event | they shut down. | grogenaut wrote: | I believe they've stated in multiple places that they | have budgeted for running the auth and entitlement | systems. They set aside money in escrow to do that. Those | systems are cheap compared to the CDN (which is also | getting much cheaper). A small team could have a multi- | year runway for running auth and entitlement. | ajnin wrote: | No-one at Steam ever actually said that, and I highly | doubt they have the legal and contractual standing to do | so if they wanted. | 5d8767c68926 wrote: | Eh, I'm not sure that has ever been a stated policy other | than an offhand remark when Steam was _much_ smaller. | Valve is unlikely to have the legal right to strip away | DRM from other companies games. Especially now that | everyone runs their own store front. | | Maybe, just maybe they would release DRM-free Valve | games, but that is as far as I could imagine they would | go. | jerlam wrote: | It will be three years and two months from Stadia launch to | cancellation. So you'd be ok with getting none of your | money back in this situation? | paxys wrote: | If all the purchases were made on day 1, then sure. | That's a lot more playing time than I usually get out of | a game anyways. For games/accessories I bought after that | - no, I'd expect a refund. | | The hardware itself was cheap anyways - like $50 for a | Chromecast + controller (and even cheaper with deals and | bundles), and you can still use both after the service | shuts down. It was the $60-80 per game that was the deal | breaker. | anonymousab wrote: | They straight up incompetently dodged the question whenever | it came up and tried to turn it into some patronizing and | belittling "we understand that you're scared of the future" | statement every single time. | | They deserved to fail on that point alone. Either promise | refunds or promise none; either way you're signaling a form | of confidence in your product and making the expectations | clear to your users. | | Refusing to answer on that point made it clear where their | confidence was and how weasely they felt they needed to be to | sell their product. | schnevets wrote: | The question is: Would that be more cost-effective than just | outright buying Ubisoft or a similar-sized publisher so your | device has some content? | nailer wrote: | BTW when Cyberpunk was released and didn't work, and PS Store | / Steam / XBox gave refunds, Stadia was the only platform | that refused refunds. | zorked wrote: | It worked well in Stadia. | josefresco wrote: | Yes! I timidly used the service knowing that Google might | kill it. If they promised me a refund I would have probably | spent a couple hundred dollars on content, controllers and a | pro membership. | sbarre wrote: | Just for clarity, they are refunding hardware and software | purchases but not membership fees. | iLoveOncall wrote: | How would Stadia shutting down justify you not getting a | pro membership? It's something you pay monthly anyway, it's | not like you get less of your money worth if they close the | service 2 years after your subscription was used, unlike | hardware and games. | jamiek88 wrote: | Yes it was a decent investment to get started, too much for | a whim. | | I seriously thought about it but ended up scoring an Xbox | and game pass and my main reason was I have to buy the | games at full price for Stadia and google will deffo shut | it down sooner rather than later so too risky. | | Game pass is amazing for someone who isn't a hardcore call | of duty type gamer! I've been away from gaming since | playing tiger woods on the OG Xbox so being able to play so | many different types of games is awesome. | | I like forza horizons! | sylens wrote: | Google's mistake was not choosing to go with a Game Pass | type model - but then again, they didn't have the content | as they have had to work to get each of the games offered | running on Linux. It's why they have had to pay millions | to developers to make Stadia versions available. | [deleted] | appleflaxen wrote: | That is incredibly funny, and incredibly apt. | dicomdan wrote: | They are refunding purchases to users. | | But developers aren't getting their time back. | [deleted] | aequitas wrote: | I don't remember exactly, but I believe this was promised in | some sense when I decided to get on board a year or 2 ago. At | the time you got a free Chromecast + Controller when buying | Cyberpunk which was also a pretty good deal to pass by. | dpkirchner wrote: | Someone asked Stadia devs or reps on Reddit if users would | have access to purchases games if the service shut down, | back when Stadia was announced, and the response was not a | "no" but definitely wasn't a "yes". | | https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/ceuy4w/comment/eu5 | 6... | | (That said, props to them for refunding folks.) | chihuahua wrote: | That the Stadia dev's response on Reddit is pure | nonsense, basically just saying that | | 1. we're committed to supporting this for years to come | | 2. you can download your game metadata (saved games) | | LOL, what are people supposed to do with their game | metadata now that Stadia is being shut down? Look at it | in a hex editor? | Macha wrote: | "and let you export your saved games" | crazygringo wrote: | Not with developers though. Consumers get refunded, game | developers don't get anything back. | ocdtrekkie wrote: | A lifecycle policy is a truly underrated component of a good | services and software business, and I wish more people both | understood that, and more companies had them. | | When I buy pretty much any Microsoft product, I can go on | their lifecycle policy page and see a date, often five to ten | years out, when they commit to continue supporting/securing | the product through. If I get more than that, great, but | there's a commitment Microsoft is held to up front. | | Google cannot make that commitment because Google cannot | commit to anything. But it's a large enough company it could | afford to do it and eat the cost when it was a bad call. The | reason they won't is because Google doesn't view customers as | people or partners they need to value. | dilap wrote: | That's a promise you can only keep if almost no one buys | anything, though. :-) | [deleted] | lolinder wrote: | If Stadia had grown to the scale where Google would have | had a hard time refunding all purchases, odds are they | wouldn't have felt the need to shut it down. | moffkalast wrote: | Problem is though, if they ever decided to shut down | they'd have to repay the entire amount of revenue they've | made and more. | jedberg wrote: | Presumably it would be something like "we will refund any | purchase if we shut down before 2024" or something like | that. | hvis wrote: | I would have liked this kind of promise, but for the | general public this marketing message might have sounded | differently: "We _might_ shut down before 2024 ". | | Even if some people are kind of used to this happening, | stating it more obviously might have a negative effect | just as well. | foepys wrote: | Nobody would have prevented them from changing the ToS | after a few years to not refund new purchases after date | X. It would have been a bad signal but if the platform | was successful people wouldn't really mind. | kevincox wrote: | If you put it in from the start it wouldn't be an issue. | Or even just guarantee refunds from purchases in the past | 3 years. So there is a rolling window and you can lessen | the impact but closing the store and continuing operating | the platform for 1-2 years. | vineyardmike wrote: | "We'll refund the purchases made while the service was in | public beta" | bombcar wrote: | Just have a rolling refund window - "If we shut down the | service in 3 years, we'll give you a full refund, and if | between 3-5 years, a half refund". | | And then if you need to and don't want to refund, just | keep the service limping along for 5 more years. | yencabulator wrote: | The monthly subscription costs will not be refunded, only | controllers & games you "bought", instead of played via | Pro subscription. If Stadia had been a success, there'd | been plenty of Pro subscriptions. | falcor84 wrote: | Well, you can also keep the promise if there are lots of | buyers and business goes well. | anonymousab wrote: | "we'll make sure you have a way to play your games even if | stadia shuts down" would have also been acceptable and | would have guaranteed much more good will. | | But they failed to adequately engage devs or their | customers' desires in the first place, so such an | arrangement would have been a comparatively impossible | licensing and product goal for them. | pbhjpbhj wrote: | Surely is down to licensing 'only'? Google presumably | didn't develop those games, the games still needed to | connect to servers, etc. Arguably, it's a benefit to get a | new person on your gaming service so Steam, for example, | should adopt all those users is the licensing that Google | arranged. | | If the terms Google had were "we'll sell licenses for your | games, but if we shoot down then you have to accept those | users as native users", then uses would have been insured | against shut-down. I can't see how those terms are worse | than if Google were a retailer of those games? | | A lot of AAA games are freemium with IAP, surely the | acquisition is Cannondale enough that game companies would | go for such a deal? | | I suppose there wasn't enough upside for Google as people | still bought Stadia without any such promise. | tshaddox wrote: | Funny story. Two years ago they gave away "Stadia Premiere | Edition" kits for free, which was a Chromecast Ultra and a | Stadia controller which I believe retailed for USD 100. I | wasn't particularly interested, but I figured it would be | worth a try. | | But when I got the hardware I tried signing up and realized | that apparently I had signed up for the Stadia free trial 6 | months earlier. I vaguely remember trying for literally a few | minutes on my laptop. This means that the $100 of promotional | hardware they sent me is completely useless for its intended | purpose. | | It's genuinely sad that some manager or team went to all the | trouble of getting the budget for this hardware promotion, | but couldn't or didn't reset the free trial for the Google | accounts of the recipients. But it might be a clear sign of | the general level of competence with which the entire Stadia | project was executed. | | On the bright side, the Chromecast is still quite useful, | although I'm not personally using it and haven't found | someone to give mine to. Last I checked there wasn't any way | to use the Stadia controller for anything, but I wouldn't be | surprised if people could figure out how to "jailbreak" it | and make it useful. | icelancer wrote: | It works over its standard USB-C interface with a computer. | | I got the same deal you did and use my Stadia controller | with ROMs on my laptop when traveling. Works great. | Excellent controller, too. | | The wireless interface is actually WiFi and some form of | Bluetooth and not easily jailbroken last time I checked. | tshaddox wrote: | That's good to know. I think the WiFi and/or Bluetooth | was what I had looked for and found nothing. I'd want to | use it for games on my Apple TV or Nintendo Switch. | hbn wrote: | Assuming it's possible, they should really patch the | controllers to be used like a typical bluetooth | controller. | inerte wrote: | I use the Stadia controller which I got for being a | YouTube Premium subscriber to play Xbox Cloud games. | Works flawlessly! | totaldude87 wrote: | I finally find some use for stadia controller then | Flameancer wrote: | Yea they should definitely open source the firmware or at | least do one last update to make it Bluetooth compatible. | I as well got the promo deal. | hbn wrote: | I got the same bundle and had the same issue (already used | the trial for like a minute just to see if it worked) | | I had a secondary Google account for app publishing, and I | was able to switch to that and start another trial there. | Not that this information is really any use to you now! | | For what it's worth, my experience was pretty bad. Had tons | of lag spikes on my 50/5 down/up internet. | Baeocystin wrote: | It's been a while, but I seem to remember using my OnLive | controller for a good while after system shutdown as a | Bluetooth media controller. I'll bet someone will figure | something out. | intrasight wrote: | "Google Stadia is a cloud gaming service whereby games can be | purchased and played, but don't have to be downloaded to a | console or PC." | | This was a doomed business model because it blurred | subscription and purchase. If it was subscription, there | should have been no purchases (hardware or software) | necessary. There are millions of people - myself included - | who would pay for a subscription game service. Stadia was not | that service. | yencabulator wrote: | Stadia had both. Stadia Pro was a subscription that gave | you access to a few new games every month, and you could | buy (licenses to play) games. | intrasight wrote: | Had both means blurred - therefore doomed | anonymousab wrote: | "stadia" in the public's mind, and how it was primarily | communicated and advertised, was a subscription streaming | service where you also had to pay full price for games | that could only be used on their service and would go | away with it. | | That's not the "Netflix for games" that it needed to be | and stadia pro's limited selection was nowhere near | adequate either. As a result, they set themselves up with | the most unappealing business model possible for | consumers. | Hamuko wrote: | I'd say the biggest effect was that consumers didn't trust | Google to actually keep their purchases alive for more than two | years. Techwise Stadia was actually very good and it could have | been a good alternative to a full-blown gaming PC for people | who are not gaming enthusiasts. | agrippanux wrote: | People who are not gaming enthusiasts are pretty happy with | mobile gaming. I honestly don't know what Stadia's target | market was. | babypuncher wrote: | Google should have launched a new PC game store that lets | you download your games. For a nominal monthly fee, you can | stream those games from Google's servers instead of needing | to buy expensive gaming hardware. | | This would have given enthusiasts a lot less to hate about | Stadia. It would have given customers a lot more confidence | in the long-term viability of their purchases. It would | have highlighted the flexibility offered by Google's | streaming platform without making putting up with its | drawbacks a requirement to enjoy your games. A player could | start out only streaming their games, then upgrade to a | real PC down the road to get an even better gameplay | experience out of their existing library. | | For many enthusiasts, the product Google actually launched | felt like an existential threat to their hobby. They feared | games could go streaming exclusive. Publishers could use it | as a form of extra draconian DRM, or start designing their | games around the limitations of streaming. As a result this | turned many of the biggest gaming enthusiasts, the people | casual players will often ask for advice on what to buy, | into ant-Stadia evangelists. | anotherman554 wrote: | "Google should have launched a new PC game store that | lets you download your games. For a nominal monthly fee, | you can stream those games from Google's servers instead | of needing to buy expensive gaming hardware." | | Nvidia already has a product like that called Geforce | Now. Instead of having it's own store it integrates with | Steam and GOG. | | There's still the problem that is a hypothetical customer | wants to game enough to pay for Stadia but doesn't have | the funds for a gaming PC... why don't they just buy the | $300 dollar Xbox Series S? | babypuncher wrote: | GeForce Now is a good option, but their implementation is | clunky precisely because it is a "bring your own games" | affair. | babypuncher wrote: | Well Google sure proved them wrong, they kept those purchases | alive for nearly three years! | lrae wrote: | > Developers didn't onboard because they were afraid it would | get shut down. It got shut down because no one onboarded. | | One of the reasons why they launched and bought studios for | exclusive content. Which they then shut down early, only a bit | over a year after launch of Stadia (?). | candiddevmike wrote: | This is keeping me from looking seriously at Flutter tbh. Go is | safe, it has a community and ecosystem outside of Google, | Flutter doesn't seem to be there yet. | rjh29 wrote: | I am using Flutter and have the same concerns. There are many | companies that use Flutter, but Google do 99% of the | development and don't seem to be using it for any of their | own public apps, which is discouraging. | tsbertalan wrote: | Well, they did a Big Damn Rewrite to use it for Wallet/Pay, | and, in the process, dropped a bunch of features and made | it infuriatingly tied to a phone number, because the | rewrite was really for the Indian market. | collegeburner wrote: | i can confirm that this kept at least a few teams i've talked | to or worked with from choosing flutter. facebook and react | native are viewed as much safer from the "killed by google" | effect. same thing tossing around the idea of using carbon, | their new language. | yesimahuman wrote: | Not to mention that it seems that the relationship between | Flutter and the Android team is contentious at best | sirius87 wrote: | 100% this. I don't know if this is a PR problem, but it very | much feels like Flutter is a project that will live and die | by Google's sword. Go doesn't come with this perception. | | Projects that make it big from within Google need to find | shelter from this perception by moving into community driven | project governance, for better or worse. | mosburger wrote: | I feel like it might be a little "safer" if it wasn't tied to | Dart. :-/ | rjh29 wrote: | Dart is pretty much 'done' as a language though. They are | adding code generation and other nice things, but it's | stable. Flutter on the other hand needs to be kept up to | date as Android and iOS change, so it's very vulnerable. | SahAssar wrote: | What is an example of a mainstream language being "done" | before? | detaro wrote: | Most mainstream languages are "done" in the way that | matters here. Not "done" in the sense of "not receiving | new features anymore", but in the sense that you could | switch their implementations to maintenance mode today | and they'd remain useful for a long time. Easily visible | with languages where people do indeed keep using old | versions for whatever reason. | tommy92 wrote: | I started learning dart/flutter a few days ago. Now I'm | having second thoughts. | timsneath wrote: | (Disclosure: I lead PM/UX for Flutter & Dart.) | | For sure, anything that I could say along the lines of "we're | not shutting Flutter down" might be taken as having overtones | of the Baghdad Bob meme. And indeed, why should you trust my | word? | | The reason you should feel confident to use Flutter is | because it's strongly in our business interest to invest in | it. Over 600,000 apps in the Play Store alone are already | written using Flutter, to say nothing of the countless apps | for iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux and web. The list includes big | brands like Alibaba, BMW, eBay, and SHEIN. Neither Google as | a whole, nor Android in particular would be better off if | Flutter didn't continue to flourish. | | Aside from that, there are thousands of engineers at Google | who use Dart and Flutter internally to build a wide variety | of apps. There are many millions of lines of code written | that power everything from Ads to our internal CRM system. | Google wouldn't be better off if we had to throw all that | code away and start over. | | Lastly, Flutter is very successful. It has a developer base | of several million, is growing quickly, and developers tell | us it makes them more productive | (https://medium.com/flutter/does-flutter-boost-developer- | prod...). Happy developers are a prerequisite for a wide | variety of other Google APIs and services, so we have a | vested interest in continuing that. | | Even if it weren't for Google, there are more contributors to | Flutter from outside Google than there are Flutter team | employees. Those contributors include big companies like | Samsung, Canonical and Sony, as well as prolific individual | developers like @a14n (https://github.com/a14n). | | We're working hard on lots of fun new stuff right now, | including a rewrite of our graphics rendering engine. If you | haven't seen it, check out https://wonderous.app, which is | using the new engine on iOS. We think it shows the potential | of Flutter well! | root_axis wrote: | Yes, and even worse, the nature of Flutter means its utility | is especially vulnerable to abandonment. If Go were abandoned | you could at least maintain your Go applications | indefinitely, but since Flutter relies on its own UI engine | it requires perpetual development to stay in sync with the | evolving UI design language of iOS and Android. | megaman821 wrote: | It's even worse than that. Not only is keeping the UI | updated a herculean task. It is written in a programming | language (Dart) that virtually nobody outside of Google | uses. Other than another giant tech company, no one could | keep Flutter going if Google ever drops it. | Apocryphon wrote: | Dart is a really simple and ergonomic language to pick | up, and there are all sorts of hobbyist languages and | frameworks that have niche developer interest. It doesn't | have to replace anything major to survive. | SahAssar wrote: | > Dart is a really simple and ergonomic language to pick | up | | Are there any major projects besides flutter built on | dart? The fear is not that dart is hard to use, it's that | it would not be maintained if flutter was not a | mainstream success. | johnnyanmac wrote: | A quick browse shows a few notable names like Square, | Tizen, and Toyota. Amazon seems to have also forked | Flutter themselves to make their own framework so expand | Flutter to Desktop and Web: https://docs.amplify.aws/ | | Seems to be enough buzz around it that I wouldn't be | super worried. | wpietri wrote: | Yeah, I tried Flutter for a project and there was a lot to | like about it. But it's very much a Google project. On the | one hand, that's great, as they've been able to do a lot of | interesting stuff. But Google is just so fickle that I'd hate | to bet that they'll keep going with it. | Apocryphon wrote: | It's open-source, at least. It seems to be popular enough | in Asia that if Google abandoned it that Alibaba or someone | might be interested enough to pick it up. | | https://twitter.com/taodong/status/1141603862740008960 | (thread) | | Canonical saying Flutter is the future of Ubuntu desktop | apps is something too, but I'm not sure how much it's | caught on since when it was announced in July 2020. | | https://canonical.com/blog/flutter-and-ubuntu-so-far | Illniyar wrote: | Flutter is basically a custom rendering engine with | massive effort to create pixel perfect compatability with | native offerings. If google drops the ball on it, I doubt | there is any company that can take on maintaining | something like that. | | If google drops support for flutter, the next design | update by ios or android would kill it. | phillipcarter wrote: | The wonderful thing about making everything OSS, and also | why execs hate it, is it gives up a degree of control to | kill something at a moment's notice. And so Dart/Flutter | are in a good place! | busterarm wrote: | It's an important point to understand that it's not the | flexibility to kill it but the flexibility to divert its | resources elsewhere. | | You lose that with OSS projects because you eventually | end up with people screaming down your door and the | visibility that brings. Also being assigned to work on | these projects internally is career death. Both of these | problems happened to Google Cloud's Terraform provider at | some point and it was a headache for the company and the | community. | | Luckily Terraform adoption is out of Google's hands. | They're just forced to play ball. OTOH, Google could | easily kill off Flutter via other means. | preommr wrote: | Go projects are also usually biased towards being very simple | with few dependencies. A lot of projects that are well suited | for go would be easy to rewrite to another language if Google | did ever decide to abandon it. | rinze wrote: | Honestly, at this point in time if you don't know that | investing your time in a Google product is probably going to be | a waste... it's on you. | eis wrote: | Yup and at least my friends and family are extra cautious when | it is a service where you "buy" something which can be taken | away from you at any moment. | | Google is building a too strong reputation of an unreliable | company. Doesn't help when an AI is in charge of banning people | from accessing their critical stuff like emails and stored | files. | blihp wrote: | Google's reputation is, and has been for years, so bad on this | front that most of their initiatives are stillborn for this | reason pretty much from the day they are announced. Three years | ago we had this regarding Stadia: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21596003 (even before | this, I recall lots of skepticism re: Stadia on the day it was | announced) | kabdib wrote: | Years back, I received quite a few contacts from Google | recruiters about interviewing to work on an unannounced gaming | product (which was Stadia, of course). | | Google's reputation for canceling projects was bad, even back | then. Never gave it serious thought. You could see the writing | on the wall, even before they built the thing. | phao wrote: | Super sincere question. | | > Google's reputation for not supporting things long term | | I didn't know Google had such a reputation. I mostly use drive | and gmail, so it was fine to me. | | Does google really have such a reputation? Any place I can read | more on this? | [deleted] | kalmi10 wrote: | https://killedbygoogle.com/ | | I miss Google Reader and Google Wave the most. | nitrixion wrote: | I really miss Google Play Music. For my needs, it was the | perfect streaming service. | | Youtube Music is a huge step back. Spotify is far too | playlist and recommendation happy, I want to listen to | albums not curated lists. Tidal is decent, but similar to | Spotify. Apple Music is the one I haven't tried for more | than a couple of days and I don't recall what I didn't like | about it. | shadowofneptune wrote: | It made a great offline music player, too! | bobsmooth wrote: | I don't understand this comment. You can listen to whole | Albums on Spotify. | nitrixion wrote: | Yes, you can. Easily! | | The point I was making about Spotify is that even if I | solely listen to music as full albums, I _only_ get | recommendations for playlists. I rarely want to listen to | a playlist. There are a number of other things I don 't | like about Spotify, but it works well enough. | Peanuts99 wrote: | Same here, GPM recommendations were fantastic and the | interface was very simple and nice to use. When they | moved the service to YouTube music half my playlists were | filled with poor quality songs uploaded to YouTube, it's | a mess. | | Spotify is okay and does have some nice features in the | way that casting works and multiple devices joined to one | account, but it's certainly not as enjoyable to use. | gilrain wrote: | Apple music is my choice, exactly because it is still | album focused. That said, I'm not surprised you bounced | off... the UI isn't very good. | baq wrote: | Gmail and drive are pretty much the only safe havens. The | rest... how many its own chat apps will google kill this | year? | citizenkeen wrote: | https://gcemetery.co/ | dougmwne wrote: | Very sincerely, you must read just about zero tech news. | Google has been infamous for this ever since they shut down | Google Reader in 2013. For about the past 10 years they are a | company adrift that can no longer launch new products without | getting absolutely ridiculed. Everyday consumers have lost | their faith in the company because they are so used to | getting jerked around anything G. People I know wont touch a | G chat app because they know it wont last 6 months. | metaltyphoon wrote: | Yes, they do. I personally would never put a single service | on GCP just out of principle. | MichaelCollins wrote: | https://killedbygoogle.com/ | [deleted] | misthop wrote: | https://killedbygoogle.com/ Lists the lifetime and EOL of | everything Google has killed, along with a short blurb about | the termination | pie_flavor wrote: | Developers didn't onboard because it was Vulkan-only. You can | release for GOG as an afterthought, but you had to build for | Stadia as Another Separate Platform, and they somehow managed | to make their SDK requirements more onerous than Xbox's. | | They might still of joined if there were any customers, but | customers didn't join because of the prospect of needing to buy | their existing games again, then pay for a subscription service | to play them, on top of the already-not-so-big group of people | with great internet but not so great hardware. Though they | might of still joined if there were any games. | | The primary thing Google got wrong was assuming everyone would | flock to their service in droves for the promise of the other | side of the service, thus forming it. They didn't anticipate | that all the roadblocks they installed from the start would | prevent any kind of flocking. | | HN posters will talk about Google's graveyard, but it is not a | factor for businesses; Google's history of shuttering perfectly | good services doesn't extend to services you actually fork over | cash for. And this won't affect that, as it was nowhere near a | perfectly good service and was doomed before it was released. | johnnyanmac wrote: | Yeah, if it was truly a cheap port that was just putting the | game on another store and plugging in some API calls, devs | would have flocked to it. But it involved a pretty involved | linux ports instead. Apparently Red Dead Redemption 2 cost | tens of millions to get working on Stadia. | | sucks to hear as someone who wants linux gaming to get more | prominance, but I guess for now the current direction is to | WINE it out. | pjmlp wrote: | Google's GDC talks regarding Android and Stadia are kind of | proofs of how they lack any kind of sensibility how to talk | with game developers. | | While Sony, Microsoft, AMD, Intel, NVidia do cool tech | sessions, Google is all about analytics and Play Store. | | Then they expect developers used to devkits and Visual Studio | plugins, to use classical UNIX like development experience to | target Stadia, while hoping Stadia will stay around. | berz01 wrote: | well said, literally it's getting old. no one trusts | amazon/google/fb new ventures. atleast fb is going all in on vr | IntelMiner wrote: | Facebook is dumping money into VR to try and push their | boulder of a terrible idea (the "metaverse") up a hill. | Except the hill is a solid 90 degree angle cliff | | Nobody wants to go to Walmart in VR and artificially grocery | shop. That's a dystopian misery. But Facebook is happy to | try! | | Their counterparts at places like VRchat meanwhile realized | that just making a sandbox environment for people to do | whatever they wanted is far more enticing to users. Valve | meanwhile is happy to chug along and putter out critically | acclaimed games to go with their own bespoke hardware | releases | vhold wrote: | For those who have not seen the Walmart VR demo, it's | really something else. Something is going very very wrong | at Meta if they thought this looked enticing: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLcaDStxljw | rjh29 wrote: | They are losing stupid amounts of money on VR (as part of the | R&D thing) in the hope that people will use it for work. The | awesome value of Oculus Quest 2 will probably never be seen | again. | worldsayshi wrote: | They could mitigate this by always releasing the source code | for shut down projects so that it could be self hosted or third | parties could continue the work. | jedberg wrote: | That wouldn't work because their tooling is so custom you | could never run it. Also the code is probably in an | embarrassing state, especially if the product is getting shut | down. | scarmig wrote: | It's a bit of a conundrum: every company is going to shut down | products. What's the best way to launch new, risky things? | Startups can simply go all in on the product, and if it fails, | the company dissolves, though people rightly are hesitant to go | with a fly by night startup for exactly that reason. | | I'm not even sure that Google has shut down more products than | an equivalently sized company. But it's certainly shut those | products down in such a way that it's generated far more | backlash and ill will than anyone else. | | Just brainstorming, but perhaps a large company, when launching | a new product, could establish some kind of dedicated trust to | provide credible assurances that e.g. the product would be | supported for at least 10 years. | coldpie wrote: | Microsoft, Nvidia, and Sony have all launched game streaming | products without this kind of coverage. It's a Google | problem. | potatolicious wrote: | Importantly all of their products are still alive, | supported, and even if they're doing superbly do not appear | to be on the verge of shutdown. | | There are a few problems to Google's way of doing things, | having witnessed it from the inside. In no particular | order: | | 1) Google tends to be over-optimistic and under-skeptical | when it comes to new products. This is largely driven by | organizational dynamics: Google's corporate structure | encourages fiefdoms that come up with the Next Big | Thing(tm) - everyone involved is encouraged to be wildly | over-optimistic about their products, and there is not a | countering skepticism from upper management to impose the | right amount of discipline re: these wild-eyed claims of | TAM, growth, etc. The net effect is that Google launches | products that aren't sufficiently baked, with vastly | overestimated initial growth. This creates disappointment | as the products bounce off the market and do not get | anywhere near the (completely fictional) projections. | | 2) Google's go-to-market strategy tends to be under-baked | as well. This is related to point #1 - heavily over- | optimistic projections causes Google to accept woefully | substandard GTM plans. Stadia launched with an incredibly | poor lineup and burned a lot of the initial goodwill and | press which stalled any kind of momentum they could've | gotten. | | 3) Google organizationally isn't set up to reward | individuals that turn around troubled products. Promotions | heavily favor new product, not fixing existing broken | product, especially once the product has lost executive | favor. This causes team death spirals - failing products | experience intense team attrition that further hampers any | kind of turnaround plan. | | 4) Google has comparatively high executive turnover vs. | similar companies. This results in rapidly shifting high- | level strategy. Products and projects fall in/out of favor | so quickly it causes whiplash. Other companies (see: | Nvidia, Sony, MS, Apple) seem to be able to identify | product areas of strategic importance to the company, | executing against it, and having the executive support to | continue resourcing these projects even if they initially | fail/disappoint (see: Apple Maps, PSVR). Google | constitutionally does not have this ability - they _talk_ a | lot about multi-year investments in strategic areas but in | reality their commitments are fickle. | zerocrates wrote: | Though do any of those do the Stadia model of having you | "buy" the game specific to them to be able to stream it? | | Other systems I'm aware of mostly piggyback on some other | platform so your "ownership" extends to local usage also | (like how Nvidia's system works with your Steam library), | or are just Netflix-esque subscriptions that give you | access to the available library as long as you're | subscribed (like PlayStation Now, well, whatever it's now | called under Plus, and Game Pass streaming). | | Neither of those models has the same type of concern over | losing your purchases. Google's track record is obviously a | factor too, but the business model is as well. | csydas wrote: | > What's the best way to launch new, risky things? | | To show great confidence in it and address the elephants in | the room as directly and clearly as possible. | | I think the main issue here is that the perception of Google | being fickle and uncommitted means it's harder for third | parties to want to commit resources to. Strong signaling from | Google on long term commitments has to be made, but I think | that Stadia is in a bit of a pickle because of its nature. | | With a console, I assume there are some general timelines | developers get on how long the console is going to be around, | so it's a lot easier to develop a strategy for working with | it because you know off the bat you likely have at least N | years, your projects will take Y years, thus you understand | how many projects you can put onto it before the console | obsoletes. | | With Stadia though, since it was just PC games and Android | games being streamed, there are two ways you can try to | understand it: | | - It never obsoletes as Google just upgrades the hardware and | OS to keep new fresh games coming in | | - It obsoletes as soon as it's too costly for Google to | refresh the hardware and they decide to cut their losses | | My guess is a lot of people thought it would be the latter | and just didn't want to invest time into it. I'm not sure how | the process for getting a game on Stadia was, but based on a | quick look at some articles, seems that Google was struggling | with this aspect even as late as 2022 [0] with trying to help | make the process more convenient and faster. That's 3 years | into the platform already and they were still teaching | developers how to get their games onto Stadia efficiently, | and I have to imagine Google was already looking at the | numbers for the datacenter costs and going "welp". | | So how could Google have really changed it? My take is have | this convenience and strategy for the porting from Day 1. I | did not use Stadia or really follow it (just not interested | in Cloud gaming in general), but looking at this article and | the history of articles on porting games to Stadia, seems | that it wasn't an attractive process from the beginning, for | an already iffy platform for developers, with the looming | fear that Stadia would not make the numbers to keep Google's | interest. | | Combine that with Players already unhappy with not actually | owning a lot of their games and distrusting Stadia, I guess | it seems like Google just couldn't quite sweeten the pot | enough to convince them to pay full physical game price for a | game they didn't really own and ran the risk of being removed | due to obsolescence (a perception on players part perhaps, | but this is again a communication issue for Google) | | [0] - | https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisholt/2022/03/15/google- | stad... | the_snooze wrote: | >What's the best way to launch new, risky things? | | Slow-roll invite-only launch to establish a core user base, | work out the bugs, show staying power, and build from there. | Exactly what Google did in 2004 with Gmail. | pb7 wrote: | The same strategy that failed with Google+. It's not as | foolproof as you're making it out to be. | bink wrote: | That's not really apples to apples though. Gmail worked | with external SMTP services to send and receive mail. | Google+ required that anyone you wanted to connect to | also have been offered and accepted an invite (or | received one of your limited invites). | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | It seems plausible that social networks have more of a | network effect than things like a game streaming | platform. Obviously there's still some network effect and | a certain marketing aspect to it, but I don't think | they're directly comparable. | pb7 wrote: | You have to convince game developers to port their games. | If the reward is a few thousand users, it's going to be a | hard sell. Also the R&D and infrastructure required to | even start up the project is too high. Building a Gmail | (especially back then) is small potatoes in comparison. | Thaxll wrote: | Well for a thing like Stadia it's not doable, you have very | complex hardware and r&d to do first. | delecti wrote: | Conversely, they tried the same approach with Google+ and | the slow rollout absolutely killed the momentum of a | desired service. | theptip wrote: | That works great for a service where costs scale with users | so you can run lean in beta. | | Unfortunately I don't think Stadia fits that description | well; you need to build hardware, network PoPs, license | games, etc. | | Maybe there is a private-beta approach that really | iterates, initially uses off-the-shelf hardware, only | launches in one state, has limited games, etc. but it's | hard to make a splash like that. | | I think if Stadia had just been better (so everyone using | it was raving about it) the Google reputation might not | have mattered. | | It just ended up not being a game-changer economically, | people still want to buy consoles etc. | | The model of thin-client gaming might win long-term but | it's just not a clear winner yet. | jldugger wrote: | > Unfortunately I don't think Stadia fits that | description well; you need to build hardware, network | PoPs, license games, etc. | | Hardware is literally scaled by customer demand, and was | one of the reasons gmail went with the invite only | launch. | | Network PoPs are less an issue when you are already | piggybacking off of Goog / GCP infrastructure, and you | can mitigate the remaining costs by per country launches. | And they did exactly that. It's still not supported in | Hawaii. | https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/9338852?hl=en | | > I think if Stadia had just been better (so everyone | using it was raving about it) the Google reputation might | not have mattered. | | Stadia was too late to market, in a field where content | is rare enough relative to the number of competitors to | have bargaining power. And they have no vertical | integration to lean on. Nvidia has GPUs in house, | MS/Sony/Nintendo have game devs in house for exclusives. | Amazon _might_ be able to parley Twitch into a profitable | Luna, but its a long shot. | theptip wrote: | Hardware is well understood to be OpEx intensive, and | have high up-front costs. Look at the pricing for | injection mold dies for example. The opposite of a good | fit for an iterative approach. | jldugger wrote: | In my defense I was thinking of the GPUs and servers, not | the client devices (does stadia have clients?). In that | scenario, might HW be capex -- a durable good you buy and | use for many years, and can sell if you no longer require | it? | munificent wrote: | _> Hardware is literally scaled by customer demand_ | | Hardware manufacturing is, but design is most certainly | not. It takes as much work to design a controller that | you build one of as it does a controller you build a | million of. | jldugger wrote: | Okay, fair, design costs have to be amortized across the | userbase, and probably the correct solution to this is to | build hardware people want to use with or without Stadia, | so your design isn't anchored down. I.e. I can (and do) | pair PS5 and Switch Pro controllers with other OS's. | Obviously those other platforms don't offer the force | feedback or HD rumble, but at the very least it's a | signal to the your designers and the market that you | expect your designs to be competitive in the open PC | market. | | Obviously less viable for the set-top boxes, but still a | valid strategy if you can do it. | TheCondor wrote: | I never had stadia so I don't know, but was it games | only? Or was it a YouTube TV box/Android TV and a game | box? You could build a compelling user base to develop | the scale and then make it more about the games. | | A coworker and I were chatting about it, what happens | if/when Apple drops and Mx SoC in the AppleTV? There are | the obvious apps, you create a camera add on and add | FaceTime to the living room. Things like that but you | also have a very serious machine that can go head to head | with PS5 and Xbox, legitimately. I wouldn't be shocked if | something like that were to happen. | mook wrote: | > Maybe there is a private-beta approach that really | iterates, initially uses off-the-shelf hardware, only | launches in one state, has limited games, etc. but it's | hard to make a splash like that. | | That's... kind of the problem? They have a reputation for | abandoning products after making a huge splash. The only | way around it is to stop looking for big splashes and | start building products slowly instead. Pixel phones were | notoriously only available in selected countries. Google | Fibre is even more limited. | lewisl9029 wrote: | It does sound like their distribution power is a double-edged | sword when it comes to launching new products. | | On one hand, the distribution power makes it extremely easy | for new products to get lots and lots of users really | quickly. On the other hand, it can give a false sense of | security when it comes to product-market fit. | | The only real solution I can think of is deliberately | launching new products without the Google branding and | without relying on the built-in distribution channels, | working towards product market fit the hard way, and only | after that should they consider taking advantage of Google's | distribution power to accelerate growth. | josephcsible wrote: | They should have split Stadia into two conceptual halves: one | with the technology to split the processing from the input | and output, and one to do the hosting of the processing. Then | when they decided to kill Stadia, they could have let other | people run the latter, so that the former would still be | useful to people who already owned it. | nobodyandproud wrote: | Shutting down most product lines doesn't mean said product is | rendered unusable. | | It does mean any further support is non-existent. With PaaS | and SaaS, this implicit contract between buyer and seller no | longer holds. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _every company is going to shut down products_ | | There's typically a fight, though. | jedberg wrote: | > I'm not even sure that Google has shut down more products | than an equivalently sized company. | | AWS has shut down I believe only one service in its entire | existence (SDB). And only when they had a viable alternative | (DynamoDB) _and_ helped their biggest users make the move. | | I can't recall any Apple service that has been shut down | without an alternative. They've certainly cancelled hardware | programs, but that doesn't break your existing hardware. And | they give plenty of warning for iOs phase outs. They pissed | some people off by dropping support for old apps, but only | after most of the big ones had been converted. | | And Microsoft is the king of long term support. How long did | they keep supporting DOS in Windows? Or 32 bit programs. Or | Windows 2000! | busterarm wrote: | Steve Jobs's Apple liked to deprecate the whole API | underpinning their OS from version to version. That and | "upgrade" products with increasingly inferior versions | (Final Cut, iTunes, XServe). | | And then there's any era of Apple and their habit of | removing consumer choice and forcing customers more into | their closed ecosystem. | acdha wrote: | > Steve Jobs's Apple liked to deprecate the whole API | underpinning their OS from version to version. | | Can you provide some examples? The years of supports for | things like Carbon are hard to reconcile with that claim. | munificent wrote: | Bias up front: I work at Google but this is just my | personal opinion. | | _> AWS has shut down I believe only one service in its | entire existence (SDB)._ | | Sure, but that's comparing a different branch of the | company. Stadia is a consumer product, not a paid developer | product. On the consumer side, Amazon has discontinued | plenty of things (as every large corporation has): | | According to this article[1], Amazon has canceled Haven, | Amazon Spark, Amazon Restaurants, Amazon Storywriter, | Amazon popup stores, Dash buttons, Amazon Tap, Instant | Pickup, Amazon Tickets, Whole Foods 365, Amazon Fresh's | Local Market Seller, Quidsi, Endless.com, MyHabit.com, | Amazon Webstore, Amazon Destinations, Amazon Local, Amazon | Wallet, Amazon Local, Fire Phone, Amazon WebPay, Amazon | Askville, Amazon PayPhrase, and Amazon Auction. | | Relevant to this thread, Amazon Games is technically still | around, but they canceled Nova, Intensity, Breakaway, | Crucible, and the Lord of the Rings MMO. Many top | executives have left. | | [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-products- | services-fai... | mosburger wrote: | > I can't recall any Apple service that has been shut down | without an alternative. | | I can think of an esoteric one that no one misses: Ping | (their music-based social media network) | duskwuff wrote: | There were a decent number of features in Apple's iTools | / MobileMe package which were discontinued with no | replacement. One big one that comes to mind was iWeb | (static web hosting). | joshstrange wrote: | Also their "Print a photo book" from Photos (at the time | it was call iPhoto I think?). You could design a photo | album and they would send you a really nice bound copy. | They discontinued it but had 3rd-party plugins that | filled the gap for a while before even those died (I | think). | mikebonnell wrote: | Ironically enough, Google Photos still has this | capability. | nemothekid wrote: | Amazon shutdown Drive (their dropbox competitor), there are | plenty of consumer services Amazon has shutdown. Google's | problem has been their tendency to shutdown perfectly good | services because they aren't successful as ads. Reader is | the posterboy for this; a service probably used happily by | millions (or tens of millions) that had the plug pulled. | | The fear with Stadia wasn't that Google may just shut it | down, it's that it could have been very successful, with | millions of happy users, and Google _still_ would have shut | it down. That 's what separates Google from other | companies. | throw10920 wrote: | jedberg said " _AWS_ has shut down I believe only one | service in its entire existence (SDB) " - emphasis on | AWS, _not_ Amazon as a whole. Big difference when you 're | talking about developer services, as opposed to end-user | services. | | Now, it's a perfectly valid point that Stadia is a | consumer service, like Drive - but in a thread where | there are discussions about developer services (GCP, for | instance), making the distinction is important. | nemothekid wrote: | > _(GCP, for instance), making the distinction is | important._ | | The distinction is meaningless in that case because GCP | hasn't sunset any services either. | silisili wrote: | > it could have been very successful, with millions of | happy users, and Google still would have shut it down | | Weeps in Google Play Music and Hangouts. | kingaillas wrote: | Microsoft shutdown stores, resulting in loss of purchases | for customers. I lost a few ebooks when they shut down | their ebook store, their Zune Marketplace and Play For Sure | was a confusing fiasco with the final result of authorizing | purchases for one final resting place before the DRM | servers were killed. | | So they don't exactly have a spotless record. | Aunche wrote: | Windows phone was the biggest shutdown of all time. Off the | top of my head, there's also Edge and Silverlight. | jedberg wrote: | Edge and Silverlight both had replacements. Windows phone | was shut down because almost no one cared. | | The difference is Google shuts down services people | actually like and use simply because they aren't | profitable _enough_ | pjmlp wrote: | 10% of Europeans cared, but it wasn't enough. | jsmith99 wrote: | And windows phone still got updates for over 2 years even | after the shutdown, despite the fact it had been semi | dead for years before then. | Aunche wrote: | In terms of market share, Windows phone was a few | percent, but that's still millions of phones. | | Silverlight may have a replacement, but that doesn't help | the devs who sunk their time developing with it. Same for | people writing extensions for and debugging compatibility | with Edge. | jsnell wrote: | So is your argument that people liked and cared about | Stadia? Because right now it feels like a really odd | double standard. Go read through that canonical "Killed | by Google" list. How many of those products were more | popular than Windows phone / had users be more invested | in it / etc? Be honest, it's a handful. Most of them you | hadn't even heard of. | | It feels like you have a double standard at play here, | and are giving both Microsoft and Amazon a free pass on | their abattoirs of dead products by various excuses, and | totally ignoring that those same excuses would apply to | Google's. | faefox wrote: | Feels like the writing was on the wall almost as soon as they | launched. It seems telling to me that Stadia couldn't get any | traction even during one of the most protracted GPU | shortages/crypto manias in history; connectivity requirements and | lag issues aside, I think a lot of gamers just aren't interested | in outsourcing the hardware side of things the way these | corporations might expect. Building and maintaining your "rig" is | a big part of the appeal for the PC gaming crowd that renting | time on an anonymous server in a datacenter somewhere just can't | match. | polytely wrote: | I think they might have made it if they went with a gamepass | style service, pay a fee per month, get access to the full | catalogue of games, you could even bundle it with youtube | premium. | pie_flavor wrote: | I will happily pay Nvidia to be able to play my Steam games in | the cloud when I am out of state with no access to a gaming PC. | But Google wanted me to buy a separate copy [!] at full market | price [!!] while also paying them a subscription service [!!!]. | And then there's no games, because they thought they could | impose a specific graphics API instead of just porting D3D like | Steam did, and in reality ports take time and nobody wants | spend just as much money as any other console port takes in | order to sell to a platform with a fiftieth of the users. | camel_Snake wrote: | The subscription is optional. I loved Stadia because I only | really play one game, Destiny, and I could play it year round | for just the annual season pass and 0 hardware investment. | Came to ~$100 a year for all my gaming needs and it was | perfect. | drusepth wrote: | Yeah, I mostly just bought games outright on Stadia rather | than subscribing for the Netflix-y pool of games everyone | said they wanted, which worked out really well for me in | the end: I played for years and hundreds of hours and it | was basically all for free. | foepys wrote: | My personal problem with Stadia was the lock-in. You were | required to buy a game at full price on Stadia and were only | allowed to play it on Stadia, a service for which you would've | eventually had to pay a subscription fee. | | One can tell people that a PC is much more expensive upfront | and that you could play for years on Stadia for the same money | but the risk of it being shut down and losing access to all the | full price games just wasn't worth it. Plus real-time | multiplayer games like shooters and MOBAs were just impossible | to play competitively, so you needed a PC anyways if you played | even only one of such games. | p1necone wrote: | Yeah, and people will shout about Steam being the same level | of vendor lockin but they're ignoring the trust factor. Steam | has been around for decades and rightly or wrongly people | mostly consider it a given that their Steam games will never | disappear. Google needed to acknowledge that and actually | provide an appealing alternative. | | Instead they tried to charge full retail price on games from | a tiny library on a product that nobody believed they weren't | going to sunset in a couple of years time. I suspect if | they'd gone with a subscription cost only model they probably | would have been a lot more successful. | Rapzid wrote: | Just look at the popularity of 144-240hz displays and eSports. | The fact the 5800x3d even exists to eek you out 20 extra fps at | 1080p to get you from 150 to 175.. | | Cloud gaming with its latency? Some people not noticing isn't | going to cut it. | | PS5 is hugely popular and perpetually sold old. So the console | market is not hurting either.. | | The market has spoken and it's not interested in cloud gaming | services with its downsides. | donatj wrote: | Stadia owner here, the entire concept of a streaming game system | where you still have to buy the games is just weird. I used it | for a couple weeks and went back to my Xbox. | | To succeed, it really needed to be just a gamepass-esq model. | | The thing I found _really_ impressive is that the latency felt | better over the _actual internet_ than streaming my Xbox from | another room. | | It's also _super impressive_ that the headphone jack in the | controller 's audio seemed perfectly in sync with the video from | the Chromecast despite the controller operating over Wifi. The | video and audio streams are presumably completely separate, | originating from Google servers. | crazygringo wrote: | I'm honestly astonished at full refunds for everything purchased | via Google -- not just software but hardware too. | | I know most of the comments here are focusing on "Google shuts | down yet another thing as everybody expected" but this is really | doing right by consumers. | | I think they deserve a lot of credit here. With so many (usually | valid) warnings about how you don't really own digital content in | the cloud or hardware you can't root... the fact they're giving | everyone all their money back even when they're probably not | contractually obligated to, that's pretty huge. | | If Stadia were a startup that ran out of money/funding, that | would never happen because there wouldn't be any money left in | the first place. So even if Google cancels a lot of things, this | is a nice (if occasional) bright spot of news, that Google has | the ability to do full refunds and actually does it. | | It also makes you wonder what future gaming plans they have, | especially since they're spending the cash to preserve as much | goodwill here as possible. | jsploit wrote: | Two months ago, Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32276188 | jjulius wrote: | >Stadia will exist by the end of the summer. You don't have to | believe me. Like I said feel free to come back to this thread | in October. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32278402 | neogodless wrote: | Summer ended a week ago! They were right! | defen wrote: | It's not October yet though. I look forward to returning to | that thread in a few days. | stephc_int13 wrote: | Streaming is not sexy for gamedevs. We all know that latency is | going to suffer. | | I don't understand the pain point they are trying to solve for | end-users. | | Gamers are used to buy shiny new hardware to run their games. | | This is again a case of a solution looking for a problem. | unsafecast wrote: | > Gamers are used to buy shiny new hardware to run their games. | | I think you meant "Gamers _that have the money to spare_ are | used to buy shiny new hardware to run their games". | | You can get a subscription for $10/mo. That's $120 every year. | That's a hell of a deal for a casual gamer that doesn't want to | spend the money on a PC. | stephc_int13 wrote: | There is also a huge amount of free to play games for this | audience. | camel_Snake wrote: | I just have a mac so don't have the real hardware to run proper | games. I've used Stadia for the last year+ and here are some | nice aspects to cloud gaming you may have overlooked. | | - No downloads. This means if I wanna play any game in my | 'library', I just click a button. Not decide if I wanna wait X | hours to download/install the game or figure out what to delete | to free up space. This means when new updates come out I just | get to play them, not time out the download, etc. For cloud- | only games, this also frees them from having to limit the game | to to user hard-drive space. | | - No cheating. I mean I guess you could rig an AI that watches | your screen and reacts to it but that's much, much harder than | current cheats. For a while when cheating was a bit too | rampant, some destiny users opted to play PvP on Stadia instead | just for the fair games. | | - Convenience. Being able to switch devices/screens mid session | was quite nice. Same for launching games to do a bit of | maintenance from my phone (i.e. check daily vendors on my lunch | break) | welcome_dragon wrote: | Have you tried it though? It's so much better than any other | streaming game service from Xbox or PSN | | When cyberpunk came out, it was crashing everywhere except the | stadia version. I've rarely had performance issues with a | stadia game, and even playing over 4g is pretty good. | | The technology almost works like magic here. | | Now if only there had been more games on it and if people | didn't dismiss it before it even launched it MAY have had a | shot (and I guess if Google didn't have a knack for killing off | things). | | I am fully convinced that stadia represents a good future for | gaming, and as hardware costs go up with sinking bandwidth | costs, I am sure the concept will come about again in a similar | way. | stephc_int13 wrote: | Oh, this idea has been around basically forever, it will come | again, I have no doubts about it. | | Stadia was not the first attempt; it won't be the last one. | | People have been trying to build perpetual motion devices for | centuries, some still are. | zepppotemkin wrote: | Get wrecked Google | vyrotek wrote: | Just a couple of months ago. | | "Stadia is not shutting down. Rest assured we're always working | on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro." | | https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656 | furyofantares wrote: | What I think happens in situations like these (from experience) | is that the team is trying as hard as they can to prevent | shutting down. And they either believe they'll succeed, or | believe they _can 't_ succeed without boosting the expectation | that they'll succeed by explicitly claiming they aren't | shutting down. | | If you say, both to the public and to the team, that you might | shut down but you're not sure yet, that's as good as shutting | down. And if there are rumors about shutting down, because it's | close to happening, then you may have to address it. And you | may believe that the only chance you have of not shutting down | is to tell everyone that you aren't shutting down. | Diesel555 wrote: | I like this statement. It doesn't imply ill-will such as | intentional lying or selfish intent as most other posts do. | This statement simply shows that people are trying to make | their projects succeed in a complicated environment. | | From my experiences, most people are doing what they think is | right. We should take more time understanding why people | think what they are doing is right, even when we may perceive | the action as immoral or wrong. | sva_ wrote: | > Just a couple of months ago. | | This was exactly 2 months ago (July 29th). | timmg wrote: | I mean, it was _probably_ a lie. But, also, things may have | changed. It 's not like Google didn't just go through a big | hiring freeze and budget process. | gilrain wrote: | They really don't deserve the benefit of the doubt when it | comes to abandoning products. | MichaelCollins wrote: | Everybody here knew it wasn't going to play out that way, so | surely everybody in Google knew it too. Or should have known. | Either they were lying, or were effectively brainwashed by | the corporate environment (a real possibility.) | UncleMeat wrote: | The company really did go from "hire like mad" to "oh shit | cut stuff" seemingly overnight. It would not surprise me if | Stadia was an easy way for some SVP to slash their budget | to appease Finance. | z9znz wrote: | Many companies, especially publicly traded ones, do overt | knee-jerk reactions when there are big stories of | economic downturns. | | I actually think it's an intentional behavior designed to | show investors that they are being studious relative to | economic conditions (aka, covering their asses to avoid | shareholder suits). | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | That tweet was from _two months_ ago, long after everyone | saw the writing on the wall with respect to the economy. | As another commenter responded, the first tweet in | response to that was: | | > When you inevitably do shut down in a couple of months | could you please just release Bluetooth drivers for the | controller first? It's a good controller and I'd like to | be able to use it. | | In other words, people didn't believe them from the get | go. Whether it was an outright lie, or a George | Constanza-esque "It's not a lie if YOU believe it" | message, is pretty irrelevant. Everyone knew or should | have known it was BS. | lazide wrote: | Delusional thinking isn't just for random people living | under a bridge. | andrewstuart2 wrote: | Also, orgs have multiple levels and various individuals | in leadership who have their own plans that never quite | perfectly align. Miscommunications happen, and | corporations aren't a single entity. | yieldcrv wrote: | This just gave me a flashback to everyone working for | WeWork pre IPO | | Nobody I knew there was willing to understand how all of | Wall Street was making fun of them and the valuation | attempt. | bee_rider wrote: | It is a really low-stakes prediction, for us to guess that | Google is going to cancel a product. Internally I bet they | had people making good-faith arguments in both directions. | buttersbrian wrote: | Not a pay product though. How many pay products have they | shut-down cold-turkey, with no new service/product to | migrate to? | bee_rider wrote: | My point is less that we are more likely to be correct, | and more that without seeing the sunk costs first hand it | is easier to say "lol it is google they will cancel | things!" | sbarre wrote: | It's likely that the person tweeting this believed it, | because it's what they were told.. | | I'm going to bet most of the Stadia team found out at the | same time as, or shortly before, everyone else. | lrem wrote: | Most certainly not a lie. The person tweeting that was a | member of the Stadia team. If they didn't believe Stadia is | going to be fine, why wouldn't they jump ship earlier? | LatteLazy wrote: | In the UK, you know a minister will be sacked soon when the | Prime Minister publicly announced they "have her full | confidence"... | tomschwiha wrote: | Same for German politicans | Psychoshy_bc1q wrote: | wrong. german parasites can literally do what they want. | they get away with (almost) everything. | drcongo wrote: | And football managers. | throw_m239339 wrote: | archived for posterity: | | https://archive.ph/W3F3g | artursapek wrote: | It's a Google service, what do you expect | barbariangrunge wrote: | Some people were mean to me when I said I wasn't going to port | my game to stadia. I said, "google will probably cancel it | within the next few years, so I'm not even considering it," and | they got really offended by my prediction. | | Well... it was a little rude to make a prediction like that, | but it was based on research and past history. It was just way | too big a risk. | | I wonder if it's a bit self fulfilling at this point: timid | users lead to poor adoption which leads to cancellations which | leads to timid users? | ConceptJunkie wrote: | This is Google we're talking about. They shut everything down | eventually. | Kye wrote: | Somehow Blogger persists almost 20 years post-acquisition. | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | I still like Blogger. | Kye wrote: | Sometimes I wonder how it keeps getting updates while | other stuff dies. Maybe the people responsible for it are | on a different career track. I'll probably put my next | blog on there. 10+ years of "Blogger is doomed!" haven't | amounted to much as the graveyard fills with newer, | hotter applications. | krossitalk wrote: | Does anyone think we'll ever see the sunsetting of something | huge like YouTube or GMail? | transfire wrote: | Yes. | 8note wrote: | Those are part of the core ad business. I could see | anything that isn't an ad driver being shut down. Eg. GCP | or Google docs | 1123581321 wrote: | Not unless the products start failing or human population | grows 10x and they don't keep up relative to other Google | products. Google takes products seriously when they have | huge user counts and huge user counts relative to their | competition. Their problem is their inability to seriously | commit to growing valuable new products to that size. | wvenable wrote: | Nope. Huge products will be fine as long as they stay huge. | | Google doesn't support new products enough to become huge | and don't seem to have a cohesive plan to support a range | of products in the long term. | | I'm probably someone who could have benefited from Stadia | but I feel like they never marketed to me in a way that | even got me to try it. And the fear that this was just | another experiment by Google didn't have me seeking it out | on my own especially for the up front costs. | drexlspivey wrote: | If Gmail goes, most people on earth will be locked out of | their online accounts | MichaelCollins wrote: | Too big to fail. If Google ever collapses the G in | 'GMail' will come to mean Government. | morepork wrote: | Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1361/ | | There are 2 classes of product that I don't see them | shutting down. | | 1. Those that make lots of money, e.g. search, youtube, | maps. Unless that changes of course. | | 2. Those that are heavily used internally at Google, e.g. | gmail, docs, calendar. They are always going to want those | as internal tools. I guess they could make them internal | only, but how much more work is it to maintain the public | version too given it already exists? | ocdtrekkie wrote: | In 1997, I'm not sure anyone could imagine an Internet | without GeoCities. | pvarangot wrote: | For GMail? yes. | | For YouTube I think it would be something like it will | slowly turn into CNGooGSNBC and be heavily editorialized | where you need to work with an AI assisted nebulous entity | for weeks before you can upload content. | 93po wrote: | I agree with this. At some point YouTube could possibly | only allow monetizable content, meaning anything that | veers even slightly out of mainstream, or covers topics | that advertisers don't want to associate with, will get | deplatformed. | sfmike wrote: | Nope because both are extensions of ads. Both are bought | and managed within google ads manager. Basically a product | lasts at google ifnm it can reach ad placement scale. Docs | is useful for it's data and to help personalization of ads | so it stays. Most of the tool shutdowns couldn't have ads | or didn't assist ads effectiveness. | ipaddr wrote: | 100%. Not sure which will go first but my guess is youtube | will fold into another product. Gmail will start breaking | and be sunsetted. It would not surprise me to see search | sunsetted. | Xeoncross wrote: | The first reply to that tweet: | | "When you inevitably do shut down in a couple of months could | you please just release Bluetooth drivers for the controller | first? It's a good controller and I'd like to be able to use | it." - https://twitter.com/josh_ross/status/1553465786634604544 | DSingularity wrote: | Gold | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | Lol, I like his other response to someone praising his | prediction abilities: | | > It's not hard to predict the Google future. Yet another | rebranding of whatever chat product will come soon enough | also. | bornfreddy wrote: | I am guessing they didn't release the drivers? | zerocrates wrote: | My understanding is that it uses Bluetooth just for | pairing, so I'd assume that it's not so much an issue of | "drivers" but more of controller firmware to get it to send | inputs over Bluetooth at all. | ThatPlayer wrote: | Yes, the way it normally functions is directly connected | to the Stadia server over wifi. It does show up as a | controller connected over USB too. But Bluetooth is just | for setting up the wifi connection. | | I don't even want to call it pairing because the way you | pair the controller to your game session is to enter in a | 5 button combination that is displayed on your TV. | willtemperley wrote: | It works nicely as a controller over USB, I'm using my | stadia controller with OpenEMU | ren_engineer wrote: | Google needs to restructure their incentives before it wrecks | the company. I have no doubt whoever launched Stadia got | promoted and then bounced to a different product and didn't | care about whether Stadia was a success long term. | | Google's ad money printer masks the rot underneath, Google is | literally a meme at this point for shutting down products. No | serious business or developer is going to trust them. If | governments get serious about ad regulation and damage their | cash cow, Google is in trouble | akira2501 wrote: | > Google needs to restructure their incentives before it | wrecks the company. | | People build monopolies for the perceived benefits but this | is the price you must always pay. You're no longer competing | in a marketplace of customers, as you've flagged, your | managers are now just competing in a marketplace of capital | expenditure. | scarface74 wrote: | You can't blame this on Google's size. Neither Microsoft, | Facebook, Apple, or Amazon (Disclaimer: I work at AWS) have | this problem. | | Google has never struggled as a company. Amazon barely | survived the dot com bust, Apple almost went bankrupt and | even Microsoft had to pivot or become the next IBM after | Balmer and missing out on mobile. | | Facebook being still founder led and having the advantage | of knowing how fleeting social media networks have been in | the past, keeps Zuckerburg paranoid. | | Google's ad revenue is covering up a lot of project/program | mismanagement. | pb7 wrote: | Microsoft choked their lead in the console market to Sony | despite being much larger with bigger pockets. | PlayStation 4 and now 5 both outsell Xbox 3:1 or so | despite Xbox 360 having outsold PlayStation 3 and had | loyal customers. They also choked with Mixer, losing to | Google (YouTube), Amazon (Twitch), and Facebook (Gaming). | It is not a "Google problem". Google (and Apple and | Facebook) hate is just trendy on HN. | scarface74 wrote: | Microsoft is playing an entirely different game than | selling loss leader hardware. They are all about | subscriptions and streaming games. | | Then again, look at the revenue mix of the other | companies to see how well they were able to move into new | markets | | - Apple - phones, tablets, watches, computers, | accessories, services, and even the AppleTV+ series have | been getting rave reviews. | | Apple Arcade even isn't in any danger of being cancelled. | | - Microsoft - Windows, Server software, Azure is a strong | second, at least they didn't cancel XBox and I bet their | streaming game service will be around for awhile. | | - Amazon (same disclaimer I work at AWS): Amazon retail, | AWS, Twitch, advertising, Prime Video, the Alexa devices | | - Facebook - FB proper, WhatsApp, Instagram -yes two of | those are acquisitions. But how many acquisitions has | Google screwed up completely? | | And then you have Google. | | - YouTube is believed to be barely break even from a | profit standpoint | | - it was revealed in the Oracle trial how relatively | little Android makes in profit . Yes I realize the | numbers are old. But what has changed since then? By the | time of the trial, Android already had the dominant | market share. Google pays Apple a reported $18 billion a | year to be the default search engine. That has to be more | than Google is making from Android per year. | | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/google | -s-... | | After all these years, everything that Google has don | outside of advertising has been a failure as far as | profitability. | pb7 wrote: | >Microsoft is playing an entirely different game than | selling loss leader hardware. | | Same can be said for Google, right? Google is playing an | entirely different game than having paid-for-products but | instead funneling products into the money-printing Ads | machine. | | >But how many acquisitions has Google screwed up | completely? | | I actually don't know and am very curious, how many? More | or less than other similar companies? From my memory it's | not many but I could be very wrong. Firebase for example, | is alive and strong and rarely gets mentioned. | | I don't think every company needs to have the same _type_ | of business model. Google became popular because it made | really great products that were all free* which increased | adoption. Maybe some of them (like say, Search) would | have never gotten popular if they had charged for it | right away. I 'm not convinced there's a single right | path. | | >it was revealed in the Oracle trial how relatively | little Android makes in profit | | It makes sense though, right? I don't even know how | Android would make money directly (ok, I do know of ways, | not sure if that's how it is) but it's a precursor for | making money from the Play Store. | scarface74 wrote: | > Same can be said for Google, right? Google is playing | an entirely different game than having paid-for-products | but instead funneling products into the money-printing | Ads machine. | | Look at the diversity of profitable lines that Amazon, | Apple and Microsoft have gone into over the last two | decades and compare to the number of failed attempts that | Google had at trying to diversify. | | I'm sure Oracle was counting Ad revenue coming from | Android when calculating profits. | ryanbrunner wrote: | It's less size and more lack of competition. As dominant | as the companies you listed are, none of them completely | capture a market to the degree that Google does with | search and ads. | | Having a golden goose that has very little risk of going | away can definitely be a curse. | scarface74 wrote: | Google's "market" isn't search, it's "selling ads" and | capturing attention (mostly YouTube). Google is under | assault in ad selling by Facebook who knows more about | you and Amazon (same disclaimer I work at AWS) who knows | your buying habits. | | You also can't block Amazon and Facebook ads. | | On the YouTube side, you have TikTok that is becoming | more competitive for attention and maybe Twitch (???) | pb7 wrote: | You know this is not a good take, right? This is like | saying Amazon's market isn't e-commerce, it's taking | payments. | scarface74 wrote: | Amazon makes most of its profits from AWS. It's also | making plenty of money these days from advertising. | | Who gives Google money and what do they give Google money | for? | | When I was working for B2B companies, our "customers" | were the IT department and the companies. Our customers | weren't the end users. We tried our best to make the | software easy for the end users. But we marketed to the | CxOs and made sure they were happy. | | In the case of Amazon Retail. They (we) have to convince | the customer to give us money in exchange for goods and | services. | pb7 wrote: | >In the case of Amazon Retail. They (we) have to convince | the customer to give us money in exchange for goods and | services. | | Right, and Google needs to convince users to love the | products and continue using them, so that ads can be | shown, and maybe even _despite_ ads being shown. | | I have noticed a strong sentiment against paying for | products even here on HN where the average user probably | makes quite a bit of money. People would rather block ads | than pay for YouTube Premium, for example. It shows me | that ads are actually a pretty good business model | because if "wealthy" people won't pay for products, less | wealthy people definitely won't. | scarface74 wrote: | Does anyone love Google search or does it just suck less | than the alternative? | | Search for "bicycles" on Google with Ad blockers turned | off. How do you like the experience? | bongoman37 wrote: | meltyness wrote: | Once it is realized the ads are mostly harmful this is | inevitable | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | People have this idea that Google hasn't ever done anything | successful beside search. | | Google experiments constantly and shuts down bad experiments. | | Experiments that probably aren't going anywhere for a long | time: | | 1. Gmail | | 2. Maps (acquisition, but did not have a web interface and | was not remotely popular prior) | | 3. Android (literally bought before the first launched | devices) | | 4. Play Store | | 5. Cloud | | 6. Google Pay / Wallet | | Most of these businesses are larger than most public | companies in the world... | | Google will likely continue to experiment. People should | think of Google's new products as startups - because that's | exactly how Google thinks of them. | | Enterprises don't want to rely on some startup like Snowflake | when their 1-2 years old. | | Google does a very good job of distancing the Google and | Android brands from things like Stadia. | | All of us on here know Google owned Stadia. We're also all | smart enough to know that we can keep using Gmail & YouTube | without worrying about Google shutting them down. | pb7 wrote: | Google Drive (2012) and Google Photos (2015). | avrionov wrote: | Google Chrome the most popular browser in the world. Google | Workspace (Docs, Sheets) more than 1B users | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | > People have this idea that Google hasn't ever done | anything successful beside search. | | That is a total strawman. I think most people know Google | has done other successful products, especially Gmail and | Android. | | > Enterprises don't want to rely on some startup like | Snowflake when their 1-2 years old. | | Actually, I think the opposite may be true. A startup like | Snowflake has _one_ business, and they are all focused on | that business. They will go through hell and highwater to | make that business successful. I think the biggest risk | with a company like Snowflake is not folks worried that | they 'll fold, but worried that they'll get acquired and | their "goodness" sucked out (see Figma). | | With Google, though, basically nearly _everything_ besides | ads is an afterthought. Nobody trusts them anymore to keep | things around. Which has the ironic effect of making some | of their "experiments" invalid, because if all potential | customers _know_ it 's an experiment that may get killed at | the whim of whomever got promoted, they'll be less likely | to try it in the first place. | | I'm not a Google hater. I'm a big fan of GCP, and also a | big fan of Firebase. I do get nervous, though, when I see | some simple, straightforward problems that languish for | literally years because apparently they're not "sexy" | enough to fix. Case in point, Firebase Auth (an Auth as a | Service platform) _still_ only supports SMS as a second | factor for login, despite the fact that Google itself | recommends against using SMS as a second factor. People | have been complaining about this for literally years, yet | it 's crickets from Google/Firebase teams. | pessimizer wrote: | > People have this idea that Google hasn't ever done | anything successful beside search. | | I don't even think that search is very successful. Pagerank | was successful, and was also pretty quickly made obsolete. | They still own search because their competitors died as | they replaced the verb "search" with their brand, and then | created a browser to funnel people into search. Search is | only important because of ads. And buying Youtube after | failing with Google Video, in order to show more ads. So it | all boils down to buying Doubleclick, building a browser, | and buying a popular video site for me. Android is | certainly key in this too, but its key was somewhat in | funneling people into Google's ads, but mostly preventing | Apple or some FOSS upstart from getting between users and | Google's ads. | | Google was successful at being a significantly better | search engine for a very short time. It took the money it | made and bought the largest ad company. Then it vertically | integrated the entire industry from OS to final purchase | (with varying degrees of success) to funnel people into its | ads. | | The only skill that Google has is taking advantage of and | creating monopoly positions, not technology. | | edit: Oddly, I think that their greatest success might have | been to covertly corrupt Firefox. Without that, Chrome | might have ended up a largely USA-locked thing like the | iPhone is. Although releasing a brutally locked down and | closed mobile OS masquerading as an FOSS upstart is a close | second. | jjtheblunt wrote: | Weren't Gmail, Maps (Keyhole), Android all acquisitions? | avrionov wrote: | GMail was internal project. | jenny91 wrote: | Gmail was a 20% project apparently. | fortuna86 wrote: | YouTube.. | travismark wrote: | an acquisition | pb7 wrote: | An acquisition in its infancy. | | Acquisitions happen all the time and later get turned | down when they don't flourish. Many stories get posted | often with negative sentiment right here on HN. | seizethegdgap wrote: | | 6. Google Pay / Wallet | | Since Google Wallet launched in 2011, they added a physical | card, replaced that card with Android Pay, dropped NFC and | limited it to Android Pay, merged Google Wallet and Android | Pay into Google Pay, launched Tez in India and then | rebranded that to Google Pay (which was an entirely | different app than the first Google Pay), then rebranded | the first Google Pay as Google Wallet, while people in | India still use their Google Pay app. | | I think. I still can't make sense of it. | | Imagine being a store/vendor and trying to make sense of | which app your POS supports while just trying to run your | business, what an absolute nightmare. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Pay_Send | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wallet | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Pay_(mobile_app) | | https://www.androidpolice.com/google-pay-becomes-google- | wall... | kibibyte wrote: | I can provide a little bit of insight into the Google Pay | shenanigans, though I didn't work there or interact with | anyone there. | | The initial Google Wallet launch irked the card networks | because they presented their own proxy card rather than a | card that clearly advertised the card issuer and the | network. (Oh boy do they care a lot about branding...) | | I assume they dropped NFC initially because it was done | with the first generation tech that was very insecure and | simply transmitted card numbers in the clear. Today's | contactless tech is all EMV based, and also needs to | depend on a Secure Enclave chip to be blessed by PCI; | that might explain why they cut off support for a number | of devices. This happened around the time Apple Pay came | into the scene. | | The rebranding and all that though, well, that's Google. | johannes1234321 wrote: | > 1. Gmail | | 2004 | | > 2. Maps | | 2005 | | > 3. Android | | 2008 | | > 4. Play Store | | Elementary component of the Android business, but well: | also 2008 | | > 5. Cloud | | 2008 (also) | | > 6. Google Pay / Wallet | | A requirement for Play Store, but relaunch as general | payment solution: 2011 | | Now the current year is 2022. And yes, they did | improvements here and there and in cloud launched more | services, but anything big new, with a chance of survival? | ren_engineer wrote: | worse when you realize that Maps and Android were both | acquisitions, Google hasn't had a genuine home grown win | in almost 20 years | pb7 wrote: | Google Drive (2012) and Google Photos (2015), both with | >1B users. | hbrn wrote: | This. I'm surprised how often people try to copy Google | practices because Google can't be wrong. | | My bet is that Google is one of the worst places to learn | anything, be it product, management or programming. You will | only learn how to solve problems the Google way, and that is | only applicable at Google. | | It's like learning to govern from Xi Jinping. Sure, there | probably are some interesting experiences to observe. But few | will claim that let's say Norway will be better off | implementing China's political system. | scarface74 wrote: | It's easy to see from the outside that Google is | incompetent when it comes to overall product and program | management. | | Since this is a technical audience, I guess I should | clarify that "program management" doesn't refer to software | development | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_management | samstave wrote: | This. | | And when you refer to pm-Ing in this way I'm reminded of | the guy in San Francisco that did all the management for | a huge eve online guild and he didn't play the game he | managed all their affects in a spreadsheet and whatever | they were using to chat.... And he was making a boatload | of human money a month... | | I wonder where he is now... | moandcompany wrote: | As a Xoogler, Google is an "engineering-first" company | and in practice doesn't consider "product/program | management" to be part of engineering. Ironically, the | origin of formal methods used in program management come | from operations research and engineering management -- | they are part of engineering, but not seen that way at | Google. | | Engineering leadership is not judged for their acumen in | these areas, as they are separate job ladders, and thus | to no surprise there is little cultivation of this | knowledge or skill. | donalhunt wrote: | Before ~ 2007, Google didn't believe in project managers. | There were actually no project managers roles (even | though some people were probably doing considerable | amounts of project management) and the expectation was | that engineers would know enough to structure efforts and | timelines. | | That evolved into a situation where program managers | (mostly - programs have a sense of scale right??) exist | in most orgs and are critical to keep things aligned. | There were (are still?) even internal conferences just | for program managers. | scarface74 wrote: | The only BigTech company that I've worked for is Amazon | and there are plenty of articles about how features and | products get approved at Amazon. | | How does this even happen at any company that isn't a | conglomerate based on acquisitions? | | https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/21/22538240/google-chat- | allo... | huevosabio wrote: | It's more like learning to government from Saudi Arabia or | another gulf country. | | The money printing machine obliterates all economic | feedback loops. | samstave wrote: | And the fact that it seems literally nobody at google is | even looking at said loops. | | But you know what is needed : is some whistleblower from | within google to tell us how the decisions are made for | shutting down services... | | And btw I don't even know what stadia is! | hbrn wrote: | Looking at feedback loops means being honest with | yourself and accepting you don't know everything. And for | most people that's hard to admit. Surely if you got into | Google you know almost everything. You just need a little | bit of money to execute. | danielmarkbruce wrote: | It's a good place to learn real engineering. They know how | to build systems. There are some of the best engineering | minds on the planet in there. | lostcolony wrote: | Only if you very narrowly define real engineering. | | Google, collectively, may be among the best (I'm not | hazarding an opinion) at solving technical problems. | | I, however, expect good engineers to help with product | vision, understanding and addressing customer pain | points, and amongst the senior engineers especially, be | effective at communication and helping manage upwards to | achieve those ends. Somewhere, Google engineers are | dropping the ball there, or are so detached from those | problems that their abilities in those skills are | untested. | danielmarkbruce wrote: | Yeah, that's fair. I'm just trying to discern between | building a distributed database system with 5 9's and | writing a crud app I guess. I agree "real" isn't the | right term for that difference, I don't know what is. | hbrn wrote: | Here's a counterintuitive piece of wisdom: building both | is equally hard. | | Running marathon is way harder than running 100m. Most | people are not even capable of doing marathons. | | But that doesn't mean that winning 100m is easier than | winning a marathon. Might even be the opposite, because | of harsh competition. | | When you're building products, your goal is not _run_. | Your goal is to _win_. | danielmarkbruce wrote: | Nah, it's not. Consultants pump out CRUD apps with 4th | rate engineers left and right. | | About 10 people on planet earth could have come up with | Spanner. | | I'm just talking about engineering. I'm not talking about | building products which get market acceptance, which is a | lot more than engineering, and might be your point. | ren_engineer wrote: | some of the most valuable companies on earth are "just | CRUD apps", which was the point of the comment above. | Knowing what to build is important, which google fails at | in most cases. Google has incredible engineers working on | stupid projects | ThrowawayR2 wrote: | > " _I, however, expect good engineers to help with | product vision, understanding and addressing customer | pain points, and amongst the senior engineers especially, | be effective at communication and helping manage upwards | to achieve those ends._ " | | Not necessarily. FAANGs have an army of | product/project/program managers, market researchers, and | other analysts and experts to handle product vision, etc. | for the engineering team. That's the big advantage of | being a megacorporation: they can afford the overhead of | having their employees be narrowly focused specialists. | | (It's also why one sometimes see people who leave FAANGs | stumble when they join a startup; they're used to having | all that infrastructure supporting them and have to | adjust to an environment where it isn't there.) | hbrn wrote: | And yet those minds managed to build the most hated | frontend framework. Not just bad or mediocre. The most | hated one. | | Now, I'm not denying they are super smart. But you need a | mix of book smart and street smart to be successful. | Google seems to only focus on books. They are incredible | at solving problems. But they suck at picking which | problems to solve. | danielmarkbruce wrote: | A front-end framework isn't exactly the kind of thing the | engineers I'm talking about work on... there are 10's of | thousands of engineers at Google. A good number of them | aren't building systems per se. But if you want to learn | how to build systems, some folks in there are crazy good. | hbrn wrote: | Might be a bit anecdotal, but I actually hired ex- | Googlers for two different startups in the past. I would | be hesitant to do it again. | | They can indeed be good at building complex systems. | | But when we needed simple systems, they would still build | complex systems. | | When we needed to ship product, they would still build | complex systems. | | Twice I had the experience where an ex-Googler would | promise to rewrite a piece of software from scratch | because it had a bad architecture, only to quit/get fired | few months later (obviously the big rewrite was not | finished by then). | danielmarkbruce wrote: | Yup, I believe it. | pb7 wrote: | Which framework are you talking about? | hbrn wrote: | https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#section- | most-... | akmarinov wrote: | Come on, Flutter's not that bad... | freeopinion wrote: | It's curious to me that there hasn't been an evolution in re- | exit strategies. You want to get bought by Google, then sold | by Google. Why don't we hear about something getting sold off | by Google instead of just shut down? Is it just a given that | if Google can't make it work, nobody can? | johannes1234321 wrote: | There is one case: Google acquired Keyhole (Google Earth), | John Hanke then built Ingress/Niantic which is a spunoff | company (where Google afaik still holds some shares) doing | quite well with PokemonGo it seems (while they had to stop | their Catan project and killed off their Harry Potter game) | jsnell wrote: | A couple of others: Boston Dynamics. Motorola. | foobiekr wrote: | Dependencies on google-only stack plus many of the things | they build aren't actually financially viable. | layer8 wrote: | Selling it off incurs the risk of strengthening a potential | competitor. Also, in many cases at least half of the value | is in the team of developers, which probably don't want | leave Google and which conversely Google doesn't want to | lose. | bornfreddy wrote: | It also signals to the would-be customers of their | _other_ products that the service they want to sign for | has a chance of surviving. At this stage I wouldn 't | touch any new Google service. | murderfs wrote: | It's practically impossible to spin stuff out of Google | because of interdependencies with the rest of google3 (the | monorepo), not to mention assumptions about infrastructure. | You might as well completely rebuild the entire thing from | scratch. | otabdeveloper4 wrote: | Will there ever be a google4? | compiler-guy wrote: | No. The google3 path itself is baked into so many things | that it would be a monumental task to move. There was an | attempt in maybe 2010 or so but it was quickly abandoned. | Things are 1000x worse now. | | What Google does now is just not rev the version in any | repo paths. This is true of several projects that | previously had versions included in the path. Now all | versioning is handled separately. | closedloop129 wrote: | The infrastructure problem is funny because this wouldn't | be a problem if Google would use GCP by themselves. They | should also be smart enough to create an export function | for google3. | UncleMeat wrote: | There's a fun problem with this. | | No other company in the world has workloads that match | Google's. So there are two options. You can spend a | shitload of money making GCP actually work for the | ridiculous needs of google3 applications and then | actually get everybody to use GCP rather that using borg | directly or you can not spend that money building all the | infrastructure to do things that borg already does and | has zero external customers. | | Turns out the latter is attractive. | weinzierl wrote: | In that sense Google is the Anti-Microsoft. Microsoft makes | the scrappiest products but as long as they are not total | failures MS is committed to them in a way that is borderline | ridiculous. Google makes good products but seems to have the | attention span of three year old toddler. | booi wrote: | Stadia is 2 years and 10 months old hah | Peanuts99 wrote: | And it's that property that means Microsoft always has an | edge with its b2b customers. | that_guy_iain wrote: | > Google's ad money printer masks the rot underneath, Google | is literally a meme at this point for shutting down products. | | The thing with x amount of products failing is true. Doesn't | matter if you're an indie hacker or Google. It's been shown | by giant after giant releasing products and them failing. | Doesn't matter what industry they're in either. That's why so | many corporations just buy new products lines. They get a | product that is in demand. | | That's why it made sense for Adobe to buy Figma. Building a | competitor would have been probably rather expensive and | risky. Where instead they just buy it and have the product | and the market share. | | why Amazon has been buying products like Ring and the robot | hover. They're in demand and Amazon just needs to put some | cash behind it and it's going to generate tons more cash. | | If you're wanting to build the next big thing, you've got to | try building lots of things until one catches off. | bornfreddy wrote: | Meh. There is a reason you don't hear about MS shutting | down services, or Apple, or Facebook... Failing or not, you | can still pivot them until they succeed. It is just Google | that is shutting down everything that doesn't grow huge | fast. | that_guy_iain wrote: | Facebook hasn't really created any new products have | they? | | MS shut down products all the time. | | And Apple? They are very good at hiding their failures. | outside1234 wrote: | Yup, he was promoted to VP before moving on to Fitbit. | timcavel wrote: | enumjorge wrote: | The thing that baffles me is that this has been a known issue | for a long time, and yet there doesn't seem to be any | significant moves to improve this. | | Can someone please explain what Sundar Pichai's big goals as | a CEO are? That's a genuine question. He doesn't seem to be | solving existing issues related to culture and incentives. | And the company hasn't landed any big wins recently. I mostly | see increased monetization of products from 10-15 years ago. | I know I'm only seeing this from the outside looking in | though. There must be a reason why one of the world's biggest | companies has him at the helm, but it's not obvious to me | what that is. | nimbius wrote: | >Can someone please explain what Sundar Pichai's big goals | as a CEO are? | | Fighting a growing wave of calls from all political sides | to regulate Alphabet and Google in the US, and paying an | endless stack of compliance fines to the EU who already | regulate Google and Alphabet. | johannes1234321 wrote: | It's not only fighting them, but also forming them: The | "right" regulation can become an entry barrier for | competitors. | antipaul wrote: | Here's my opinion on the role of CEOs these days, for | companies that are decently strong and have stable growth. | | I think CEOs are there to simply not screw anything up. | | In other words, they were picked so that there wasn't | someone else there who would screw up more. | | They are supposed to be quiet, run of the mill, go with the | flow kinds of people. This is the implicit requirement. The | explicit one is, "just keep the overall revenue growth | stable". | | There is no requirement about "solving existing issues" | because that's not part of "the bottom line" or even to | land any "big wins" because growth is already "good enough" | and it's better to maintain it, than risk it and lose | everything. | | Why this profile for CEOs? | | These days, everything is amplified and the smallest | mistake can mean big trouble. Top leaders are already | magnets for attention due to their role, and if they start | to make noise about anything even minor, it will be bad | attention. | | If the business is already good, "let's not screw anything | up". | | That's what I'm thinking. I feel that this applies to | Pichai, Cook, Nadella and others like them [1] | | The danger could be that the companies may become | complacent and get disrupted eventually. But perhaps that | is something they watch out for (maybe another part of the | JD) - and they buy out any competitors that get too | haughty, as needed. | | [1] Zuckerberg is an outlier because look, he's still a | founder CEO unlike the others, and that's because, no | matter what you think of him (or even if he's a robot ;) ), | he has a terrific track record in decision making. So he's | there and allowed to make decisions, even high risk ones, | such as the whole Metaverse invention or the stuff about | culling headcount "who shouldn't be here". Though he's also | doing those decisions due to privacy regulations which | seems to affect the stable growth mentioned above. | KerrAvon wrote: | Nonsense. Apple and Microsoft are both objectively | thriving under their respective current CEOs, who have | both made some tough calls and been responsible for | important new products, and both now have sufficient road | behind them that we can believe in their ability to call | shots for the long term to at least some degree. These | companies are not just treading water. | | I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone outside | Facebook has much respect for Zuck in terms of | decisionmaking for products or anything else in | particular. This may look different to a Facebook | employee, of course. | lovich wrote: | Zuck is still there because he didn't give up control. | These companies weren't wrested from their founders | grasp, they were sold | [deleted] | ginger2016 wrote: | I don't understand why engineers in this forum argue | against own interest. Too much efficiency is bad for | workers, you want successful companies like Google and | Apple invest in projects which might have a high chance of | failure. At a minimum it will give people jobs and builds | expertise. | | Investing in Stadia is 100 times better than Google using | that money to buy back stocks and making day traders rich. | rurp wrote: | This is a false dichotomy. I think most would prefer a | third path where Google invests in projects it actually | believes in and commits to for longer than the lifespan | of a fruit fly. | | Projects contantly being half-assed and rug pulled aren't | good for users or the developers being bounced around | between them. | numpad0 wrote: | Stadia wasn't something that excites engineers in the | first place. It only looks genius if you've not had prior | experiences and assessment of issues with remote gaming. | noirbot wrote: | I literally know someone who went to work on the Stadia | team 2 years before it was announced because working on | it was essentially his dream job. It doesn't have to be | "genius" to be interesting to work on with the scale and | backing of Google behind it. | dekhn wrote: | And I know somebody who had been a 15 year Google | employee who could choose to work any team decided to | make it his new priority. This is somebody who could have | worked on any platforms project they wanted. They left | Google a couple years after it launched, I imagine | probably at seeing their hard work go nowhere. | datavirtue wrote: | "scale and backing?" | | The just ended it because it didn't scale. | bigiain wrote: | I wonder if even Google suffers from the premature | scaling architecture astronaut problem? Perhaps if they'd | spent more of their resources getting to 1000 and 10,000 | games, before doing the engineering to support a billion | users, they may have actually needed that scalability | (and might have become at least a small cash cow | alongside the surveillance capitalism asserting golden | goose)? | robertlagrant wrote: | I used it for a little bit, for gaming on my phone. I was | genuinely astonished at how responsive it was. | madeofpalk wrote: | On the other hand, Google still just prints money with ads. | Everything else is just a talent retention program. | | 'Success hides all problems', but exactly what _real_ | problems does Google have making money? | pclmulqdq wrote: | The fact that it can't keep doing it forever, and its | investors expect that if Google is going to keep | expanding its headcount and keep spending tons of money | that it will produce results. | | Nobody would mind if Google _just_ printed money with | ads. That is what the trade desk basically does (TTD), | and it 's a comparatively very small company. Google | could be the most profitable company per employee in | history if it wanted to, and it wouldn't lose anything | from its core money-making functions. Instead, Google | wanted to build a grand technology empire. | | If you're going to act like a rockstar, when the lights | come on, you better be dancing up on the stage. The | lights are turning on right now, and I don't think anyone | sees anyone dancing. | itstomkent wrote: | I mean if Google's goal is to maintain it's monopolistic | lead in the search/ad space, that means gobbling up as many | of the really talented devs as possible to keep them out of | the hands of would-be competitors. Really talented devs | want to work on new and exciting shit, so google | continuously mints projects and kills them off when they | are no longer shiny and new. Seems to me things are working | as intended. | ksec wrote: | >Can someone please explain what Sundar Pichai's big goals | as a CEO are? | | The same goal as most other Fortune 500 companies CEO, to | earn as much money as possible for themselves while they | are at it. | | It is funny I was extremely sceptical but I remember all | the hype around Sundar Pichai becoming CEO and how it would | improve Google. Repeating something similar to what Satya | Nadella did to Microsoft. And it wasn't media / VC or | submarine PR article hype, it was real hype on HN, by | Silicon Valley fellows. And Google wasn't considered "evil" | back then, even though nothing much has changed, only the | perception of the public. | ryanbrunner wrote: | > The same goal as most other Fortune 500 companies CEO, | to earn as much money as possible for themselves while | they are at it. | | Sure, but you don't get a company working in concert or | particularly well if all you have is "go make money" | chihuahua wrote: | The person you're responding to doesn't mean "the company | making as much money as possible". They mean "Sundar is | earning as much money for himself (into his own bank | account) as possible". And for that, it doesn't matter if | the company is working in concert etc. when Google can | coast on ad revenue for many years. | | 1. Get stock grants 2. Sell it as soon as it vests 3. | Apres moi le deluge. | lupire wrote: | Sundar Pichai is like (the Hamilton version of) Aaron | Burr. He rose to the top by not making noise and survived | to be last man standing as the most inoffensive | nonthreatening choice. | flavius29663 wrote: | > nothing much has changed, only the perception of the | public. | | I would say things have changed: directly in google | services, they are worse everyday (ads in youtube, | useless search engine etc.) and also indirect: they | forced their black box in all sites' SEO and also adsales | on so many sites that they are slowly ruining the | internet for everyone else too. | tektekX wrote: | At this point I feel like it's that Search has gotten | significantly worse. I've had pages of results that are | completely AI-generated text, with my search query just | rephrased as a sentence. As an employee, it's | disappointing. | FreakLegion wrote: | You'll find plenty of people who support every side of | every issue here. You'll also find plenty of people who | call out the people who support $BAD_SIDE of an issue as | "classic HN" and "Silicon Valley folly". In this case, as | in others, it's all in your head. | jgalt212 wrote: | > Can someone please explain what Sundar Pichai's big goals | as a CEO are? | | His primary job is to keep the FTC at bay. | kodah wrote: | imo, your eye is on the wrong ball. Google died when it's | founders moved their attention to Alphabet. Google has | moved from a bespoke kitchen to the catering kitchen that | keeps the lights on for Alphabet while they build a | strategy. | lupire wrote: | The founders retired in all but name only almost 10 years | ago. | usrusr wrote: | But how much "alphabet" is there still left, other than | Google and YouTube? In hindsight it almost seems as if | alphabet was deliberately set up as a pasture for the | various doomed "moonshots" to die more quietly, with less | impact on the main brand. | ghaff wrote: | What moonshot--at least that is known about--is possibly | transformative at Alphabet/Google scale? Waymo seems | increasingly unlikely both in terms of time-scale and | differentiation in a crowded field. And what else is | there? | kevin_thibedeau wrote: | Loon could have made them the ISP for the developing | world. | pb7 wrote: | Waymo is very far ahead of the competition. It may be | hard to compare given all the fly-by-night competitors | but it has had many more years in development and the | result is more dependable. | obviouslynotme wrote: | It shouldn't baffle you. Google ads make so much money with | no real competitors that there is no motivation to innovate | anything else. Blizzard has the same problem. World of | Warcraft makes so much money that it kills everything else. | Valve makes so much money being the only real PC gaming | platform that they stopped making games. | | These companies become victims of their own successes and | eventually become hollow money machines that are preyed | upon by professional executives. The culture dies and all | the good people leave except a small cadre of highly paid | early employees who have worked on core services for | decades. | | Google's problems are so pervasive and famous because they | don't care. Why fix hiring? That requires effort and time | for a questionable payoff. Why fix promotions? Same | problem. Why fix customer service? That's just a cost. Why | enforce stable APIs that are well documented for cloud | services? Not my problem. At the end of the day, a small | core of people will keep ads going and everyone else will | decorate their resumes for their next jobs. | alasdair_ wrote: | >Blizzard has the same problem. World of Warcraft makes | so much money that it kills everything else. | | $15 x 6 million players is good money but it's peanuts to | something like Google. I wouldn't be surprised if Google | spent that much just on Stadia itself in some years. | mrazomor wrote: | My impression is that Google actively tries to hedge. | They are aware of the fragility of the ads business. | | But it's difficult to set up a business when your | baseline is "Google Ads". | | I thought they have it with Cloud. I'm still puzzled how | it went wrong. | obviouslynotme wrote: | People only put up with GCP because AWS is owned by | Amazon, a notoriously ruthless company. AWS is better | from the perspectives of API stability, customer support, | and third party support, aka the primary things cloud | customers care about. Now that Microsoft has Azure, they | are going to crush GCP into the ground and there is | nothing Google can do to stop it even though Google | invented most modern cloud technology. | mr_toad wrote: | Azure has been around for > 10 years. If they're planning | on crushing GCP then they're taking their sweet time | about it. | oefnak wrote: | Their cloud is better, or at least I like their interface | better, but how do you know they won't just shut it off? | Azure or Amazon are safer choices. | [deleted] | pas wrote: | they won't, it makes a lot of money, it's b2b, etc. | | gcp has a lot of business continuity guarantees. | | still, I don't recommend them. because google acts like a | dangerous savant at this point. | antonymy wrote: | Valve's issue is pretty much just a lack of serious | competition against Steam. They do occasionally put out | something new, just at their own pace. They aren't in any | rush since their core business is virtually unassailable | at this point. | | They have less to fear about "professional executives" | worming their way in because Valve is not a publicly | traded company, unlike the other examples you mentioned. | It's private, Gabe Newell calls the shots at the end of | the day. There's no real avenue for people to buy their | way onto a board of directors and exert influence on the | company from on high, or oust its historic leadership. | Valve's pretty well protected from that. But it can't | protect itself from sloth induced by a lack of | competition. | giobox wrote: | Realistically how does this end though? Unless technology | is created to immortalize Gabe in a machine, at some | point he presumably will want to sell or die. | | Does it just become a bozo filled public-company at that | point, chasing quarterly numbers? I think it's the | biggest risk to Valve, speaking as a customer who loves | their products/services today. | | I would not at all be surprised to see it end in a | Microsoft acquisition or joint venture of some kind, | given their current appetites. | mywittyname wrote: | > I would not at all be surprised to see it end in a | Microsoft acquisition or joint venture of some kind, | given their current appetites. | | This is absolutely what will happen. | x86_64Ubuntu wrote: | >... World of Warcraft makes so much money that it kills | everything else | | This fact reminds me of the resource curse. | andybak wrote: | > Valve makes so much money being the only real PC gaming | platform that they stopped making games. | | The Steam Deck is an incredible device. And Alyx is one | of the truly great games made for VR (which they | pioneered generally). It might not be much but I'm not | writing off Valve entirely. | schlauerfox wrote: | Alyx was the result of an acquisition (campo santo) and | it killed their work a non-franchise game "Valley of the | Gods" after "firewatch". | Cyph0n wrote: | Citation needed. Wikipedia at least says that they were | acquired while Alyx was in development and that they just | joined the overall dev team. | akmarinov wrote: | Both are nice, but very niche. | | Now if they do Half Life 3 - that'll be a mainstream | blockbuster, but they won't, as they're not the company | that can pull that off anymore. | giobox wrote: | VR absolutely niche, but Steam Deck has delivered on its | promise far more than I expected, and this seems to be | being reflected in impressive sales. | | I'd happily place a bet today on there being a family of | Steam Deck devices forming a material part of the PC | games industry in 5 years or earlier. Much of the | implementation such as the store experience is already | leagues ahead of the garbage Nintendo get away with on | the Switch. | | When they inevitably release a second one with an OLED | display and more performance and battery life, its going | to be massively compelling. Sure we can all point to | failures like the Steam Boxes, but from those failures | came Proton which has been directly responsible for the | Deck concept working so successfully. | balefrost wrote: | It's unclear whether Valve is playing the long game or | simply hedging their bets. My recollection is that their | investment in Linux was expressly stated to be a hedge | against a future where Microsoft put Windows in a walled | garden, like iOS. | | On the other hand, I know that a bunch of people are | unhappy that the Steam Controller has been discontinued. | Secondhand prices are through the roof. | EricE wrote: | >Secondhand prices are through the roof. | | Really? I never use mine - guess I'll have to look at | selling it! | giobox wrote: | I'd argue this to be a pretty dated take on Valve's | strategy, personally. Gabe stated it was a hedge over 10 | years ago, in response to the risk of Windows 8 moving to | mandatory Microsoft Store: | | > https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/07/26/window | s-8-i... | | Obviously none of that came to pass, we are two more | Windows releases on and much has changed since. It is | serendipitous the tech built is so great for delivering a | portable experience - I think Valve's actions and words | demonstrate it to be far more committed to the Deck than | prior efforts, I don't see this as hedging bets. And why | wouldn't they? At this stage they appear to have a hit | product on their hands. | | In 2022, Microsoft and Valve have strategic partnerships | too, which certainly wasn't the case in 2012: | | > https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/30/18645250/microsoft- | xbox-g... | | > https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/26/22952086/valve- | microsoft-... | | > https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/25/22550103/microsoft- | new-wi... | goosedragons wrote: | After having a Steam Deck for a bit I really really hope | either Valve or some other decent controller company like | 8bitdo makes a controller with the same style of setup. | The dual haptic trackpads+paddle buttons combined with | the customizability is incredible. To me it is easily the | biggest leap in controller tech since the analog stick | with the N64. | | I've never used the original Steam Controller and I still | think the dual analog stick setup is better for some | games but having the trackpads is good for many others. | zepppotemkin wrote: | They are still pulling off big projects and pivoting well | though though steam proton/steamdeck which pivoted from | the initial failures of the steambox push | | they may not really be in the AAA game business as much | but I'm not sure that's a bad thing | Sebb767 wrote: | > as they're not the company that can pull that off | anymore. | | No company could ever pull off Half Life 3. This game is | hyped to death before it's even announced and everyone | would come in with sky-high expectations. To make matters | worse, everyone would expect that game to be something | different and it would be impossible to make even just | half of the players happy. There's no point in creating a | Half Life 3, it's a guaranteed disappointment. | stickfigure wrote: | They could just take the old game engine as-is, give it a | new plot and art, and I would beg them to take my money. | AshamedCaptain wrote: | And this is how you end with "Jaws 19: This Time It's | REALLY REALLY Personal". | cmsj wrote: | Always leave the audience wanting more. | almenon wrote: | Nitpick: niche, sure, but the deck isn't very niche. The | mobile gaming market is a established market open to all | sorts of gamers. | | I agree with you on VR though, that's very nice atm. | hintymad wrote: | Peter Drucker is so wise for urging companies to "kill | your cash cow". The unfortunate constraint is that it | requires extraordinary leaders and amazing luck to | execute such killing successfully. | danielmarkbruce wrote: | His goal is to keep the peace. And he's good at it. It's a | little bit "game of thrones" in there. | bigiain wrote: | You you're saying he's Tyrion Lannister? That sorta | checks out... | danielmarkbruce wrote: | Lol no no, I think Tyrion drinks a lot more than | Sundar... and Sundar certainly doesn't seem like the | womanizing type either. But hey, I didn't know him | personally so who knows. | oofbey wrote: | > Can someone please explain what Sundar Pichai's big goals | as a CEO are? | | I'd say he's trying not to be remembered as the "Steve | Ballmer" of Google. You know - that second-run CEO who | drove the company into the ground while keeping the wall | street numbers looking good. Cuz that's exactly where he's | heading right now. | | I think he knows he needs to fundamentally change the | culture of the company. He's been making public statements | as such. He knows it's a problem that Googlers have been | treated as unicorn snowflakes with free massages and all | the gourmet food they can complain about, with zero | accountability for getting anything done. And despite this | obvious rot, most of the world (like everybody here who | dreams of a google job) still reveres Google as an idyllic | place to work. Which makes it all the harder for the | company to admit to itself that anything is wrong. | | Cultural change is really hard. And it's not at all clear | that he's got what it takes to do it successfully. Googlers | are so pampered that any attempt to push them out of their | comfort zone is going to get serious pushback. I say this | as a former googler. There was a hilarious post on HN not | long ago which I can't find where a googler said something | to the effect of "no way in hell my manager is gonna make | me work." | | The entire company is built around solving HARD problems, | not USEFUL problems. Obviously they've pulled off a lot of | truly amazing things, but that difference is pretty | important when your company's entire revenue stream is | still coming from key insights made in the late 1990s. To | me it's clear they need to change their promotion criteria, | which solidifies this and drives so much of people's energy | and bad patterns. But the arrogance built into the culture | of "solving the world's hardest problems" means that any | changes there are likely to insult the fragile egos of all | those snowflakes and cause them to go on strike or make the | good ones just leave. | unity1001 wrote: | > Googlers have been treated as unicorn snowflakes with | free massages and all the gourmet food they can complain | about, with zero accountability for getting anything done | | As a user, and customer of some Google services, I don't | care about that. They should give a pink unicorn to each | Googler if they want to. These are not relevant to me, as | the user. | | What I care about is the stuff that I am using not | getting deprecated on my face because some mba thinks | that it is not making enough gobs of cash and they should | shut it down and do something else that will make more | gobs of cash. | | Cherishing and building up user trust. That's what is | missing from Google. And that's not the engineers' fault. | AtlasBarfed wrote: | He structured it as Alphabet. As in 26 different | companies. | | Google can't VC new projects with a 50 billion to play | with in excess/above line revenue to fund them a year? | | How does google not have self driving car revenue? They | should have highway driving (as in trucks on | superhighways) solved 10 years ago and been rolling in | money. | | How does google not have a competitive IaaS offering? How | does google not have THREE competitive IaaS offerings? | Buy one or two, and have them compete against each other | internally and externally. | | Why doesn't google have a competitive Desktop OS based on | some combination of Linux / Android / Chrome and Macbook | pro level hardware? | | Their AI products are all dystopian. | | ChatsChatsChatsChatsChatsChats. | | Why didn't they buy Java/Sun. Stupid. Why don't they buy | Keybase? Actually don't then the servers will be shut | down. | | Silicon Valley is too woke? Start new branches. | | What is the biggest recent success of Google? Chrome. Why | not repeat that a dozen times over? Take important Open | Source software, and make it good, and don't make it | utterly dystopian until 10 years later. Linux Desktop? | Open Office? WINE? Steam clone on Linux? | | You know, why not have a hardware division that can | deliver? For IoT, Google Glasses, an actual decent phone, | self driving sensors. | | Be good at software. Be good at hardware. | | What a clown show. | ktzar wrote: | Couldn't agree more. The problem in Google started as | soon as it went public. Then "Don't be evil" went through | the window and it's all a short-sighted vision driven by | making as much money as possible for investors and pay | dividends. | _HMCB_ wrote: | When was there last big win? | ok_coo wrote: | Android and Chrome... so it looks like around 2008-2009? | tmpz22 wrote: | The goal of a CEO is to bring value to shareholders. | There's a lot of wiggle room as long as you're doing that. | I doubt Stadia was more then a proving ground for a lot of | related product verticals, and Stadia's legacy will | continue to drive value to those. | | If you cant understand the incentives to a thing, the | incentives were never for you in the first place. | hintymad wrote: | I don't know how Pichai can change Google's culture without | Google having an existential crisis first like IBM in the | 90s. I saw these intertwining problems in Google: 1. | Employees want promotions at all cost. It's not due to | ambition but to comparing ourselves with our peers, thanks | to lax promotion policies for years. L6 used to be treated | as god, but no more. Employees simply lost it when they saw | people who were not necessarily effective get promoted | fast. Well, maybe the process is not lax, but identifying | the real gems certainly becomes disproportionally harder as | the company grows. 2. Management want to expand at all | cost. The only metric that matters to most managers in | Google seems to be the size of their teams. The larger a | team, the more "successful" a manager will likely to be. | Yes, managers did get cautioned that it is the scope and | impact that matters instead of team size, but in practice | team size is a proxy measurement for scope and impact. 3. | Maybe this is the real root cause: as Google becomes so | large, it is simply impossible to gauge the impact and | complexity of one's work reliably, resulting in all kinds | of gaming and angst in all levels of employees. In the end, | gauging impact becomes gauging the perception of impact. | | In other words, people are culture. When a company grows | large, the culture regresses to the mean. | pclmulqdq wrote: | In my opinion, the biggest problem Sundar has is that he | is too much of a chicken to shake things up, and his | underlings know it. They do something dumb, he gets | questioned about it, he says the word "thoughtful," | everyone at G gets a little bit angry, and then the whole | thing blows over. That does not incentivize | responsibility among the managers underneath him. Sundar | tries to keep peace between managers and departments, but | in doing so, he loses control. | | There was an "exit only doors" fiasco a year ago, and the | man couldn't say either: | | * "yes, VPs get special permissions to access the | buildings" or | | * "that is a security risk and everyone needs to go in | through the same lobbies" | | He just said "thoughtful" and the VPs lost their exit- | only door access for a while until it blew over. | | This was such a small, petty thing that I pretty much | lost all respect for Sundar over the fact that he | couldn't take a stand on it. He absolutely refuses to | provide an opinion about _anything_ to the wider group of | Googlers. His underlings know that, and they know they | can do stupid shit and work against each other without | accountability. | cosmotron wrote: | Why would VPs be interested in using different building | entrances? | pclmulqdq wrote: | The lobbies get very crowded around 9 and 5, and so do | the elevators near them. | datavirtue wrote: | Can't have the executives possibly smelling the rabble. | galaxyLogic wrote: | All executives exit effectively immediately! | stoltzmann wrote: | At some offices, the exit only doors are in significantly | more convenient locations. | birdyrooster wrote: | I remember when Sundar became CEO the first thing he did | was hole himself up in 2000 Amphitheatre Pkwy and block | access to all Google staff not in that building. The next | thing he did was get bullied by the board and their CFO, | but I digress. | ikiris wrote: | The buildings were designed for much more open access | prior to security policy changes that made most of the | useful paths exit only. | CydeWeys wrote: | > In my opinion, the biggest problem Sundar has is that | he is too much of a chicken to shake things up, and his | underlings know it. | | What?? Sundar is the CEO. All the buck stops with him. | Why are you pretending as if he doesn't have agency? The | problem here is his actions and/or lack thereof, not | people under him doing stupid things and he's somehow the | victim. He gets paid the big bucks to lead. | dlp211 wrote: | That is what the person is saying. I'm not sure what you | are questioning here. Sundar has agency and authority and | he refuses to use it. This enables his underlings to have | free reign. | scarface74 wrote: | No manager who leads in demand software engineers will | ever be able to change anything unless their reports | believe in the vision. The minute things don't go their | way, we can just get another job, | | It's really hard for a CEO who had nothing to do with the | current success of the company to have any type of | credibility with employees. | | Let's look at the CEOs of the other BigTech companies. | | - Apple: Tim Cook had as much to do with the current | success of Apple as Jobs did. He worked for Apple from | the time it was broke until today. | | - Amazon: Jassy (my skip*10 manager) led the AWS division | from its "real" founding until he became CEO. | | - Facebook - still founder led | | - Microsoft - the CEO came in from Azure and had a vision | for what the "new MS" should look like - completely | different than "Windows Everywhere" | tektekX wrote: | There's some bizarre PR campaign going on to try and | brand Sundar as the next Steve Jobs: lots of the photos | of him looking thoughtful with steepled hands overlaid | with anodyne quotes about technology or AI. It's unclear | to me if he's much more than a tech billionaire by luck. | | No kind of strategy is ever communicated to employees, | just defensive + responsive TGIF responses. Truly | bizarre. | oogetyboogety wrote: | That's funny. Yes, for me this bizarre PR campaign shows | up as promoted content when I scroll through my Google | news feed. | vosper wrote: | > The only metric that most managers in Google seems to | be the size of their teams. The larger a team, the more | "successful" a manager will likely to be. | | I suspect this is pretty universal at large companies. | And especially managers seeking to make their way up the | hierarchy are always looking to grow the size of their | teams. | giantrobot wrote: | Team size seems to have become the new "corner office" in | terms of managers self measurement. When the iPhone was | still super secret, having a locked hallway was Apple's | "corner office". A manager was on track to get their | Tesla Roadster if they could get their team working on | iOS and get their hallways locked behind an extra set of | badge readers. This continued for a few years after the | iPhone's release as the Mac and iOS software teams were | still not fully integrated. | jupp0r wrote: | Team size is an easily quantifiable metric of a managers | influence/budget etc. It's also something that's almost | never confidential as opposed to other business metrics. | "Impact" and "scope" are hard to measure and can be | debated about. | unity1001 wrote: | It doesnt look like the promotion-hungry culture that's | the problem. Or engineering. | | It looks like Google not giving a zit about users is the | problem. Deprecating stuff on people's faces. Backwards | incompatible updates. They treat everyone as if everyone | works at Google - like everyone works in a large | organization with ample funding so that they can take | time to go through deprecation and backwards- | incompatibility hooks. | | Grand majority of the public doesnt have any of that. So | when something is deprecated on their face out of the | blue, its a great 'f you' to them. Their businesses, | their very own personas. | | So they aren't taking risks building things by relying on | Google. | z9znz wrote: | > looks like Google not giving a zit about users is the | problem | | I think this has always been the case for Google. It just | so happens that sometimes what Google chooses to do | happens to align with what's good for users. But when it | doesn't align, a bit like a sociopath, Google doesn't | appear to be concerned for the impact on users. | | Obviously this applies to the whole automated | moderation/banning situation that's been a moderate risk | for years. | andrekandre wrote: | > The only metric that matters to most managers in Google | seems to be the size of their teams. The larger a team, | the more "successful" a manager will likely to be | | sounds like... bullshit jobs? [0] | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs | zepppotemkin wrote: | Eh, most people want to work for Google for the cash | these days it's reflected in their hiring where they | don't even know where they want to place people half the | time | UncleMeat wrote: | The actual big goals appear to be to get GCP out of third | place and to do something nebulously magic with AI. Both of | these have made progress, but not in a way that actually | makes the company money. Other than that I agree with you, | there doesn't seem to be any sort of coherent product | vision other than "ads in search/youtube" and "keep | building the handful of actually popular products we've had | for ages." | | It is definitely hard as hell to develop another business | the size of ads alongside it, but it really doesn't seem | like there's a clear idea here. | tomp wrote: | "GCP is not shutting down. Rest assured we're always | working on bringing more great servers to the platform." | UncleMeat wrote: | Unlike Stadia, I do actually think that killing GCP would | destroy the company. So I don't expect the same end | outcome. | dekhn wrote: | Right, they're trapped in a terrible position where it's | sucking the company dry of its profits while also being | necessary to continue or they will lose all credibility | with enterprise and developers forever. That said, they | could shut down Verily and save some $1B/year. | UncleMeat wrote: | The thing that is bizarre to me is that Google has | _absolute shitloads of money_. 120B+ in the bank. | Megabillions in profit each quarter. Like, they could | _buy Nintendo_ for less than half of their cash on hand. | | I understand that the market demands infinite growth but | internally it feels like horseshit to see the ridiculous | numbers and also get told that basically nothing is high | priority enough to get funded. | lmm wrote: | Nothing is high priority enough to get funded _because_ | they have a firehose of money coming out of ads, compared | to which nothing looks like a good enough opportunity. | jsnell wrote: | Cloud's losses ($1.8B in H1) are about 4% of the | operating income of the money-making parts ($46B in the | same timeframe). Sure, a billion here and a billion | there, pretty soon you're talking real money. But it's | hardly "sucking the company dry of its profits". | xerox13ster wrote: | 291 titles. Not great, not terrible. | caskstrength wrote: | Don't forget about shoving Shorts into faces of their | paying Youtube Premium users without a toggle to | permanently disable it. That will definitely outcompete | TikTok any day now! | post-it wrote: | If they made it possible to cast Shorts like other | videos, I might actually use them. I've tapped a Short | several times because it looked funny, but it wanted to | start playing on my phone instead of the TV. I watch | TikTok alone on my phone and YouTube with my wife on my | TV, so Shorts just doesn't fit into that routine. | | It's mindboggling that you can't cast Google Shorts to a | Google Chromecast. My hypothesis is that because | Chromecast casting is so buggy and unresponsive (compared | to Bluetooth), swiping from one Short to another would be | such a frustrating experience that they dare not enable | it. | rightbyte wrote: | My 2yo smashed my Oh So Smart TV with the remote and I | got a spare dumb TV and plugged in Chromecast into it | since everything is streams nowadays. | | Dear God how annoying it is to use. Buggy, laggy, drops | randomly ... still can't play videos from my computer in | an easy way. | | I forgot how bad Chromecast were since I last used it 5 | years ago. | Tostino wrote: | When the original came out ir was practically magic to be | able to have the TV on while hanging out with roommates | or friends, and all be able to contribute to the | entertainment for the night right from your phone...then | it didn't improve in any meaningful way, and regressed in | others over the following 8+ years. | | Really sad with the state of things. | rightbyte wrote: | When he broke my TV I was in the store looking for a new | one. I had one condition -- there had to be a sane way to | write with the remote. None of the TVs had any sane way | but used arrows and enter or some cursor marker for the | on screen keyboard. | | Dunno why none used a T9 type of letter entering system. | All remotes but one had number pads. It is really | inconvenient to use "Smart" TVs. | | So I went with the spare for a while. | terinjokes wrote: | It seems like within the last two weeks they changed how | Shorts and Chromecast works, where I'm at least able to | cast the video. | dijit wrote: | I'm still annoyed at the "hover to play" that I have to | disable seemingly every few days. | makestuff wrote: | Also they are testing 5 preroll ads now. Idk why as a | premium customer I do not have the option to filter out | shorts. It is really frustrating. Also I just want | youtube with no ads I do not care about youtube music | that is bundled with it. | jrumbut wrote: | Azure became interesting when it got better integrated | into the Windows/AD/Office worlds. You're not having to | manually integrate so much anymore. | | The way for GCP to compete is to give customers | (presumably high level customers) some real deep | integration into Search/Gmail/YouTube/Ads/Drive/Maps, | including data. That would not only be a killer | differentiating feature, it would signal to everyone that | Google is serious and won't shut this down on you like | they did all those other services. | | They probably won't do that, but I'm not sure why they | really want to run GCP if not. If they're not going to | give customers something only Google can give them, I | don't see them capturing much more of the market. | ghaff wrote: | >something nebulously magic with AI | | And even then I wouldn't place a bet on Waymo producing | anything interesting from a revenue perspective for the | next couple decades+. And, while I'm sure Google is doing | other interesting things with AI--especially from an | internal operations perspective--it's not like Google | Home is doing anything earthbreaking or that Google | search etc. is--from a consumer functionality point of | view--particularly differentiated from other major | players. And plenty of AI research is happening outside | of Google. | snek_case wrote: | It seems likely here that since revenue numbers keep going | up, they don't really realize that there is a problem. Why | rock the boat and change anything with the culture when you | can just keep collecting your bonuses? | myko wrote: | "More wood, fewer arrows" has destroyed the longevity of | Google as a company for anything beyond search/ads | | Alphabet seems to have been a mistake, too. Instead of | shielding their bets they flounder and wither. | | Just terrible strategic thinking. | ghaff wrote: | I'm not sure what bets they should have better shielded. | Probably social generally but that seems so counter their | DNA. | [deleted] | lumost wrote: | It's really hard to diversify away from a major cash cow | product. Everyone else's success gets compared to the cash | machine. Ask for another 30 engineers to work on a product | with _only_ 100 MM profit, why aren 't you more successful? | | People get wise to this dynamic and just start selling | dreams. Everyone can buy into the dream of the next Billion | dollar product, it's harder to get buy-in to just grind out | a _measly_ 50% YoY growth. | scifibestfi wrote: | It's as if they drove a clown car into a gold mine and fell | in. | | (said about twitter, but fits here) | enos_feedler wrote: | I know some of the leads. One key guy I know bounced from | Google completely right after Stadia went live. This is | classic Google cool tech bad business/product | danielmarkbruce wrote: | I was at Google 2014-2018. It appeared that Larry & Sergey | didn't understand incentives, despite otherwise being very | smart guys. They just didn't seem to get it. At all. There | were lots of smart, motivated people but the incentive | structure was completely set up to reward launching products | and moving on. Some of the Stadia folks were insanely good at | playing the promo game. | | There was _talk_ about the need to "land" rather than just | launch but it never got baked into the promo process (or if | it did, it certainly didn't appear that way to people below | VP level...). My understanding is it's still that way. | potatolicious wrote: | Agreed with this take. It's frustrating to see people in | this thread pinning this on Sundar. I certainly think he | could've done _better_ as CEO, but the incentive structure | and culture around products was baked in from Larry & | Sergey's time. | | I was around during the pivot to "landings" - which didn't | actually make many practical differences. For the most part | people simply redefined "landing" to "releasing a | product"... which was also the definition of "launching" :) | cosmodisk wrote: | It does seem to be that way from the outside: tons of | products launched, acquired,and then nothing happens, as | they either rot or get killed after a few years. | moandcompany wrote: | I wrote a description of the actual incentives Googlers see | here a couple weeks ago: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32844740#32845704 | lrem wrote: | What if I told you that perf has been abolished in the | meantime? | | It's even public: | https://buildyourfuture.withgoogle.com/programs/grad | reindeerer wrote: | Yep but incentives haven't shifted, and the | organizational inertia to fight in their fiefdoms is | super strong | danielmarkbruce wrote: | This sounds like a re-brand... | [deleted] | lupire wrote: | 2014 was when they retired. | danielmarkbruce wrote: | Nope, wrong. | johnnyanmac wrote: | > I have no doubt whoever launched Stadia got promoted and | then bounced to a different product and didn't care about | whether Stadia was a success long term. | | apparently the product manager was Phill Harrison. He's been | active in games for a few decades, so I'm not sure if this is | just a pivoting move to focus the product or his exit | strategy. Time will tell. | [deleted] | jesuscript wrote: | They are silo'd and it appears to be so bad that their | organizational structure is now appearing in the actual | products. Amazon and Apple (obviously more so Apple) don't do | silo'd product releases, they do product releases veiled | within the shroud of the "ecosystem". | | What ecosystem is Stadia in? They couldn't brand it right and | veil it through YouTube or Google Play? You'd never shut down | YouTube or Google Play, you'd just let that, you know, that | "Google Play Live (Stadia)" feature quietly enter maintenance | mode. | | Apple won't shut down Apple News. They'd never announce it. | It's just some product that's interweaved into iOS. If it | ain't a hit, it quietly fades. | | Google+, weave that shit in with Gchat. But no, no, it's ... | yeah, it's its own special thing. Special things get their | own very special shut down. | | I'm not wise like that, but if you want to try stuff to see | what sticks, lay low and quietly try things. That way you can | quietly cut it short if necessary. | | If you enter loud, you exit loud. And if you don't exit loud, | people remember you left quietly and laugh that you entered | loud. | dgs_sgd wrote: | Something I'm still hung up on about the "promotion then | bounce" strategy is wouldn't having a history of launches | followed by fizzle-outs actually look bad on your resume? | | Sure, they launched Stadia and then went somewhere else | before it failed. So the strategy works at least in the first | transition. But wouldn't this become a barrier to further | growth, when people can see that they have been leading | failed projects? | appleflaxen wrote: | Can an argument be made that antitrust action a decade ago | could have saved them billions on now-shut-down projects? If | I were an investor I would want brutal focus from the top on | search search search and _nothing_ that didn 't directly | create value in _search_. | jraph wrote: | > Google needs to restructure their incentives before it | wrecks the company | | No no, please don't restructure, wreck the company, that's | fine. | | Or more realistically, the worst offenders are not going | anywhere and Google is going to be okay (Search, Maps, Play, | Ads, Analytics, Fonts, Chrome, YouTube, ReCAPTCHA...). | | Stadia, I don't care either way. | ferminaut wrote: | Google kind of reminds me of IBM in the early 90s before Lou | Gerstner. IBM built segments of its business around the fact | mainframe money would keep pouring in. | taurath wrote: | I agree wholeheartedly - I'm currently using google fi which | hasn't had an improvement of any real impact in over 3 years, | and it still barely works on my iPhone. I suspect it will be | shutting down soon - which is a shame, it was a fantastic | idea but they launched and then promptly did nothing but let | it slowly rot. | coryrc wrote: | Don't worry too much, Google Voice had been in that state | for at least a decade and I'm still using it. (Not official | statement, just long-time GV user, if your font is large | enough to read in GV app it's because I complained | internally and that was the only user-facing thing I ever | got to improve). | Applejinx wrote: | Hope not. I use that to barely have a cellphone service and | not have to pay much when I don't really use it :) | picsao wrote: | partiallypro wrote: | To be fair, Stadia was an astoundingly stupid idea for Google | to get into, the fact that it was ever green lit is crazy to | me. It fits nothing in their business model. At least the | Google Pixel showcases Android and digs deep into their AI, | etc. Stadia literally didn't do anything, but maybe use GCP | in some way...but they didn't do it in the way Microsoft is, | which is to lure gaming companies to use the cloud for their | own development. It was dead before it ever launched. | i_love_cookies wrote: | It's a shame their platform choices prevented a decent | stream of content, stadia was easier to use but I subscribe | GFN due to the content | | on the whole I feel like they were to focused on potential | vs. offering something desirable right away | Ecstatify wrote: | The whole point was to diversify their business model. The | tech behind Stadia is very impressive, I could play | Cyberpunk 2077 on my TV/Mobile/iPAD/Mac with no lag in 4K. | Stadia integrated into YouTube could have been a Twitch | competitor. With Covid it could have been the perfect time | to really launch the product when no one could buy a | PS5/XBOX. Google didn't invest in games, closed down their | own game studio. It's reminiscent of Windows Phone having | no apps. | Manuel_D wrote: | > The tech behind Stadia is very impressive, I could play | Cyberpunk 2077 on my TV/Mobile/iPAD/Mac with no lag in | 4K. | | Could they actually do that? Or more importantly, could | the average user - not someone next door to the | datacenter - get that kind of performance? | Ecstatify wrote: | 35 Mbps or greater for 4K. | | Internet performance in Europe has improved dramatically | over the past year and a half. Average fixed line | download speeds have increased by more than half (+51.9 | percent), from 68 Megabits per second (Mbps) in March | 2020 to 103.3 Mbps in June 2021. | Manuel_D wrote: | It's not just throughput, but also latency. I'm getting | 20-30 ms ping to google, which is 2 frames latency. For | something like an RPG, or among us, that's probably fine. | But for an FPS or a fighting game, that's a huge | difference. And I live in a city center with good | internet. | zepppotemkin wrote: | Honestly they just didn't have any content due to their | technology choices, I use GFN all the time because it has | most of the games I want to play already | | they put themselves in a position where they were stuck | acting like a psudo-console-platform thing needing to get | developers to support thier platform | lupire wrote: | I doubt the Stadia leadership killed their own division. The | problem was someone higher up. | | Harrison is still the lead of Stadia. | nonethewiser wrote: | I'm not sure how bad this is. I think it's good that they | like to try new things. They couldn't do that if they | committed to supporting everything they start indefinitely. | ren_engineer wrote: | try new things under a different brand name that doesn't | taint everything related to Google if you want to | experiment | | Google shutting down consumer products hurts Google Cloud | in many developer's minds. Doesn't help that Google Cloud | itself just as frivolously deprecates products or APIs that | people build their businesses on. And customer support is | equally terrible across the company | forgetfulness wrote: | Examples of Google Cloud sunsetting products? As far as I | know it's very rare that they do that. | | Killing consumer products, and quite possibly launching | products that flop in the first place, or their failure | to make their consumer products appealing over time, | really rubs off on Google Cloud though, you have to keep | repeating to yourself that Google rarely kills its | Enterprise offerings | | Edit: not to say anything about Workspace, you can be | essentially shut down for nothing. But there's a wider | problem of major email providers behaving like a cartel | in basically only accepting email from one another. | ren_engineer wrote: | Their IoT platform last month - | https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/17/google-cloud-will- | shutter-... | | several other examples as well, but the worst thing they | do is very frequent breaking API changes which force | companies to do maintenance work to adjust to Google | iroh2727 wrote: | Well, we also gotta look at Google's outside incentives, | those of being a monopoly. At the end of the day, it's not | the most efficient use of resources to innovate internally at | a monopoly (better uses include M&A, competitor sabotage, and | sales/marketing, which they've of course also done). | | Anyways, Google I think has been trying to maintain a | semblance of its early culture of innovation so as to attract | talent/applicants, to not cause too much internal turmoil, | and to make investors think it is still an "innovation" | company. Also, because growth comes with bloat and | bureaucracy, so may as well have that bloat come up with new | products. | | Google will never be fixed internally to be its former self | or a company centered on innovation because that's just not | how monopolies work... Maybe once they capsize (which | hopefully they do because monopolies are toxic and anti- | competitive), they can once again become an innovator, like | with Apple's early capsizing which led to them bringing Steve | Jobs back. | nvarsj wrote: | I wonder if Google even realises, like at Pichai level, how | much this hurts them. I'm fairly sure it's at least one | important piece as to why GCP is struggling to gain market | share. Who in their right mind would depend on a Google | product for critical business functions at this point. | endgame wrote: | https://steve-yegge.medium.com/dear-google-cloud-your- | deprec... makes exactly this argument. | samstave wrote: | There is literally only one service I use from google and I'm | actively sunsetting that use : Gmail. | | I never go there for search and I can't think of another tool | of theirs I use... | schlauerfox wrote: | If you go on any website that uses adsense, Google's real | customers are using their services on you. The rest is just | to feed the beast. I got suckered, I loved my very early | invite only Gmail account. Not sure my protonmail isn't | just more of the same performative 'i'm a techie and using | the fashionable thing" but can I ever escape that? | tlogan wrote: | Google is NOT in trouble. Our perception that Google is not | an ad company is in trouble. | JJMcJ wrote: | > governments get serious about ad regulation | | Or companies pull back on Internet advertising. | | The unknown unknown is the creation of a new advertising | method. I doubt that any newspaper in 1990 thought that this | thing called the Internet was going to all but destroy their | ad business within twenty years. | otabdeveloper4 wrote: | Internet advertising isn't going anywhere. | | Google's ad product, however, is truly horrendous and | exists only because it's perceived as "too big to fail". | htrp wrote: | working with the core ads platform, feels like one of the | worst designed systems i have ever seen in my life. | | definitely no innovation in that side of the business | julienfr112 wrote: | don't fix what ain't broken. | giancarlostoro wrote: | I've given up trusting anything new they make. They've shut | down otherwise perfectly fine products that they could of | charged some money for and I would of gladly payed. Google | Talk was perfect, the UI was stale but I could log on via | Pidgin. Everything that followed Google Talk was a regression | is what it felt like. | subsubzero wrote: | Take away that search monopoly and you have one one of the | most dysfunctional and slowest moving companies in tech. | Which is incredibly surprising as they hire really bright | people but their leadership and product direction is not good | at all. | yellow_lead wrote: | So that was a lie | kyrra wrote: | Googler, opinions are my own. I don't work on Stadia. | | From what I saw, the Stadia team was working hard on product | improvements and adding new games still. So a careful parsing | of the sentence is that the Stadia team was still working | towards the goals of expanding the service, as the shutdown | decision wasn't made yet or told to the team yet. | ddalex wrote: | I mean, HN is read more often then memegen/ I guess they | know now. | gilrain wrote: | > When asked what changed from the week prior, Harrison | admitted nothing had and told those on the call, "We knew." | | I encourage you to consider looking for work at a company | which respects you; you're worth it. | johnnyanmac wrote: | TBF, if Mcdonalds paid people 100k at age 23 to flip | burgers, employees would put up with a lot more BS as | well. And that salary for a google newgrad is low | balling. | hinkley wrote: | Unfortunately there's a reason teams and people get put on | "Double Secret Probation". If consumers find out the team | might get shut down they start relying on them less, at | which point the probation becomes a self fulfilling | prophecy. | | It got out that one of my favorite restaurants was going to | lose their lease for new construction, and didn't have | plans to relocate. I moved shortly thereafter and never | checked up on them. What actually happened is that the | construction project got delayed over a year, and the | restaurant stayed, but anyone who didn't live in the | immediate vicinity didn't hear about that. Any time I told | someone it was still open, the response was happy, but | complete surprise. | | They opened a kind of a cafe with just a fraction of their | menu closer to my house, but the location wasn't great | (It's worth paying someone to sit around a potential | location for hours on multiple days to see what foot | traffic is like. If you're across a high traffic street | from a high foot traffic area that doesn't mean you'll see | foot traffic) and I'm sure by then the rumor of their | demise had affected revenue. So bad location and the food | wasn't quite as good as at the old location. Probably staff | turnover. | | That slow avalanche took three years to shutter the | company, and they probably would have been fine if they'd | managed to stay out of the local paper. | theonlybutlet wrote: | At this point it's standard fair for Google, in my | opinion, a large reason this ended up being unsuccessful | was that people were worried it was going to be shutdown. | hinkley wrote: | Oh I'm totally on Team Popcorn at this point, I'm more | talking about "hey kids, copying a Google is not the | ticket to success". | | Being caught saying "don't worry" just damages their | brand more. What they really need is to declare some | things as sacred cows. But you can't do that after you've | already lied using the same phrasing. | chaostheory wrote: | I can't believe that I'm defending Google, but this time | at least they offered credit or refunds for any | purchases. Google not doing this in the past has made me | extremely hesitant in paying for new Google devices that | feel risky. This will alleviate that worry a bit | hinkley wrote: | It's a very common problem in software that we target | 'better' instead of 'good'. Or as we used to call it, | "sucks less." It doesn't help that we keep trying to | 'disrupt' domains that had no software or had software | written by people who know how to write critical systems. | | It does sound like they're trying to do better, but it | was a long time coming and this still isn't good | behavior. | johnnyanmac wrote: | I don't see how this is bad in the consumer's perepctive. | Those that didn't use it lose or gain nothing. Those that | did use it get their refunds. They don't care about the | dev side.I don't think it's bad behavior to shut down | something no one watns. | | The exec communication with the devs is unfortunate, but | a separate matter. | 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote: | After negative news, it's pretty safe to assume thr opposite | when PR / Marketing says something like "we wont be shutting | down" or when a CEO says "there wont be any layoffs". | | If you read between the lines, those kind of announcements | can usually be a good indicator of the appropriate "time to | adapt", whether that be to prepare for a layoff or to start | buying IP on a survivable platform. | wil421 wrote: | A company I worked for moved from the Suburbs to downtown | in the city I live in. Local news broke the story right | when the deal was signed with the building contractor. For | weeks on end they denied it, until they didn't. Surprise we | were always lying to you! | chrsig wrote: | As a general rule, I tend to invert any sentence any | manager ever gives me. | bink wrote: | They usually couch it in weasel words such as "we have no | plans to conduct layoffs at this time" rather than an | outright lie. | elil17 wrote: | That is an outright lie if they do have plans for | layoffs. | hansvm wrote: | "at this time" just needs to refer to when the layoffs | are happening rather than the existence of a plan. | jedmeyers wrote: | Oh no, they have a plan to create a plan for layoffs, but | as of right now there is no plan to layoff employees. | ConceptJunkie wrote: | More realistically, "We don't have a plan for laying off | employees at this time. Our plan is for laying off | employees next month." | jerf wrote: | Companies, governments, and politicians do not say things | to inform you about what is happening or what they are | doing. They say things to produce in the listener the state | they desire, whatever that may be, and they have few | limitations as to what they will say to do that. (Not quite | "zero", but definitely "few".) | | The sooner you learn this, the more information you can get | from this sort of release. It doesn't mean you can | perfectly decode it, it just means you can get more | information. And the amount of time that "more information" | outright contradicts the nominal content of the | statement... it's not terribly uncommon. It's certainly the | normal case that the decoded content heavily shades the | nominal content. | hdjjhhvvhga wrote: | I hope this becomes common knowledge and starts being | taught in elementary schools. | jerf wrote: | I wish. People talk big about "critical thinking" but | critical thinking curricula still tend to focus on the | nominal content of claims. Motivation of the speaker and | their desired goals is not an incidental concern to be | briefly covered, it's the core of the skillset. | | Of course asking people teaching "critical thinking" to | arm the students with a toolset that can be turned | against the teachers is a pretty tall ask. I've had | teachers who could take that level of heat, and props to | them, but I've certainly had teachers that simply | couldn't. | geodel wrote: | Excellent point!. I agree typical critical thinking | courses seems to be about logical/mathematical | consistency. I find a _follow the money_ approach works | much better in real life situations. | [deleted] | throw10920 wrote: | Unfortunately, many people let their political beliefs | interfere with their use of this principle; if one | institution('s representative) lies, then it's just an | isolated incident or there was a good reason, but if | another institution does, it's because that institution | (possibly including all institutions in that class) are | "evil". | falcolas wrote: | This gets confusing when you consider public companies, | whose shareholders are also the targets of public | statements (like tweets saying "no we won't shut X | down"), and there _are_ (well, supposedly) legal limits | on misleading public statements by public companies. | coldpie wrote: | Yes. Stadia execs lied to their own employees. It's a pattern | for the company. | | _This call was followed by a contentious Q &A where the | Stadia boss was confronted about his email from just the week | before which suggested anything but a wholesale shutdown of | the studios. Harrison expressed his regret over the | misleading statements made in his previous email, according | to four sources with knowledge of the call. When asked what | changed from the week prior, Harrison admitted nothing had | and told those on the call, "We knew."_ | | https://kotaku.com/stadia-leadership-praised-development- | stu... | dekhn wrote: | My very first TGIF after my noogler one, I sat behind some | disgruntled employee who kept yelling at the stage about | how the execs were lying to us. | | I thought it was fairly rude and also I thought the execs | were simply using careful language. After attending a bunch | more TGIFs, I finally realized that nearly every exec had a | very specific way of presenting things that sort of made | their work sound perfect, even if it was shit. You can see | an example in "An Update On Google Reader" or "Advancing | our Amazing Bet on Google Fiber", or even this one. | hinkley wrote: | I'm sure there's some sort of doctor-like logic going on in | some heads where you tell the patient everything is going | to be fine because the surgery goes better if they aren't | freaked out before the anesthesia hits. | | But with team dynamics getting thrown in I think that | narrative sounds noble and glamorous but has little to | nothing to do with reality. Instead it's an equal part "I | can save this" and "we aren't gonna save this but we need | people to stay to help with an orderly shutdown", and the | Mushroom Treatment (keep them in the dark and feed them | bullshit). | humanistbot wrote: | > I'm sure there's some sort of doctor-like logic going | on in some heads where you tell the patient everything is | going to be fine because the surgery goes better if they | aren't freaked out before the anesthesia hits. | | That is a clear violation of informed consent. Even if it | might lead to better short-term outcomes, over the long- | term it leads to degrading trust in doctors. Same with | this case. It gives all of us (internal employees, | outside devs, businesses, customers) even more reasons to | never believe any promise that comes out of the mouth of | an Alphabet executive. | hinkley wrote: | I am at the moment trying to get an appointment with a | doctor to tell him the same thing to his face. | | What you shouldn't do is enumerate all of the potential | side effects in vivid detail. That's the WebMD curse. But | if someone wants you to look at your work you should look | at your work, not blow them off on the phone. That's just | more arrogant asshole behavior, which contributes to | White Coat Syndrome. | | What are we going to call WCS for mega corps with short | attention spans? Because I think we need one. | Melatonic wrote: | At least with the mushroom treatment though you end up | with some very tasty and healthy products! | hinkley wrote: | I am not a product. | anonymoushn wrote: | Surely these executives will be severely reprimanded for | their lack of integrity, lest employees throughout the | company begin to assume that such behavior is the standard. | thombat wrote: | Actually, the Stadia management were _this_ close to | being shitcanned for failing to live up to Google ideals. | The only thing that saved them was when they announced | that their group had already pivoted to a promising new | product idea featuring a built-in messaging client. | everfrustrated wrote: | Upvoted because I had to think twice if this was sarcasm. | switch007 wrote: | I found much more peace as an employee by accepting that | all executives lie to some degree | | In their circles it's called "controlling the message", | "not causing panic", "simplifying" etc. They often simply | do not believe it's lying | ConceptJunkie wrote: | I try to work for companies that aren't openly evil. | johnnyanmac wrote: | you best bet of doing that is spinning off your own | company. I unfortunately cannot afford to do that. | findingaway wrote: | The greatest idea since sliced bread... too bad that | leaves a vanishingly small pool of potential work. | | "Working as Intended" | JTbane wrote: | Pull Request: Remove "Don't be evil" from the Code of | Conduct. | ceph_ wrote: | I think it's realistic to assume that this happens but it | doesn't mean it should be accepted. How can you trust in | the leadership of someone you know will lie whenever they | think it will get them a slightly better outcome? Execs | like that are not leaders and they should not be in those | positions. | vkou wrote: | > How can you trust in the leadership | | You shouldn't. At best, they are fellow travelers. At | worst, they aren't accountable to you, and their | incentive structure usually does not drive them to behave | ethically towards you. | | Execs aren't paid to lead, they are paid to deliver | business value. Ethical leadership is often incidental or | counterproductive to it. | | In this case, the execs were paid to do everything | possible to promote and grow the product. And that's what | they did. | hbrn wrote: | They should probably try implementing OKRs at Google. I | heard it helps with transparency. | rany_ wrote: | I doubt the social media guy even knew. They were posting | promotional tweets just 2 days ago. | | Source: | https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1574790973443522566 | __david__ wrote: | It depends on when they made the decision. Changing your mind | doesn't mean you previously lied, it just means you were | wrong. Lying needs intent. | wpietri wrote: | I doubt it was a lie in the sense that the person who said it | believed it to be false. I think this instead falls under | Frankfurt's definition of bullshit: speech intended to | persuade without regard for truth. | | But there's a corporate twist here, in that the person saying | might have believed it to be true, because some executive | also believed it to be true, even though if you take Google | as a whole, it was always uncertain. | | So I think I'd call this "corporate bullshit", where Google | as an entity has low regard for the truth as presented by PR | mouthpieces, and is thus a dedicated bullshitter. | tgv wrote: | Publicly, knowingly uttering bullshit of which you know | it's false, or has a high probability of being false, is | simply called lying. | wpietri wrote: | I agree, but don't see the relation. Who specifically do | you believe publicly said something knowing it was false? | canadianwriter wrote: | Like... maybe? Why does it have to be a lie instead of | incompetence? They may have totally thought that back then, | then changed their mind? | mrguyorama wrote: | It's Google. Everyone knew the second Stadia was announced | that it would die. It wasn't even a particularly good | example of a game streaming service. If you work for Google | and were convinced that Stadia was secure for the future, | you should reconsider the reality you live in. | myko wrote: | I've used GeForce Now and Stadia was a lot better than it | on my iPad/WiFi | | What service is better than Stadia at actually running | games in the cloud? | DashAnimal wrote: | So... Just to get this correct, the social media person | who probably isn't privvy to plans affecting their job in | two months should have written something along the lines | of "were told it's going to be ok, but who even knows | with Google"? | kwertyoowiyop wrote: | That would actually have been hilarious. | mrguyorama wrote: | Maybe PR teams shouldn't get a free pass to say whatever | they want. If your PR team can just lie to the public due | to "ignorance" it becomes very very profitable to lie to | your own PR team. | awill wrote: | Probably the reason they had to give refunds, or they'd get | sued, and this would be evidence #1 against Google | taytus wrote: | It's really a lie if everyone knows it is a lie thou? | xxs wrote: | Of course it is, and it's just a blatant one at that. | sanxiyn wrote: | Yes it is. | taytus wrote: | It was a joke | jamiek88 wrote: | In the current zeitgeist it was a poor one. | | Blatant lies are destroying nations. | judge2020 wrote: | What is the social media person supposed to say in this case? | "we're working on a blog post about Stadia shutting down | that'll be released in 2 months"? Even if Phil Harrison | himself were the one running that Twitter account, he | probably knew it was destined to shut down but didn't have | anything official on when or the details of the shutdown. | georgeecollins wrote: | "We're proud of our Stadia experience and we are working | hard on projects for it." That would not be as misleading | as we are not going anywhere. | | Anyone who didn't think Stadia was going to shut down at | least a year ago was either kind of inexperienced or being | paid not to realize the obvious. | compiler-guy wrote: | There are also those who knew it was at risk and in | danger but thought that it could be saved with hard work | and a little luck and were working toward that end. | MichaelCollins wrote: | > _What is the social media person supposed to say in this | case?_ | | If they can't find peace with everybody calling them a | professional liar, they should quit their job and find an | honest line of work. | bccdee wrote: | Something evasive in the vein of "Stadia represents a | significant investment and Google has not announced any | plans to scale back Stadia. We can't comment on rumours and | speculation." | bombcar wrote: | "Good night, Stadia. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most | likely kill you in the morning." | messe wrote: | Fittingly, piracy would've served consumers better than | Stadia did. | yellow_lead wrote: | How about nothing? | laserlight wrote: | If we collectively stopped believing non-binding statements | with no skin in the game, these bullshitters would stop | bullshitting. | unicornmama wrote: | From a cynical ex-Google employee, this would have translated | to "Stadia still has more promotions to squeeze out". Today's | message signals that it's done its squeezing, permanently. | [deleted] | Forge36 wrote: | https://twitter.com/BlueFireDemon44/status/15530629798847488... | | >I mean we could wait till September 24 too | | Not bad missed the estimate by 5 days. | Yhippa wrote: | I should have known when they cancelled the Pixelbook that this | was next. | goldenManatee wrote: | This is what drives my hesitancy toward subscribing any Google | paid product. The company is very short-term focused and fickle | on measuring the success of a product. They have the cash to | throw at new problems, but they lack the stamina for any of | their products to weather-out a storm. Google itself has the | reputational problem of being weak on product longterm visions; | that makes it a non-starter for buying into their mercurial | fantasies. | sjs382 wrote: | I used Stadia super casually, despite buying the Founder's | Edition as soon as it was available. I bought maybe 5 games | at very steep discounts and maybe played them for 1-4 hours | each. | | With that said, the way they're handling this shutdown gives | me LESS hesitancy re: consumer entertainment purchases. | Granting full, automatic refunds is the vest way this can be | handled, period. | | Now, developer services are another story... Winding down a | service that I rely on (rather than just being entertained | by) would cause me more work, on their schedule. | | But still, I have _slightly_ more trust that they 'll handle | similar things well in the future. | crazygringo wrote: | That tweet was surely from the Stadia team, and teams generally | do not plan on shutting down. I think we can assume that was | 100% honest at the time, and the team was doing everything it | could to keep going. | | And that upper management (VP/director/etc.) probably finally | made the decision to shut it down just a couple of weeks ago or | even less. | | So while ironic... it's highly unlikely Google was lying, as | multiple people here are suggesting. Nobody knows for sure that | a product/team will be shut down until it actually is. Not even | upper management knows until they see the newest numbers. | | Having had some experience at large companies, many teams' | whole existence is on the line every ~3 months as the product | manager presents updates to the VP and associates, and then | waits a week to find out later if the team a) gets new | employees / higher budget, b) gets no new employees and no | increased budget, or c) gets cancelled so start looking for an | internal transfer. | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | I don't think folks really care much if it was an outright | lie, or if it was a George Costanza "It's not a lie if YOU | believe it" lie. | | Just another data point on why people rightfully think PR | posts like this are BS. | Melatonic wrote: | Typical Guurgle move. Self fulfilling prophecy and all that | princevegeta89 wrote: | That's why you should always take corporate promises with a | tablespoon of salt. | | After seeing so many big companies promise things and only | screw those over along the course of last couple of decades, | this is of no surprise to me | ravenstine wrote: | Though I'm not suggesting lying/malice on The Google's part | here, it's incredible that anyone still believes a word of | corporate PR. Whenever a company insists it's not going to do | something, I assume they're doing damage control and that the | opposite is more likely to be true (much like Bettridge's Law). | If a company makes a positive statement in PR, I assume their | statements won't live up to their promise or, even worse, come | with a deal breaking caveat. | Sebb767 wrote: | > it's incredible that anyone still believes a word of | corporate PR. | | If you look at the discussions about the shutdown rumor, | hardly believed PR. I was on the defensive side and my | argument was that spreading this rumor was basically a free | point. | rvz wrote: | Yep, damage control that is: _" It's okay if your head's in the | clouds. There are video games here."_ We all saw though that, | and we knew it was a sinking ship. | | But this wasn't really a surprise since this information was | given to me from the future [0] and I said exactly was was | going to happen and predicted it a year before [1]. | | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27039202 | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32278255 | Sakos wrote: | I'm Jack's complete lack of surprise. | | Also, there's this tidbit: | | > Harrison says Google sees opportunities to apply Stadia's | technology to other parts of Google, like YouTube, Google Play, | and its AR efforts, and the company also plans to "make it | available to our industry partners, which aligns with where we | see the future of gaming headed," he wrote. | | I assumed they'd do a pivot towards offering it as a service | for game publishers to build on, something like GCS just for | game streaming. I wonder when we'll see an announcement for | that. | rajnathani wrote: | The top 4th and 7th comment on the Stadia launch post on HN sort | of predicted this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19432957 | | During those times I thought HN was being overly pessimistic as | usual about a product being killed by Google, but now it is | pretty understandable, especially as despite Google's headstart | that they were overtaken by Nvidia, Microsoft, and others in this | space. | alsodumb wrote: | A reply to the 7th comment says "I'd say one promotion cycle | for the top executives on the product, 2-3 more for the next | tier of engineers/product folks to ship some cool stuff, then a | year or two for the product to coast before no one wants to | take on the technical debt. So I'll predict its shutdown will | be announced by July 2022." | | That prediction was so damn close. | ALittleLight wrote: | It's funny, when Google lied and said they were always going to | be working on Stadia, were in it for the long-haul, etc - they | lied because they knew they needed people to believe in the | service to use it. Of course, people knew they were lying and | didn't believe in the service and didn't use it. If Google had | told the truth - "We're trying Stadia, it might shut down, and if | it does complete refunds on everything" - people would've | believed Google and would've tried out the service and they | wouldn't need to shut down. | solaarphunk wrote: | It turns out that if you run an ads monopoly and cloud oligopoly, | very few other businesses you try building will turn out to be | worthwhile maintaining. I wonder if Google cut 75% of its | workforce and their long tail of products, if their stock price | would go to the moon because they would be ultra-profitable. | Zigurd wrote: | Someone at Logitech is having a miserable day. | mooman219 wrote: | There's a lot of animosity on this thread, but I think Stadia | shutting down is distressing and we should talk about that. | | The concept of a 3rd party game streaming platform is another | foot into the grave with Stadia shutting down, and that should be | cause for alarm. I think most people in this thread can agree | that the licensing model for Stadia was less than stellar, but it | feels like getting favorable licensing requires being an existing | behemoth (Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Sony PlayStation Now, Nvidia | GeForce Now) to have any chance of a AAA title being on your | streaming platform. Blade filed for insolvency just last year, | and has since been remarketed as Shadow.tech which functionally | is just expensive Windows VMs. | | A lot of people on here will happily argue that they want to own | their games (Which I want too!), while also rejoicing that cloud | gaming is increasing narrowing to fewer and fewer companies. | Licensing is getting increasingly harder, and I'm worried at some | point we'll be left with a monopoly and it'll be too late. | | This is hacker news, what's the answer here for startups going | forward? Is becoming a 1st party powerhouse (Like Netflix) while | getting licensing agreements with as many indie games as you can | (Like Epic Games?) the only option? How do you make this model | succeed when you have no negotiating power? If Sony is suing | Microsoft to keep Call of Duty on their platform, what chance | does a startup have? | wbear wrote: | I do not want cloud gaming startups to succeed. I feel like I | would own my games even less than I do now, and due to the laws | of physics, games would be less responsive than playing | locally. I am glad that Stadia has failed. | mooman219 wrote: | I believe the issue is cloud gaming is succeeding for a | triopoly of companies, and only them. You can not want them | to succeed, but that's further entrenching their dominance. | If you're fine with narrowing who can license games to just a | couple of companies, then I'm afraid that's there's a very | real risk of no longer owning your games at all. This is a | bit of a slippery slope, but that's just my concern. | majormajor wrote: | I knew someone who worked on Stadia a few years ago. They left | Google shortly after. I don't know how universal it is, but in | that case working on non-core-ads-business stuff there sounded | like a bit of a mess (unless it was just Stadia). | spir wrote: | I was a happy Stadia customer for a while. And then an unhappy | customer. And now I own relics of history (Stadia | controller+purchased games). | | In my view, the root problem here may be that Google is too | accustomed to having a monopoly position in the market and not | actually treating customers that well, whereas gaming is | hypercompetitive and Google doesn't have the customer centricity | in their DNA to compete successfully. | christmm wrote: | p1necone wrote: | Kinda surprised about the full refunds on seemingly _everything_. | That has to be a pretty huge loss doesn 't it? | | Did they have to do full refunds legally, or are they just | choosing to? | TheDesolate0 wrote: | sicp-enjoyer wrote: | A few years ago I did some back of the envelope calculations that | suggested to me that the input and display latency were | unacceptable. Were they never worried about this? | ElijahLynn wrote: | warinukraine wrote: | > And while Stadia's approach to streaming games for consumers | was built on a strong technology foundation | | This line is so telling of Google's culture... | | No one cares if your product has a "strong technology | foundation". Users only care that they get something out of the | product. Google doesn't get this. They think as long as the tech | is strong, that's all you need for a successful product. | greatgib wrote: | The title in itself is interesting as an exemple of the modern | corpo-speak bullshit as we can see everywhere now: | <<A message about Stadia and our long term streaming strategy>> | | In the content they tell that they are shutting down, so giving | up on the project, but the title tries to pretend that they | "pivot" and so that it is something that is beneficial for them | in the long term to be invested in "streaming" technologies. | vardump wrote: | Never used in the first place, only because I had almost no trust | in Google not shutting down any new services. | | Not surprised. Google really needs to stop doing this. | adrr wrote: | Google doing what google does. Release an MVP , dump marketing | dollars to gain customers, kill the product when adoption rates | don't meet expectations. With no real exclusive games, Stadia was | destined to fail. | esskay wrote: | It was only a matter of time. It is a Google product after all. | It's basically their thing at this point. "Hey look at this | fantastic new service from Google" should be met with "No thanks, | they'll close it and I'll lose everything". | frankfrank13 wrote: | Google is search, ads, and G Suite. Everything else is | recruitment window dressing. | pearjuice wrote: | "Stadia is not shutting down. Rest assured we're always working | on bringing more great games to the platform and Stadia Pro. Let | us know if you have other questions." | | - Jul 29, 2022 | | https://twitter.com/googlestadia/status/1552989433590214656 | sascha_sl wrote: | Likely written by a support rep who definitely wasn't in on | todays announcement. | wildpeaks wrote: | I'm still convinced industry applications that have to run on | powerful hardware (such as 3dsmax or AutoCAD) would have been a | better target than games, especially when products like GamePass | exist. | partdavid wrote: | It's a really interesting idea and also a way for those | publishers to help move to subscriptions, which they all do. | | I have GFN and I love it, but I will say that input | methods/devices is a real weak point. Right now there's still | no credible story for racing wheels, for example. I'm not sure | about flight simulator rigs, either (I think no). I wonder if | you'd have to do a bunch of R&D to make all kinds of tablets | and digitizers and other specialized input devices available; | or if the workstation costs for consumers of those applications | are already dominated by license fees and expensive input | hardware? Making it less attractive? | _appub wrote: | https://www.businessinsider.in/advertising/google-made-a-sec... | | In 2015 google acquired agawi - any game anywhere instantly | AtNightWeCode wrote: | Stadia always would fail. Most sane people knew this. Same as | with Google+. But sometimes companies need to be bold for the | sake of it. | | The most worrying trend with Google is the search engine. The | quality of the search results has declined over the years but it | seems it has become multiple times worse over the last couple of | months. Many top results for simple queries result in pages that | directly send one into a redirect loop that ends on porn or | casino sites. | HL33tibCe7 wrote: | Imagine how depressing it must be working at Google on new | projects, never sure whether they might just get cancelled months | down the road. And then how depressing it must be after they do | get cancelled, and your work just goes directly down the drain. | Speaking from experience, there is nothing quite as demoralising | in our trade as this. At least the money's good there, I guess. | mortenjorck wrote: | Time to update http://isstadiadeadyet.com | 1270018080 wrote: | Can anyone find the old tweet by Stadia support, or some | executive, saying Stadia will not be shut down? It was only a few | months ago. | helloworld97 wrote: | leokennis wrote: | Maybe their track record in B2B is better, but as a CTO or | something I'd think very long and hard before I would make my | business depend on GCP (as opposed to AWS or Azure)...before you | know it Google pulls the rug out underneath your feet. | bogwog wrote: | Sorry for the stupid internet drama/shenanigans, but I couldn't | resist. | | > Anonymous sources providing nothing but a statement are | baseless. | | > Stadia will exist by the end of the summer. You don't have to | believe me. Like I said feel free to come back to this thread in | October. | | Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32278402 | | It ain't even October yet. | the_duke wrote: | Well, autumn started on the 23rd. | | So it technically did exist by the end of summer. | unethical_ban wrote: | As someone in the tech area and likes PC gaming, I know nothing | about Stadia or GeForce Now, despite having a 3070 and a Shield. | | Was stadia its own platform and hardware? I thought it was a way | to say, play steam games over the net on an x11 session or | something. | | I'm not being silly, I really had no idea how the thing worked. | 2wrist wrote: | You could see it coming but it is a shame it ended up the way it | did. | | The hardware though, the platform.. it was an interesting linux | machine which could have been a cracking base going forward. The | whole thing had so much promise, it is such a shame they half | arsed the game licensing/ownership side of things. | DoneWithAllThat wrote: | I was thinking how far back this whole "launch and cancel" cycle | started and I think I'd have to say the Nexus Q was the first | one. Launched, received poorly, recalled for further work to be | done on it and just sort of died an ignominious death. | tnsengimana wrote: | Someone has already mentioned this deep in one thread, but I am | genuinely worried about the fate of Flutter given Google's | reputation. | moogly wrote: | [Surprised Pikachu] Is GCP next? | hypeatei wrote: | Probably not GCP as a whole but services within it. | | As seen from the recent IoT Core retirement notice. | legohead wrote: | I used Shadow [1] for a couple years. They basically give you a | windows VM and you install whatever you want. All the other big | players limited the games you could install, which was a deal | breaker for me. I think there's 1 or 2 others that have a similar | model to Shadow, but they are pay by the hour. | | Shadow was great, when they had a California datacenter (~20ms | latency). I noticed zero lag most of the time. Once they closed | that and I was forced to go to TX (~60ms latency), it started to | become an issue for me. There were other issues too, like some | games don't let you install on a VM (very rare), and I kept | running out of space. | | I finally upgraded to a PC this year (~$1400 w/GeForce 3070 & | i5), and it is a much better experience. I was so used to the | latency, I kept failing mini-games with timed key presses. Now I | have all the hard drive space I need, and the graphics look and | feel much smoother (I assume something to do with the | compression). While the cloud GPUs were performing well, I don't | think the CPUs were up to par. | | I still think cloud gaming is great, and wish Shadow well. But if | your cloud gaming service is going to limit the games people can | play, get your tombstone ready. | | [1] shadow.tech | hotpotamus wrote: | Latency is the aspect of cloud gaming I'll never understand. | There are literal physics based limits on how fast you can | transmit a signal (and a lot more practical ones on top of | those). I keep thinking that someone must have some secret | sauce they've come up with, but unless Google or someone can | invent faster light, I'm not sure what that would be. Obviously | the closer you can get the compute to the screen, the better, | but 20ms still sounds perceptible to me. | it_citizen wrote: | Are they refunding the original price of the games bought? | | In that case, it doesn't seem like a bad news at all for Stadia | users. They will have play through multiple pretty recent and | expensive games for free during years. | fakeslimshady5 wrote: | wilt wrote: | Hopefully this puts consumers off cloud gaming. | de6u99er wrote: | Quantum computing division will soon follow! | shadowgovt wrote: | I actually got Cyberpunk 2077 specifically on Stadia so I could | play the meta-game of "Can I win Cyberpunk before the | unaccountable mega-corpo revokes my access to Cyberpunk?" | | I will be losing that game. | MichaelCollins wrote: | Now _that_ is an immersive gaming experience! | colinmhayes wrote: | you still got a few months | shadowgovt wrote: | I considered that, but then I remembered finishing the game | would, unfortunately, require me to play more Cyberpunk 2077. | shadowgovt wrote: | (I just realized this could be a meta-joke on the plot of the | game and, if so, I salute you good commenter. ;) ) | MrWiffles wrote: | But can s/he get ALL the endings in time? I dunno... ;-) | xxs wrote: | Likely... there is only one ending that cannot easily be | achieved. The rest are trivial and require very little | prep. | 0x457 wrote: | The hidden ending that actually leads to the same ending, | just via a different path? | xxs wrote: | the hidden is called 'the star'. No spoilers, etc. | MrWiffles wrote: | True; I was forgetting that you can save before | triggering the endings. You don't have to replay from | square one all the way through. Still, the harder ending | (I think they called it the "fear the reaper" one?) was | the best I think. The saddest is the one on the space | station, that one was oh my god, gut-wrenching! But I | also liked the one with the Nomads :) | xxs wrote: | >"fear the reaper" was the best I think. | | indeed, also the hardest by far - all enemies are max | level. | kinakomochidayo wrote: | One of those rare instances where I think NFTs and having | digital copies available for all to download might make | infinitely more sense than buying into centralized gaming | platforms with their own licenses. | jayd16 wrote: | Nah, NFTs don't quite fit the bill. They can act as receipts | but they're not good for hosting the product. | | I think the spirit of your desire is valid though. What I | want to see is the invention of some kind of digital legal- | trust structure. | | In theory, SAAS providers could produce some kind of | "serverless" way to run their SAAS. Trusted cloud providers | could host the SAAS past the lifetime of the original | company. Users would need to pay for the hosting but the | service can live longer than the company given there was a | desire. | | Legally things could be structured such that this works for | closed source SAAS such that it remains closed source. It | hits the niche for when just open sourcing the product on the | way out isn't feasible. | yreg wrote: | If the receipt part is solved then torrent is enough for | hosting installation files, no? | jayd16 wrote: | If you can torrent, then why bother with the receipt? | kinakomochidayo wrote: | Because developers will want to make the game content | only accessible to buyers who have the receipt | jayd16 wrote: | If the devs have servers to validate authorization | anyway, then NFTs are unnecessary. Were also discussing | the case where the devs go under and no longer provide | such a service. | | Asking clients to check their own NFTs is very weak DRM. | | So what is the actual proposed flow? | yreg wrote: | IntelMiner wrote: | How would NFT's help? | | If the company refuses to refund you, your digital "receipt" | is worthless | kinakomochidayo wrote: | If the game is able to connect to your wallet and confirm | internally that you own the game's token, it could unlock | the game without having to rely on a server. | IntelMiner wrote: | Then can you just duplicate the wallet and you've | "pirated" the game | | Ah but we'll put it on the blockchain! | | ...Which is quite literally re-inventing a worse version | of systems like Steam | kinakomochidayo wrote: | Sure I guess, if you want to share private keys with | friends. | IntelMiner wrote: | Why not just make a separate wallet per-game? You've then | effectively duplicated serial keys :) | yreg wrote: | Sounds interesting, but isn't there an issue that 10 | friends could hold a key to the same wallet and all play | all the same games, even simultaneously while purchasing | just one copy? | ethbr0 wrote: | I'm guessing implementing this would require some sort of | known-file-type attestation distributed app. | | I.e. I prove I have a token + link that token to a hash | of my current system(s) | | It's actually one of the better uses for blockchain I've | heard so far, given the data sizes are minimal... | colinmhayes wrote: | Who's running the server that actually runs the game? | kinakomochidayo wrote: | The idea would work for single player games, where all | the content is in the executable, but yeah, multiplayer | is another story. | ranger207 wrote: | To get the inevitable question out of the way immediately: | how do NFTs help? They're just receipts of purchase, not the | purchase itself. If you're saying that someone else would | honor the receipt of a different store... why? | literalAardvark wrote: | I guess in the same way you can currently link Steam to | GeForce Now and be allowed to play your game. | | But steezier! | dangerlibrary wrote: | Oh you sweet, summer child. That is not how gaming NFTs are | going to work. They are not going to be consumer-friendly | transferable assets. | | They are going to be vendor-locked, and they will only get | invested in if they increase the bottom line of the walled | garden that produces them. | thrwyoilarticle wrote: | This is correct. Reason: it's already technically possible | to transfer games between platforms, the reason it's not | done is financial, legal and political. | | NFTs create a new method for the technical axis but do | nothing to change the others. | miniBill wrote: | NFTs would not help. Like. At all. Otoh digital copies for | download would | kinakomochidayo wrote: | NFTs would replace DRM, so it would, in order to actually | play the game. | shadowgovt wrote: | How does one replace DRM with NFTs if the game is locally | loaded? | kinakomochidayo wrote: | Have an interface that interacts with MetaMask or | WalletConnect within the game. | shadowgovt wrote: | What I mean is: the point of DRM is to regulate play of | the game whether a person has rights to run the software | to play it. | | How do NFTs help if I have the binaries on my machine and | can just patch the check for NFTs to always return "Yes | this user is authorized?" | kinakomochidayo wrote: | You can patch the check with binaries? Wouldn't you need | to modify the source and build? | | I'm not familiar enough with tampering, cracking software | like that so I can't really say. | shadowgovt wrote: | No problem. So in general: yes, it's not always trivial | to crack a locally-hosted binary but it's generally | possible. It can often be done by actually modifying the | binary itself (it's just machine code; if, for example, | the entire check is evaluated by one "Call out to the | server to find out if we're authorized" function that | returns a boolean, you can just replace the first few | bytes in its machine code with "LDA $FF # true ; RETURN" | and the function will think you're always registered. If | it's more complicated, you could maybe run a proxy server | locally that pretends to be the check server and always | returns "authorized" for the query. | | Assuming everyone's playing by the rules, I can see how | an NFT could be used to indicate when someone has an | ownership license to play a game (but not the mechanics | of how that right would be enforced were someone to patch | their local copy to just ignore the rights check). If the | game is cloud-hosted, this is easier to enforce. | kinakomochidayo wrote: | Ooh very interesting, thanks for explaining! | | From reading others replies too, it does looks like | client-only mechanism on its own is weak compared to | having checks on both the client and server.. | Sohcahtoa82 wrote: | Patching out these checks has existed for literally | _decades_. | | Even in the 90's (And possibly 80's and before), this was | common. Games distributed on floppies would have a check | that involved asking you what the 13th word of page 4 of | the manual was, or would have some sort of decoder wheel. | And it wasn't hard to find cracked versions that had | those checks patched out. | | When games started coming on CDs, there were copy | protection tricks that could detect if the game was | running from an ISO image (via Daemon Tools or something) | or even a copied disc, and those were all patched out. | | GameCopyWorld was a very popular website in the early | '00s. It served up these cracked versions of games. How | it still exists is beyond me, tbh. | ElevenLathe wrote: | It couldn't replace the DRM, just the license check. Some | DRM spyware from the publisher will still have to check | if you can prove ownership via the blockchain instead of | checking a CD key against the publisher's license server. | If you can't, it will refuse to launch the game. Someone | will crack the game and provide a DRM-free experience | that is better. | Gigachad wrote: | I struggle to see how the NFT provides any value in this | setup. | jabroni_salad wrote: | Alright so the stadia games are computed in a remote | datacenter, right? | | Let's assume that what you proposed is good and useful | and I have an NFT in my wallet that entitles me access to | a game in stadia's platform | | How does the NFT help me now that the compute resource | has been unplugged? I have the entitlement but not the | delivery. | kinakomochidayo wrote: | It wouldn't work for a native streaming service like | Stadia, but I could definitely see it working for Single | Player games where all the content is stored in the | executable, where there isn't reliance on centralized | servers for content. Maybe download the game from IPFS or | Arweave, or as another have said, developers making it | available on torrents | | For multiplayer games, you'd need servers for match | making and such, so it's probably not possible right now. | billllll wrote: | Unless you're putting the entire executable on the | Blockchain (gigs and gigs of data), then you still need | servers to host the game. I don't see how hosting the | entire game is feasible, since games can be hundreds of | gigs. Day one patches would also be infeasible if you | store the whole game on the Blockchain. | | Note that most NFTs are links to a central server hosted | on a Blockchain, not the actual image itself. | kinakomochidayo wrote: | Developers can still make the executables available on | other centralized servers, decentralized solutions like | BitTorrent, etc. | | The NFT wallet check could happen internally within the | game, perhaps some kind of WebView allowing access to | browser wallet extensions. | benlivengood wrote: | The easy solution is Good Old Games. Download the installers | and archive them wherever you want. NFTs are a red herring | for this use case. | zepppotemkin wrote: | Or just offer steam keys | meroes wrote: | Even Steam revokes paid for content, which I think is the | issue being discussed. | | https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=11 | 481... | vultour wrote: | Not sure how this link proves the point you're trying to | make. I can in fact still download all the games that no | longer have a page on the Steam store. | [deleted] | IntelMiner wrote: | I'm still amazed that I not only _completed_ Cyberpunk but was | able to do so quickly enough that I was able to get a refund | from Steam support! Initially they denied it, but after showing | the tweet from CDPR saying refunds were allowed they were happy | to refund me | JoeOfTexas wrote: | You beat Cyberpunk in 2 hours?! | IntelMiner wrote: | 37.5 hours according to my Steam review https://steamcommun | ity.com/profiles/76561197998185123/recomm... | | I can't link to it since it's an internal page. But I have | a record of my purchase _and_ refund from Steam support | here, too https://i.imgur.com/TvIuFEi.png | __david__ wrote: | Sounds like you just mainlined it? I just finished up the | last Gig (minor sidequest) and I have 110 hours in it... | ok_dad wrote: | They offered refunds for it well after two hours because it | was a disaster | bitL wrote: | Cyberpunk was pretty rad, but after trying all endings I | learned about the secret one for which I didn't qualify | due to different choices in some early dialogue with | Johnny far before ending, which soured the overall | experience for me... | Matthias247 wrote: | This seems common to a lot of games, and aims for | increasing the replay value. I personally also don't like | it, because I am absolutely not motivated to play through | tens to hundreds of hours again and also don't have time | for it. But it's still ok for me - I'll just watch | whatever 30 minutes of end scene I missed on youtube if | I'm interested in that. | thrwyoilarticle wrote: | I actually really dislike this sentiment. Gamers being | upset they can't access secret content on a first, blind | playthrough means that developers are incentivised not to | include secret content. | | It seems inconsistent to complain about needing outside | knowledge to find something when the only reason you know | about it is from outside knowledge. There can be joy in | going in fully-blind and there can be joy in following a | guide like a list of chores but the no-man's land in- | between leads only to disappointment and spoilers. | | (this is also why I don't watch movie trailers or read | book blurbs) | mattnewton wrote: | To be fair, the way the secret content is "discoverable" | involves a very specific sequence of choices in a single | conversation that you cannot go back and re-make without | undoing a lot of game progression. Old games didn't have | the same kind of progression, and new games are generally | more forgiving about post-game exploration of all the | content in the game. The game also has misleading | affordances that give the impression that your | relationship with this character is built up over several | conversations, when actually only this one specific | sequence in one conversation is known to work. | | So, I don't think it's bad because the content is hard to | discover without outside knowledge, it's bad because it's | both hard to discover and impossible to fix once you have | progressed past that point. It's not like being able to | just rewatch part of a film or re read a book chapter to | get a reference. You basically have to reload an old | save, go through a decision sequence, and then replay the | entire last third of the game until you have access to a | final playable level, and the way it's implemented feels | like it was very much slapped in to take the place of a | johnny-friendship-meter mechanic that appears mostly | broken outside that one conversation. | hprotagonist wrote: | The King's Quest design aesthetic. | | it sucked then, too. | bitL wrote: | I finished all main/side missions and gigs, let Johnny | take over whenever he wanted and then went through all | reachable ending combinations (8 different endings, even | if slightly) and then I learned there is a secret ending | considered the best of them all which was denied to me | due to some obscure choice early. So no wonder it left a | sour taste. | yreg wrote: | I guess they refer to CDPR comitting to refunding everyone | who's not happy with the game.[1] | | Interesting that Steam had no issue fulfilling that promise | since they loose out on it as well. Also sounds like a bit | shit thing to do after completing the entire game. | | [1] https://twitter.com/CyberpunkGame/status/13400135166281 | 03170 | IntelMiner wrote: | Yeah I got the "bad" ending for not spending enough time | with Keanu Reeves | | The game was so unbelievably broken I just wanted to see | out the end and be done with it | justsomehnguy wrote: | > Steam had no issue fulfilling that promise since they | loose out on it as well | | That would undermine them as a platform and that would | make them loose more than a revenue from one title. | yreg wrote: | App Store doesn't let developers refund their customers | and it does just fine. | | Granted, they are the de-facto monopoly, but this | specific policy is seldom criticised. | masklinn wrote: | It's also a very different populations with different | expectations. | p_j_w wrote: | You're getting a refund, at least? | ethbr0 wrote: | I am impressed by the depth of your gaming! | unity1001 wrote: | He makes up his own achievements. Tough, real-world | achievements... | antisthenes wrote: | Seems like you ended up playing a more realistic version of | Cyberpunk 2022 instead. | shadowgovt wrote: | After the Bio-Crash of 2020 me and my chooms had to make our | own fun. | croes wrote: | Long term and strategy doesn't match with Google | xiwenc wrote: | For those wondering what the return process is, keep an eye on | https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/12790109?hl=en | | I purchased cyberpunk combo pack few years ago. I wonder if the | controller can be used on pc/osx for other games. | | Anyone? | Karunamon wrote: | I thought for sure they would've kept this going a lot longer, | and I'm a bit shocked that they're doing full refunds. Very | unexpected and very not like Google. | | That's item number one marked off on my list of 2020s | predictions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21943323 | sidcool wrote: | I was blown away by the claims Google made while unveiling | Stadia. I saw it as a true cloud promise fulfilled. I even | blogged about it. The tech is still cool. Sad to see Stadia go. | johnnypangs wrote: | Imagine selling so badly that you're able to refund everybody. | RIP! It wasn't a bad service, just badly marketed and they didn't | invest in games. | busymom0 wrote: | Is there a list of all the products Google has shut down this | way? | [deleted] | dustedcodes wrote: | I can think Stadia was part of my Google One subscription. Do I | get a discount now that one of the promised services gets | removed? | steve_john wrote: | its cloud streaming service for video games, in light of low | adoption rates among users, the company announced Thursday on its | news portal, The Keyword. Players will be able to access their | Stadia game libraries until Jan. 18, 2023. | bastardoperator wrote: | LOL, we knew it was coming. Like all of their other technology, | everything they produce is living on borrowed time. | branon wrote: | Refunds are nice and all, but gaming is a time investment too. | Wonder if they will allow exporting savegames, or will people's | progress be black-holed? | sockmeistr wrote: | You can export your savegame via google takeout, but often | these savegames will only work on the stadia builds of games, | and aren't able to be loaded into stadia. (Source: | https://support.cdprojektred.com/en/cyberpunk/stadia/sp- | tech...) | faller_slive wrote: | Yes, you can download them through Google Takeout. | | https://9to5google.com/2021/02/02/how-to-export-download-gam... | zinclozenge wrote: | That's honestly too bad. I used it to log into Destiny 2 to buy | items that were on rotation when I wasn't able to be at my desk | to do so, like traveling or already in bed and too lazy to go | downstairs. | cl0ckt0wer wrote: | well you can still use parsec | | https://parsec.app/ | closetnerd wrote: | I've long thought big companies and individuals have WAY more | money than they know how to effectively use. | | This is really hurting American innovation edge. If we could | figure out a more effective way to get that money towards | entrepreneurs / start ups - we'd be way better off. | mattwest wrote: | https://www.statista.com/statistics/277501/venture-capital-a... | IceWreck wrote: | People predicted this was gonna happen the minute the first | Stadia announcement was made. | autoexec wrote: | Everybody is talking about how terrible Google and their culture | is, so I'll just put it out there that this is great news for | gamers. Cloud-based gaming services are a terrible deal for | gamers. | | Gamers shouldn't cede so much control to some 3rd party who will | be watching over their shoulder and collecting every scrap of | data on them and their friends while they play. We don't need our | performance in games being used to determine our physical and | mental capabilities, our online chats being mined, or our social | networks being graphed. When I fire up a single player PC game | nobody is logging the days I play, or how many hours that I play | to draw inferences about my life and responsibilities. | | With very few exceptions, the games I play on my computer can't | be remotely censored or modified against my will. Neither can the | games on my shelf, and I can resell those too. Instead I retain | the ability to mod games and alter their settings to my liking | without anybody's approval even when the creators or publishers | would disapprove. | | All the benefits of Games-as-a-Service came with massive trade | offs and provide far more benefit for the 3rd parties who would | insert themselves between gamers and the games they want to play | than they provide for gamers themselves. | 9dev wrote: | Well, you conveniently ignore the reality of lots of people who | cannot afford or just don't want to buy a gaming computer or | console there. Streaming services are an actual, viable option | for them. Even though Google has done its best to show why it | might not be just so viable after all... | autoexec wrote: | Not having to keep up with hardware is pretty much the main | selling point of games as a service and it's still not worth | the tradeoffs. | | I'm what they call a patient gamer anyway. I'm often 10 or 15 | years behind, but I've never once run out of games to play | and the savings are substantial. | | Consoles (which have many of the same problems Stadia did) | aren't usually terribly expensive if you're willing to be a | generation behind and used console games are insanely cheap | with the exception of certain franchises (Nintendo titles and | JRPGs are notorious for staying expensive. Castlevania | Symphony of the Night came out in 1997 and can still go for | well over $100 for a copy!) but thankfully emulation covers a | lot of that. By the time I picked up a PS3 I was picking up | 10-15 games for the same cost as just one game at release. | | As a bonus, waiting a few years to play the latest title | means that everyone else has finished beta testing it for you | and the entire experience is much improved. You can also | usually get all (or most) the DLC included with the already | low price of the game. | | Point being, you don't have to spend a fortune or have a | blazing fast video card to have a nearly endless selection of | exceptional games. | camel_Snake wrote: | You raise great points, but often a big motivator to play a | specific game is the social aspect - playing with friends. | Stadia gave me access to that when I wouldn't have | otherwise. I have some really nice memories thanks to it. | | Not to say I can't convince friends to replay older games - | it's just a bit tougher. | dijit wrote: | I think you miss a really important use-case for stadia and | cloud based gaming: infrequent players. | | Such players usually use consoles, which are no better than | cloud based gaming for forcing updates to content. | | I jump into a match of apex legends every 3-4 weeks, maybe I | get an afternoon to play because my partner has decided to go | out with her friends. | | What usually happens is that I launch my PlayStation and _it_ | spends the whole evening applying updates. | | It's asinine, maddeningly frustrating. | | if I could pick up a controller and play: I'd be much happier. | | FD: I worked on a game that came to stadia and knew about it | before it's public launch. | hbn wrote: | People who play 1 match of 1 game 1 time per month seems like | bad demographic to target for a gaming service. | dijit wrote: | Well; One afternoon of gaming every month and a match here | and there. | | Why do you feel that this is a bad demographic? | | It's basically perfect because people like me can't | _really_ justify a console let alone a full fledged PC | gaming setup and all the work that would entail. | | Streaming services lose money the more they are used, the | worst customer is the one who plays a lot and the best one | is the one who doesn't play at all. | | Infrequent use is really ideal, and it would have suited me | better than the alternatives too. | CPLNTN wrote: | How is a terrible deal? I would literally need to spend at | least a 1000 dollars for a gaming pc, and that is 4 years of | GeForce now, without considering maintenance, the space, etc. | | I'm playing cyberpunk 2077 max settings on a 2cm thick MacBook | Pro, I don't have a bulky pc to move every time I move, and | most importantly, if I ever get bored I'll simply stop paying | instead of having a pc collecting dust | [deleted] | itake wrote: | The problem is that you have minimal control of your game. If | Google bans your YouTube account b/c your video of you | walking your dog recorded a restaurant playing a copyrighted | song, then you could also lose your entire collection of | games. | symlinkk wrote: | How is that any different than Steam? You're arguing | against DRM, not against cloud gaming | autoexec wrote: | cloud gaming is just another form of DRM. Bad for all the | same reasons plus some. | dkjaudyeqooe wrote: | GeForce Now lets you use your existing games, there is no | way for them to make you lose your games. | | By comparison, the Stadia model was broken from the start. | autoexec wrote: | Looks like multiple games/developers have already been | pulled off of the service and there's no shortage of | people posting about being banned or locked out of their | accounts. I'm sure the convenience is nice when it all | works, but you have to give up a whole lot for that. | easton wrote: | I wonder why they didn't just leave the play game page up and | leave an engineer or two somewhere to make sure it still works. | They could just start you a VM when you click play and kill it | when you leave. Then they wouldn't have to give out any refunds. | Thaxll wrote: | A bit sad, they had the best tech by far. | smm11 wrote: | Google is that crazy girlfriend that all your friends warn you | about, but she's really a good person and is going to change. | drusepth wrote: | This is mostly unfortunate just because of how far ahead Stadia's | tech is in front of its competitors. I hope Luna, GFN, and/or | xCloud improve a bit more by the time January rolls around, but | also hope maybe an exodus of users from Stadia might provide more | incentive to do so. | | The full game+hardware refunds are nice. Expected, but I would | have also been unsurprised to end up disappointed with no refunds | at all. | | I still think cloud gaming will be a huge part of the future of | gaming. | nottorp wrote: | I'm one of the people who posted "and when will they cancel it?" | when the product was launched. | | Even got downmodded, I think. | wodenokoto wrote: | Why was the link moved away from the official announcement and | onto the verge reporting on it? | literallyWTF wrote: | dekhn wrote: | When I rejoined Google (working in the hardware division), my | managers tried to get me to work on stadia and I refused (this | was shortly before it launched). I looked at it, said "this won't | be successful, and google will eventually get rid of it". My | managers simply couldn't understand that. They said "the | leadership thinks this will be successful and we should build it" | and then I realized they were sheeple. | lotsofpulp wrote: | Or maybe your managers understood, but were tasked with finding | workers for the project and were hoping you were sheeple? | solaarphunk wrote: | Google is sheeple all the way down | lmkg wrote: | That's even worse because it's malicious, wolves in sheeple | clothing. | encryptluks2 wrote: | That is like 99% of all tech companies. They want drones | not people with original ideas. | MrWiffles wrote: | When you looked at it, what was it that tipped you off to its | eventual failure? Was it a flaw in the technical design or | something? How did you know it would eventually fail? (Looking | to learn how to spot things like that, here!) | dekhn wrote: | My google failure sensors were honed on reader and google | plus. In fact I just rejoined a company I worked at before | Google and they had adopted Currents- Google's workspace | version of Google Plus. Folks tried to get me to use it and | all I could say was: I will never use Google Plus again. We | are shutting down our Currents because... nobody ever uses | it. | | There's several factors at play. First, Google simply does | not have any ability to compete in the consumer gaming space | because they don't understand it. Second, to make the project | work required an enormous expenditure across hardware, | software, deployment, and game studios. If the product wasn't | absurdly successful, it would be a failure simply because its | profit margins would be low. Third, there's no real way to | make money doing machine learning on gamer behavior (the way | this works in mobile, where many games including ads) so the | profit margin would be low. Fourth, I saw a number of | preeminent engineers who worked on the project leave shortly | after it was launched, or some time later (when it first | started becoming obvious the project wasn't a hit). Fifth, | leadership pitched this as something that only Google could | do, that Google's unique hardware and physical presence in | POPs meant they would have significant advantages was | obviously wrong (multiple companies always had the technical | acumen and production infrastructure to make this happen). | | What really blows me away is how close Google Cloud is | becoming to something that Google would have to cancel | because they can't get the profit margins to compare to ads. | wsgeorge wrote: | > What really blows me away is how close Google Cloud is | becoming to something that Google would have to cancel | because they can't get the profit margins to compare to | ads. | | I imagine GC is one of the big three cloud platforms (with | AWS, Azure) so I am absolutely intrigued by your | suggestion. How bad is it going, really? They've made a lot | of investment in Firebase also. I could probably see them | shake things up drastically, but shutting down sounds like | suicide. | vdfs wrote: | Everything can be shutdown except Youtube, Search and | 8.8.8.8 | hackernudes wrote: | Gmail? | zeroonetwothree wrote: | Welcome to every big company ever | Kiro wrote: | How could you know? It only became apparent it would fail after | it launched. The technology is great and not the reason it was | doomed. | bogwog wrote: | > It only became apparent it would fail after it launched. | The technology is great and not the reason it was doomed so | you didn't call anything. | | The technology isn't why it failed, Google is. Google was | Google before it launched, and after it launched. So anyone | familiar with Google could have predicted this failure before | the actual launch. | thelopa wrote: | Or he didn't believe in it either and was just trying to do his | job: to get engineers working on it. | matt123456789 wrote: | Highly paid sheeple whose paycheck and continued employment is | probably correlated with their ability to oversee a technically | successful execution of the designs of higher-ups. That sounds | like the line that I would use if I had to build something so | that I could get paid, even though I might agree with you | personally. | pipeline_peak wrote: | Good, Google can't and shouldn't own everything. They have too | much leverage owning everyone's phones, browsers, etc. | | I know 10 or so other companies that shouldn't own the game | streaming market either, but being dedicated game distributors | themselves, collectively they're far more deserving than some | ambiguous tech conglomerate. | PaulHoule wrote: | It was a mistake to get involved with game streaming to begin | with. | | It was never about the players, it was "everybody else is | developing a game streaming platform so we should too". | | In the last weeks there have been multiple streaming handhelds | announce which leaves me wondering... "are there product managers | who believe everything they see on TV?" | | Most of the fun of a portable game console is using it on the | bus, as a passenger in a car, or outside the range of reliable | WiFi. If you believed everything you see on TV you might think | "5G" is a solution but I have to break it to you that there are | postage stamp sized plots in Washington, DC, New York, NY, and | Los Angeles, CA that have 5G coverage. | | Given that these e-waste devices are up against real portable | game consoles like the Switch and the Steam Deck I can only hope | the people who make the decisions to go ahead with marketing | e-Waste products face some personal consequences for their | actions, at the very least they won't be allowed to introduce | more e-Waste products that hurt investors, gamers, game producers | and everyone else. | dougmwne wrote: | I actually am bought into game streaming. I subscribe to both | MS and Nvidia. I travel a lot and not needing a console or | gaming laptop rocks. Most of my gaming is from the hotel or | Airbnb, so the connection is not a problem. | | Even then Stadia was dead on arrival for me with a completely | unattractive consumer proposition of having to subscribe but | get no games (aside from some trash freebies) and having to | rebuy games at MSRP that I already owned on storefronts that | were still going to be around when the leaves fell off the | trees. | partdavid wrote: | I also made the switch to streaming (GFN) and like playing | all my same games from different "terminals" a lot. AirBNB | and my house obviously work great. I've found hotel wifi to | range from "barely works" to "does not work", lots of | crappiness. I'm still looking for a good solution to this. | Maybe you stay in better hotels! :) | | That said, I'm getting a Steam deck soon so I hope that fixes | the story for "mobile" gaming or gaming without the network | that GP pointed out. The convincing thing for me on GFN was | that you're buying your games in a standard game store so if | GFN becomes a non-option at some point I'll still have my | games. | dougmwne wrote: | I was thinking of a steam deck for the same reason. Decent | 720p gaming on the go and 4k gaming at home on the same | device with the same games sounds awesome. Cloud saves make | it all seamless. | camel_Snake wrote: | Stadia Pro subscription was optional, unless you consider 4k | necessary. once you bought a game you could play it for free | indefinitely at 1080p | foobiekr wrote: | Stadia was quite clearly part of the commoditize-the- | competition strategy, probably mostly aimed at Sony and | Microsoft. | iroh2727 wrote: | I've realized only recently a way to interpret what's going on at | Google economically-speaking: as companies grow and as economies | grow as well (e.g. to be more automated and industrialized), this | always results in greater bureaucracy [1]. However, Google while | it did add more bureaucracy, tried to instead turn these new | less-purposeful jobs and bloat into widescale attempts at | "innovation". | | Partly legitimate, but partly to maintain culture and a semblance | of being an innovative company, in spite of the fact that they | are a monopoly that, at the end of the day, is not really | incentivized to innovate (e.g. M&A is much more practical for | monopolies, as is competitor sabotage, sales and marketing, which | of course they've also done). | | I guess Peter Thiel for example said this long ago (in a convo | with Eric Schmidt iirc): that Google is actively anti- | competitive. And this is always, always the case for monopolies. | They've just done such a good job of marketing and creating | sideshows to make it appear otherwise. Not to say that they | haven't made some legitimate tech breakthroughs since being a | monopoly, but also that tech is solely to serve their ads | monopoly, rather than to serve the general public (e.g. what do | you think their ML investments are for? It's not to create | C-3PO...) | | [1] see e.g. Max Weber for how industrialization leads to | bureaucracy, or more recently, David Graeber's bullshit jobs talk | or book for a more fun, anecdotal take. | Ekaros wrote: | Entirely not unexpected. Google kills an other product. | Thankfully it seems they are doing right by their customers with | refunds on pretty much everything. | [deleted] | ocdtrekkie wrote: | I should've taken the bet, I'd be $200 richer today. Stadia fan | tears will fuel me for the next few months. | palashkulsh wrote: | Staying clear of sunk cost fallacy too seriously to their own | detriment? | | Sign of rapid experimentation in a big company? | piotr_slava wrote: | this deficit of ideas and execution happens when hiring process | is designed for those who study for six months like an exam. | wnevets wrote: | The reality is streaming is the future of gaming for a huge | number of gamers. Stadia's business model would have never worked | out but the tech does works. Stadia was always going to run into | the problem Netflix is going through now, the big IP holders will | create their own streaming platforms rather then sharing the | revenue with a third party. | Cyberdog wrote: | "A huge number," maybe, in the sense that the majority of the | world's gamers today only play games on their phone, but not | the ones spending the most money. People who will pay extra for | 144hz 4K monitors or multi-rollover keyboards with obnoxious | lighting aren't going to throw the benefit of those things away | for a platform that introduces 100-200ms of lag in the game and | creates fuzzier graphics than the graphics card they already | own is capable of. | | The market for this tech is very downmarket. If you try to sell | it to the hardcore gamer audience, as Google tried to do, | they're going to see right through this. | wnevets wrote: | > People who will pay extra for 144hz 4K monitors or multi- | rollover keyboards with obnoxious lighting aren't going to | throw the benefit of those things away for a platform that | introduces 100-200ms of lag in the game and creates fuzzier | graphics than the graphics card they already own is capable | of. | | Console gaming have been introducing 100-200ms of lag [1] and | fuzzier graphics for almost two decades. | | Streaming is a huge win for the big publishers, they hate the | lost of control and maintenance pc gaming requires. At some | point one of them will launch their latest must play title as | streaming only and the gamers who want to play it won't have | a choice. | | [1] https://displaylag.com/console-latency-exploring-video- | game-... | outworlder wrote: | > People who will pay extra for 144hz 4K monitors | | They are pretty cheap nowadays, though. That's no longer a | 'gaming' setup. Even cheaper if you make it (144hz NOR 4k) | instead. | classified wrote: | So they pulled a Google on Stadia. Here we go again... | SpacePortKnight wrote: | Considering that consoles like Xbox Series S, Nintendo Switch are | available for less than $300 and provide a much better gaming | experience, it was quite inevitable. | | This does even more damage to the Google's reputation. I would | never recommend or use GCP for example, now. | | Lastly google already has a gaming platform i.e. Android, and I | would have loved to see some more innovation in that space | instead. | proboy wrote: | dqpb wrote: | Google is like an abusive partner. You keep hoping this time will | be different, they'll try harder, they'll really commit to | something good, they won't lie to your face, etc. | Patrol8394 wrote: | Google lacks of focus. They should take a close look at what | company they want to be in the next decade and more. | | And yes, they should radically restructure their system of | incentives. Clearly the one they have in place does not work. | | They have been all over the places, from cloud, finance, gaming, | mobile, os, social, you name it. And most of their revenue still | come from ads. | | Steve Jobs: | | "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to | focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no | to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick | carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as | the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things." | SV_BubbleTime wrote: | >They have been all over the places, from cloud, finance, | gaming, mobile, os, social, you name it. And most of their | revenue still come from ads. | | Telco, political machine, automotive, surveillance, more | surveillance... and they made Flutter. | loudmax wrote: | This is entirely a failure of management rather than engineering. | | The kind of single player AAA titles they were promoting are | always going to look better and be more responsive on local | hardware. They should have leaned into Stadia as a backend for | massively multiplayer online games, where they would have the | advantage of cheat protection and a subscription revenue model. | Instead they pushed for a purchase model that exacerbated all of | online gaming's shortcomings while minimizing the advantages. | | The Stadia infrastructure may yet succeed, but never under Phil | Harrison. He should have been sacked years ago. | lostgame wrote: | Funny fact: one of the only times online I actually caught a | company shill acting as a regular person posting - essentially, | ads; and whose extensive comment history only included positive | remarks about a product - was a Stadia shill/plant I found on | Reddit about a month ago. | | Their entire history comprised of posts and comments praising | Stadia, but clearly typed by a real person; with like these weird | intentional grammar and spelling mistakes to make the account | _look_ like it was a real person. Either that or the Google | employee behind the account needed to go back to Grade 5 or 6. | | Ironically - they'd posted the article one or two months ago | where Google promised continued Stadia support, and I found it on | the front page of Reddit News. | | I didn't think twice about the poster of the article; until | enough people started joking that - yeah - give it a month or two | and Google will close it down, kinda thing... | | The OP got _so_ defensive in a very strange way to the point | where their comments started to be more than questionably 'real'. | | So, I did a quick background check on the account - only to find | - holy shit; it's true, this person is literally paid by Google | to post only positive things about Stadia online. Had to be - | just from looking at it - but most telling, and the dead giveaway | was that once myself and several other Redditors pointed out that | the account was obviously just a paid shill from Google, the | entire account mysteriously disappeared about an hour later. :P | | Companies: if you know your product has problems and/or is shit - | here's a thought - instead of paying people to shill mostly false | positive information on social media - how about you invest in | actually improving your product; or marketing it in legitimate | ways that don't make you look like a total scumbag. Just my | advice. | paulpan wrote: | Another Google example of great potential sunken by bad/terrible | execution. | | Why didn't it launch as a true "Netflix for Games" solution? | Similar to what Microsoft is doing now with its Gamepass. Sure | the gaming partnerships needed to be built but could've easily | leveraged huge library of Android games. | | Ultimately will be curious to see how many heads will roll for | this. It must've been a huge investment for both hardware (AMD | Vega GPUs, controllers), marketing, etc. | outworlder wrote: | > Ultimately will be curious to see how many heads will roll | for this. | | If other HN commenters with (allegedly) insight into Google's | politics are to be believed, none. | james33 wrote: | Not surprised, but still rather frustrated. We literally just | signed a deal to bring Arctic Awakening to Stadia in the last few | weeks, and I know a number of other devs had done the same. They | never even gave it a chance. What did they expect, to take over | the gaming market in a few short years with hardly any content? | pmarreck wrote: | Oh look, another Google failure, sigh | vhab wrote: | Unfortunately this doesn't surprise me. | | We worked on a Stadia title before launch. We were constantly | reminded by Google how big the YouTube integration would be, | which unique killer features we absolutely had to integrate with, | and more. | | And non of that ever materialized after launch. If Google can't | even convince their own internal teams to cooperate, how do they | expect studios and consumers to care the slightest for their | product. | | It also didn't help that supporting Stadia was equivalent to | supporting an entirely different new console in scope, except | less battle tested and much more buggy. Meanwhile all their | competitors allow existing console or Windows builds to be | shipped to their platforms. | | And while we're sharing anecdotes, this was a fun one. For the | longest time devkits were limited to 1080p, but at least the | output was streamed from rack mounted servers that supported a | couple of concurrent sessions. A few months before launch, they | finally made 4k devkits available, except they supported only a | single session, couldn't stream, and instead had to sit at a | developer's desk with a monitor hooked up... | | Let that sink in, a streaming service's devkits couldn't stream | :) | dougmwne wrote: | From the consumer perspective, this reminds me of the new | chromecast that was released without Stadia support, even | though the previous chromecast supported it. Get that! A | streaming stick that couldn't stream the company's own paid | service. Preposterous! | postalrat wrote: | IMO streaming games still has a lot of potential. Too bad | Google couldn't pull it off. | | The Youtube stuff is only the surface of what would be | possible. | iLoveOncall wrote: | > IMO streaming games still has a lot of potential. | | Not with the current internet speed. | | The vast majority of people is below anything that would play | "okay", and almost everyone is below a speed that would play | well (1 GBPS). | | Until 1 GBPS is the default EVERYWHERE, streaming games has 0 | potential. | p1necone wrote: | You can get high quality streaming video with _much_ less | than 1GBPS, low latency and _consistent_ speed + latency | are the important parts. | | (Needed bandwidth will still be higher than regular video | streaming though, as you have to compress in real time) | ancientworldnow wrote: | Nah, if you can stream Netflix in 1080p or better and have | low latency then game streaming works fine. I know people | who do it off LTE without issue even for non competitive | games. | iLoveOncall wrote: | I encourage you to watch a Netflix movie and a live video | game side by side and you will see how nonsensical the | comparison is. | drusepth wrote: | Doing this now... what are you expecting to be obvious | from this experiment? Obviously the video game has some | upstream requirements (just user input), but neither are | stuttering or having any issues. | iLoveOncall wrote: | The quality is simply incomparable. A 4K movie streamed | wouldn't even compared to a 1080p game being ran. | | You're putting side by side compressed and raw visuals, | it just doesn't compare at all. | SXX wrote: | Streaming problem is not about bandwidth, but about | latency. With current technology and physics there nothing | you can do about latency. | drusepth wrote: | Stadia ran (runs) well at 50mbps, and their competitors | don't require much more (~100mbps for comparable results | afaict), and 2x that minimum often results in a flawless | experience if you have the bandwidth/latency to back it up | (e.g. if you're on a home/work connection, rather than a | busy coffee shop). | | I put almost 1,000 hours into Stadia across all my games | travelling across ~20 states and 3 countries the past ~3 | years. It's very rare to find places where it isn't "okay" | to play (with some notable exceptions near launch where | you'd regularly get ~1 second input delay at times or | frozen, pixellated graphics), and in many places now it | feels indistinguisable from native/local games. | | I don't know which platform I'll move to from Stadia, but | it will definitely be a cloud one. | danso wrote: | How much of Stadia tech/innovations will we see in ongoing/future | Google products? There was a lot of hype about how Stadia's | (potential) input-lag-reduction tech, but how successful did that | end up being? | cletus wrote: | Story time. I left Google in 2017 after Fiber (which I worked on) | was unceremoniously mothballed. I mean it still exists bu tall | expansion palns stopped and it went into maintenance mode. | | Before leaving one of the teams some of us considered joining was | the then unlaunched Stadia team. This was an effort out of Cloud | I guess to create value added GCP services. Ultimately it never | went anywhere because the team didn't want a presence in NYC. | | Anyway, as soon as I heard about the project I said there's only | two words you need to kill this project. | | "Input lag" | | The conversation should've ended there as the games where this | isn't a factor are so niche it doesn't justify an entire product | and engineering team. | | I really don't understand how projects like this get signed off. | Well, I do actually. It's a pet project for someone who doesn't | really understand the domain they're operating in (ie games). | | This should've never been greenlit. | suresk wrote: | > I mean it still exists bu tall expansion palns stopped and it | went into maintenance mode. | | Google Fiber is currently microtrenching in front of my house, | and continues to move into more cities here. Did they restart, | or did their mothballing just mean that they aren't entering | new geographic regions? | | TBH, I'm super excited about it because the only other high- | speed option we have is Comcast and it is super unreliable and | the data cap sucks, but I'm also mentally preparing for the day | they get bored of it and shut the whole thing down. | chrisdfrey wrote: | I played God of War (2018), the Last of Us games, and some | other stuff on PS Now (Sony's cloud gaming platform). There | were some issues but overall it worked pretty well. There are | some games where cloud gaming can't give you low enough input | latency, but I disagree that it is as many games as you think. | camel_Snake wrote: | Destiny 2 is free on Stadia. you can launch it right now after | the intro hop into a PvP match to try yourself. | | Input lag was never a noticeable issue for the non-PCMasterRace | population, which is the majority of gamers. | cainxinth wrote: | They knew game streaming wasn't ready for prime time. The | strategy, I imagine, was to get in early and suffer some | growing pains to cement a toehold that positions Google as a | major player if/when game streaming goes mass market. I guess | the bean counters at Alphabet decided the juice is no longer | worth the squeeze. | jsight wrote: | Don't they have competitors that are doing better than Stadia? | Eg, geforce now? | | TBH, I played quite a bit of Madden on Stadia and input lag | wasn't really an issue. I think there are a lot of games that | actually worked really well there. | partdavid wrote: | I was really skeptical that this could work before trying it | myself on GFN. There _are_ network problems, and it can be a | pain when it happens, but this is standard connectivity stuff | (my ISP connection fails or I have a problem with my wi-fi) | and the input lag just isn 't perceptible to me. I was really | surprised and impressed at how well it works. At that point I | was sold. | simonjgreen wrote: | It's quite the precedent they are setting by issuing refunds on | the hardware. Presumably dodging a class action, but interesting | nonetheless | AceJohnny2 wrote: | Happy Stadia user here. Can't say I didn't see it coming. | | I'm just frustrated at how bad Google is at marketing a good | product. For example, the Stadia front page didn't show anything | enticing if you weren't using Chrome! | kikki wrote: | While inevitable, I am impressed they are refunding all | purchases, including hardware. That can't be cheap. | dvzk wrote: | I deleted my Stadia account a few months ago, and it had $400 | in purchases. I assume that I won't be getting the refund. Oh | well, RIP. | darth_avocado wrote: | I'm surprised, but I'm also glad they are doing this. It could | be to avoid class action lawsuits. I used mine for a total of 5 | minutes before throwing it in trash. It is a very unfinished | product they shipped thinking they'll solve it. But the reality | is, even with the best internet in the country, the games were | barely playable. I'm talking 600mbps download and a 100mbps | upload speed. | lokar wrote: | It would be great if they could somehow open up the API of | the controllers, they are nice. | sascha_sl wrote: | Bandwidth isn't that important with game streaming after | ~40-70 Mbps, latency and jitter (essentially latency | consistency) is. | slfnflctd wrote: | I'm somewhat surprised the 4 sibling comments as of this | writing don't even mention the latency/jitter issue-- to | me, that's always been one of the obvious biggest flaws | with game streaming. Your average consumer has little to no | awareness of it, it's beyond Google's control, and it has a | very noticeable impact to anyone experiencing it. Not a | good combination. | | Edit: Nextgrid showed up as I was typing this and set the | record straight. My faith in HN is restored. | Nextgrid wrote: | Consumer-grade Wi-Fi is also a major problem when it comes | to latency & jitter. It doesn't even have to be _game_ | streaming, any real-time application such as calls suffer | from it as well, despite not actually requiring much | _bandwidth_ at all. | | Unfortunately there is no user-friendly tool to test for | this. Most tests focus purely on speed, which can be | tricked by various packet-loss-compensation algorithms, so | you can score a "perfect" 1Gbps speedtest despite the | connection cutting completely for a second. | sascha_sl wrote: | speedtest.net used to have a sibling "pingtest" site that | measured your jitter. I'm not sure why they don't exist | anymore. | Nextgrid wrote: | I remember it using a Java applet. I think the reason | none of the online test sites support it is because it's | hard to test latency & jitter in the browser as the lower | layers try hard to compensate for it. | sascha_sl wrote: | Oh. It was Flash. | | Sometimes I forget that was ever a thing! | Nextgrid wrote: | Speed alone isn't what matters here - latency and jitter are | more important. A 100Mbps speed test over 30 seconds is | meaningless. | | I've played multiplayer FPS games on a home-made setup with | an AWS VM with GPU and Steam streaming (using a VPN to make | both machines appear to be on the same LAN so Steam streaming | would work). | | This worked well, but only because it was on an enterprise- | grade leased line with consistent 1ms latency to the AWS | datacenter, and all wired ( _good_ wireless gear might 've | worked too, but forget about trying that on garbage consumer- | grade hardware like your typical router or mesh Wi-Fi setup). | | Is it technically possible? Yes and it works well _under | optimal conditions_. | | Is it possible for the average user who doesn't have good | equipment nor the budget for it? No chance - it's a recipe | for disaster. Those who _do_ have the budget are better | served by just buying a gaming machine and running the games | locally. | | Games streaming can be a value-add to a good ISP (such as | Google Fiber) whose network actually permits this, but don't | expect it to work on the majority of residential connections. | The vast majority of them suck (whether because of the ISP's | network or the customer-premises equipment), people don't | know they suck and have no easy tools to test that, so | they'll end up blaming the game streaming provider when it | inevitably doesn't live up to expectations. | | Until _good_ networking setups become commonplace, game | streaming will remain limited to a very small niche that have | serious networking setups but for some reason don't have a | local gaming machine. | Firmwarrior wrote: | Game streaming is great for casual gamers. A lot of games | are perfectly playable even with 200ms tacked on, actually. | | It's unacceptable even with a 1ms link (because of the | extra 2-3 frames of latency that get buffered in) for | hardcore players in some genres. Even if they can't see the | difference, they'll feel it when they miss shots in FPS | games and links/confirms/parries in fighting games | | Unfortunately, most of the people here and in the industry | making these streaming products are adults with real lives | who don't understand how bad game streaming is for hardcore | players | camel_Snake wrote: | I've used Stadia for the past year exclusively and it's been | fine 99% of the time. I guess I'm relieved from defending | Stadia duty now though, _sigh_ | mrguyorama wrote: | The problem with such statements is that game streaming | services are INSANELY dependent on literally a century of | cruft and how it was handled on a house to house basis. You | can have great performance in your house, but your neighbor | across the street could have utterly useless behavior. | | Like this product literally depends on which godawful modem | your ISP sent you when you first got service. | noirbot wrote: | I'd be shocked if their contracts/EULA wasn't structured to | avoid risk of suit around something like this. Shutting down | a live service feels pretty defensible as not a crime or | tort, and they could almost definitely fight the lawsuit for | less than this costs in refunds, which makes it all the | weirder. | Sakos wrote: | It's the most likely reason. We've seen plenty of cases | were EULAs were declared void and that won't hold in a | place like the EU. You can't sign away your rights as | consumers here. They might be able to fight individual | lawsuits in some places, but it might eventually escalate | into an investigation by the EU. There's significant legal | risk there that is being avoided by just refunding a few | millions. It's the sensible move. | detaro wrote: | It's also just a good marketing move. "they made people | pay full-price for games and deleted them shortly after" | is the kind of association that sticks around and even | Google has an interest to avoid. | lotsofpulp wrote: | Anytime I see an asymmetric upload bandwidth like 600/100, I | assume the ISP is just advertising temporary burst speeds and | does not actually allocate enough upload bandwidth to the | neighborhood for people to sustain usage at 100Mbps. | AlotOfReading wrote: | It actually just means they're using DOCSIS to carry the | signal, which has asymmetric bandwidth allocations for | upstream and downstream. 600/100 is a standardized | allocation too. | lotsofpulp wrote: | In practice, it is always a heavily oversubscribed | network that never delivers sustained bandwidth for | either up or down. | | Contrast to whenever I have used a symmetric fiber | connection that advertises 1Gbps/1Gbps, I can actually | sustain close to both of those and at sub 5ms latency. | Whatever the theoretical promise is, I assume non fiber | non symmetric connections are simply low quality (in the | USA). | cromka wrote: | You could make the same argument regarding upload speeds. | They simply have asymmetrical link, and overprovision on | both download and upload. | lotsofpulp wrote: | I assume you mean same argument regarding download. In my | experience, the download is always far less over- | provisioned than the upload. | | For example, Comcast over-provisions their upload so much | they cannot even advertise what it is. They will sell you | 2Gbps download and never tell you the upload. Which I | assume, based on experience, is 20Mbps split over a | neighborhood of 500 houses. | treis wrote: | Upload bandwidth for something like Stadia is tiny. Only | thing you need to send are user inputs | Nextgrid wrote: | However, you need _consistent_ latency, which isn 't | guaranteed in a highly-oversubscribed network. | criddell wrote: | Maybe it is cheap. Any idea how many units they sold? | devrand wrote: | I think hardware was a loss-leader anyway. They were | generously giving them out for free. Games are probably the | biggest loss for them as a majority of that money was handed | off to publishers. | kwertyoowiyop wrote: | Probably the cost is small compared to their development | budget. | notjustanymike wrote: | Exactly. That one guy must be thrilled. | vincnetas wrote: | Yes, i am :) | sofixa wrote: | Not a lot, they were giving away Stadia Premiere kits (a | controller and a Chromecast Ultra) a lot (I got 2 free ones, | IIRC one from YouTube Premium and the other i don't recall), | and all were manufactured in 2019. Which means they | drastically overestimate how many people would buy their | hardware. | highwaylights wrote: | Their 7 customers will be relieved. | flatiron wrote: | My main computer is a MacBook 2103 running Linux. Stadia was | my only way to play games. I'm kinda mad I'm losing my save | progress on some games. | | Ironically I will probably use my refund to buy a steam deck. | highwaylights wrote: | There's still a bunch of alternatives. | | XCloud and GeForce Now are the two that come to mind. There | are others. | kwertyoowiyop wrote: | Kudos to Google for doing right by their customers without | being prompted. They could've said "$5 off a Nest Thermostat" | or some crap and instead they manned up. | Hamuko wrote: | > _That can 't be cheap._ | | Yeah, seriously. | | I bought Cyberpunk 2077 on Stadia when it released. It was | 60EUR new, but there was a 10EUR discount available at the | time. I believe it was if you had never purchased anything on | Stadia before. So, only 50EUR for Cyberpunk 2077 on Stadia. | | Then everyone who ordered Cyberpunk 2077 on Stadia could also | get the Stadia Premiere Edition for free (retailed "normally" | for 99EUR), which includes the Stadia Controller and a | Chromecast Ultra (alone worth about 50EUR). | | I actually sold my Chromecast Ultra for about 40EUR shortly | after I got it since I didn't really need it, which brought my | purchase of Cyberpunk 2077 down to 10EUR with a free USB | controller on the side. | | And now I'm getting a 50EUR refund? | neogodless wrote: | Does anyone have sales numbers on hardware and software? | | If the actual sales were low (and that's part of why they shut | down) then it might actually be (relatively) cheap, and perhaps | buy them goodwill towards their next experiment. Maybe next | time more people will try it, with the hopes that if it fails, | they'll get refunds. And maybe it'll build momentum for them. | drusepth wrote: | Not quite hardware/software sales, but a lot of people pegged | Stadia somewhere between 2-3 million users around the | beginning of the year. It's also unclear how many of those | break down into recurring Pro subscribers versus bought-a- | game-once-and-play-it-now users. | | Here's one that showed their work: https://allstadia.com/how- | many-users-does-google-stadia-have | bogwog wrote: | It's probably cheaper than the lawsuits. | nevir wrote: | I think it _begins_ to address mistrust of new Google products. | Which is worth a lot to Google. | | If they consistently take this approach for other | cancellations, it could change the the common view from: | | "why use this? They're just going to shut it down in a few | years anyway" | | to: | | "oh neat, Google's experimenting with something new. Let me try | it out. If it doesn't work out, they'll take care of me." | twicetwice wrote: | Yeah, if I had known this would be how they would have | handled a hypothetical shutdown, I would have very happily | used the service. Instead I signed up for GeForce Now since I | can buy games through Steam and play them there. The main | thing that stopped me from going with Stadia instead was that | I was pretty confident that at some point it would shut down | and I'd lose access to $xxx worth of games. If they had | promised up front to do this in case of failure, maybe it | wouldn't have failed. | josefresco wrote: | How is GeForce Now with Steam? I have a Steam link but find | it to be a pain in the rear. It's also difficult / clumsy | to use for non Steam games. Does GeForce Now solve this or | is it just ... different? | belthesar wrote: | GeForce Now gives you a Windows box with Steam on it, and | you log into your Steam account on it. They pair it with | a super fast cache of the Steam Depot so your first | install is speedy. That way, there's no integration | necessary, and Nvidia doesn't have to reinvent the | achievement/launcher/licensing wheel. | twicetwice wrote: | It's probably just different. I don't know what the Steam | Link is like. GFN streams the games from a datacenter, so | the quality will depend on the quality of your internet | connection. Also, GFN can't play all Steam games; | publishers have to agree to allow their games to be | played on GFN, and several major publishers don't agree | (eg Bethesda, Rockstar). All that said, I'm happy with | it. Usually I can't tell at all that it's being streamed, | and it's cool to be able to max out every single graphics | setting without thinking about it. | awill wrote: | Most Google products are free. That's the difference. | shaky-carrousel wrote: | They are not free. You are paying with your privacy. | vntok wrote: | No, they really are free. | [deleted] | paulmd wrote: | Free at time-of-service (and as mentioned, of course you're | paying with your privacy anyway) doesn't mean there's not | very real costs to the customer if the service goes away | though. | | Most people's lives would be turned upside down if, say, | gmail closed down. It would take dozens of hours just to | migrate away the accounts that I care most about. Even | though it's "free" I don't want to build my life around | shifting sands like that. | | Gmail of course is a key service to google that will never | be shut down, but I'm starting to get nervous about having | my life built around Google Voice. That one doesn't seem | nearly as solid and again, it's going to be a major | undertaking to migrate all my 2fa/recovery. I'm planning on | doing it during my next phone upgrade... I'll put the phone | on a second line for a month, transfer my google voice | number to it, then migrate all my legacy 2fa/recovery (that | wouldn't accept google voice as a cell number) from the | underlying phone line to the google voice number (now with | AT&T). Huge pain in the ass and would be really tough | without a second line to handle that switchover, but I'm | not 100% (or even 75%) sure that Google Voice is going to | be here in another 5 years when I upgrade next. | | So like, who gives a shit that it was "free" (apart from my | privacy)? I am having to shape my whole life around | migrating off this google service, it's a massive pain in | the ass and will cost a decent amount (a couple extra | months of service on a second line) even to migrate off | "the cheap way" in a planned fashion, if tomorrow they said | "oops lol it closes in 30 days" I'd be buying a burner or | upgrading off-cycle just to get things migrated. The | obvious takeaway as a consumer is "don't let these google | services get too entrenched in your life", let alone as a | business. | krmboya wrote: | Not free at all. You invest your personal capital (trust) | into their products. Then it'll be degraded and shut down | just like that. | imiric wrote: | You invest with your personal data they sell to data | brokers, and use to improve their ML models. | | Can we get those back, Google? Not just our data, but the | profits and improvements you made from it? | | "Free" in the age of adtech comes at a high price. The | sad part is most people don't care they're getting the | short end of the stick. | camel_Snake wrote: | I'm a Stadia user, and Google's handling of the shutdown of | Google Play Music is what gave me confidence to purchase | anything on Stadia (~$500 on a quick review). I actually | thought we'd be sent personal links of our games, which would | live-on in Google's white-list stadia product called Google | Stream - they did something similar for GPM which merged into | Youtube Music. I'm fine with a refund though. | chaostheory wrote: | This is the exact reason that I don't mind purchasing | Amazon's experiments. If it doesn't work out, I get my money | back and Amazon has more data for product dev | NelsonMinar wrote: | It's a remarkable decision to refund! I'm assuming all the game | developers are keeping their revenue from Stadia gameplay, so | it's a meaningful net loss for Google overall. Maybe not that | much though; I hope someone publishes an accounting. | noirbot wrote: | I'm really curious the calculation here. That's a lot of money, | and I'm certainly glad they're doing it, but feels both out of | character for Google, and I'm surprised they have the budget | allocated to just "doing the right thing". What goodwill is | this saving that they aren't burning by shutting down Stadia? | kimbernator wrote: | People were extremely cautious about stadia from day 1 | because while Google may be the single most capable company | of actually making cloud gaming workable, this specific | product required a lot of money input that had a fairly good | chance of being completely wiped out based on Google's track | record. | | With this, next time there's a product that has a similar | risk to the consumer, people will be saying "yeah it might | get shut down, but look at what they did with stadia" | sidibe wrote: | I guess they're keeping the subscription fees for those who | subscribed, not sure what percent of their revenue that would | have been. All in all the total sales are probably paltry | relative to the investment they've made in it (though surely | they'll find other uses for the servers and tech), so it's | not a big sacrifice to give that back to avoid anger and | lawsuits | noirbot wrote: | I dunno, Google has never really seemed to care about | consumer anger and lawsuits. Like I said, it's a welcome | change, and I'll be happy if they keep up this new pro- | consumer attitude, but this feels a lot more like a weird | one-off than a new policy or commitment. | Sakos wrote: | The simple answer is that it's legal hedging. They _don 't_ | want anything related to this closure of Stadia to lead to a | lawsuit that might impact the concept of software licensing, | particularly in the EU. This is a move out of pure self- | interest (not that I see anything particularly wrong with | that). | [deleted] | tpmx wrote: | Perhaps it isn't that much money... | noirbot wrote: | But if it wasn't that much money, then it wasn't that many | people who would be upset about not getting a refund, which | for a company with the cashflow that Google has feels like | not worth not pissing off. | vntok wrote: | Those "not that many people" would have been very angry | and very vocal though. | tpmx wrote: | Ok. | comeonbro wrote: | 1. Gamers are particularly vindictive | | 2. Highest probability of any product shutdown of this | exploding "don't even bother, Google will just shut it down | in a few years" into broad public consciousness | | 3. It's an enormous market and they know they'll want to try | again | | 4. Maybe it's relatively not that much money. I would be | surprised if I knew more than one or two people who'd ever | even heard of Stadia | CobrastanJorji wrote: | It's not out of character. They did exactly the same thing | for "Google Offers," the old Groupon competitor from a decade | ago. They refunded ALL of the purchased deals, even the ones | that had been redeemed. | wpietri wrote: | Dang, Groupon is a name I haven't heard in a while. I just | looked and they're still going somehow? | | IPOed at $522.20, now down to $8.76. Took $1.4b in | investment, now worth $265m. | CobrastanJorji wrote: | 12 years ago, Google offered to buy Groupon for $6 | billion and Groupon declined. Those were the second and | first dumbest business decisions I've ever heard of, | respectively. | beoberha wrote: | I think it saves a ton of goodwill. Yes, you're taking a | platform from people, but it's much better to not take their | money too. Nobody is losing their livelihood, it's a gaming | service that can easily be replaced. | noirbot wrote: | Does it though? It doesn't seem to be in keeping with how | the rest of Google functions with their general lack of | care, customer service, or recourse on anything. It also | don't paper over the fact that they killed a service that, | just 3 months ago they said wasn't being shut down. | | If there was some new Google paid service that I cared | about coming out, I'd still be hesitant that this refund is | some sort of fluke and not a standard practice, and avoid | giving Google money for something they're likely to kill in | a couple years. | skinnymuch wrote: | If this is for goodwill, they have to start somewhere. | | Google hasn't remained the same company through its | history. Like when that CFO came in and reduced moonshot | projects and maybe general expenses a lot. Which was a | radical departure from their past. | | Maybe Google is realizing they can't keep being this cold | company forever. | | Or! Just like you I agree this one time doesn't get me to | trust Google not shutting things down with no recourse. | It would have to be done a few more times. | beoberha wrote: | I don't disagree with that, but I think it's somewhat | orthogonal. If you pay people back, the general reception | is now "eh, assumed this was going to happen. Glad I'm | not out hundreds of dollars." compared to fire and | pitchforks if there's no refunds. Google already has the | rep for shutting things down. This doesn't really move | the needle besides showing that they will at least | financially compensate your loss. | ethbr0 wrote: | I'm hesitant to claim exceptionalism, but history | supports the claim that gamers are (a) quick to claim | umbrage, (b) VERY vocal on social media, (c) have a LOT | of free time to shitpost, (d) have long memories, and (e) | are a younger demographic (aka future consumers). | | Maybe that was communicated to Google leadership and | "Let's pay to prevent everyone from hating us" was the | cheaper option. | noirbot wrote: | Perhaps, but I wonder if _that_ class of gamers you 're | talking about is the target/actual audience for Stadia. | The folks I knew who had/used Stadia were a lot more | casual and non-traditional gamers, since why would you | pay for an online streaming game service when you already | own consoles or a robust PC? | | It's not like Google has a good rep in that community | already, given how much pretty much everyone on Youtube, | and especially in its gaming community, complains about | YT constantly. There's a reason most gaming folks are on | Twitch more than Youtube and have to be bribed massively | to move over to YT. | MichaelCollins wrote: | A lot of gamers are the sort of people that flame a | developer of a bad game they never even bought/played in | the first place. Attacking corporations is itself a sort | of game they enjoy, having a personal stake in the fight | isn't necessary for them. | | On that note, some commentary from /v/: | >even the shut down lagged by months | drusepth wrote: | >why would you pay for an online streaming game service | when you already own consoles or a robust PC? | | Lots of reasons come to mind, but the biggest ones for me | were portability (playing my games at max settings while | traveling, at friends' houses, at work, at coffee shops, | etc), the ability to play on whatever device I wanted | (usually laptop or TV depending on the game when at home, | but I also played a lot on phone/tablet while | travelling), and to a lesser extent some smaller perks | like using less battery life / hard drive space / time | updating / etc than the native alternative. | | In other words, if I have the choice between playing the | same game on my desktop (strictly in my office) or on the | couch (or wherever else I want to be), I'm always going | to pick the latter. | falcolas wrote: | The Ars Technica article about this notes a few caveats: | | - They are not refunding the 'pro' subscription charges | | - They are not refunding hardware purchases made from 3rd | parties | | The first is a bit sus, the second does make sense | unfortunately. | | https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/google-stadia-offici... | zerocrates wrote: | If you actually get access for the term of the subscription | you paid for, I don't see an issue with not refunding | subscription fees. | causi wrote: | _We will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through | the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made | through the Stadia store._ | | What are the odds of this being another lie? | swampthinker wrote: | To the surprise of absolutely no one. | glanzwulf wrote: | To the absdolute shock of... nobody. | zmmmmm wrote: | It's always harmful to your reputation to shut down a service, | but it is especially harmful when it is an ecosystem or platform | play where you are burning the good will of third parties who co- | invest to create the platform. Clearly stadia is in that second | category. While Google can refund consumers for their purchases | they can never make up for the opportunity cost those parties | suffered. | | At this point, I can't see how Google can ever launch another | platform or ecosystem except on a 100% transactional basis. | dougmwne wrote: | I am more entertained by this than I should be. Back when Stadia | launched I was in a Reddit thread saying that the blatant double- | dip business model of subscriptions + purchase stunk and that I | had no faith in Google to not shut this storefront down shortly. | I was immediately roasted by a flock of obvious astroturfers | telling me that this was an absolutely serious move by Google to | dominate the console games market and that the executive in | charge was a big shot games industry person who was going to made | this an unstoppable product. The paid astroturfing felt very | weird coming from Google. | | Then they started locking up game publishers into exclusive deals | and getting games removed from other streaming services, a | definite dick move. It was obvious that this special executive in | charge was pretty consumer unfriendly. | | Now this service is being shut down with little notice and while | it's great that they are refunding the purchases, there's also | the matter of the Stadia Pro claimed games that were part of the | subscription benefits but will be lost. Along with no clear plan | for taking out save data, this is a real FU to anyone who | believed those astroturfers and went all in on the stadia | console. | | The icing on the cake is this statement that it didn't "gain the | traction with users that we expected." Ha! This business model | was dead on arrival. The competition was innovating while Stadia | stood still. And instead of giving an inch off the starting line, | they took their toys and went home. This is one of the most | petulantly childish things I have ever seen from them. | | This company is a bloated rotting carcass. The regulators should | chop it up and feed it to the seagulls. | [deleted] | gbasp wrote: | > I was immediately roasted by a flock of obvious astroturfers | | I was a true believer in Stadia for years and still am when it | comes to cloud gaming. I was never paid a cent by Google to my | knowledge (although they are refunding my purchases so I | appreciate that). | | That said, unfortunately you are correct that Google is a | bloated rotting mess. The worst part is that Stadia was a legit | good product. | xtracto wrote: | This [1] guy got it right to the year (3 years ago when Stadia | started): | | >It also doesn't help that it's from Google. They've lost a lot | of good will in the last couple of years and honestly most | people expect Stadia to be EOL'd in 24-36 months once Google | gets bored with it. | | [1] | https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/e1l9j4/comment/f8ru... | hbn wrote: | It was many more people than that one guy. Myself and others | were calling a shut down in 2-3 years literally the day | Stadia was announced. | | Those of us who were bucked off at the Google rodeo enough | times eventually learned our lesson and realized it's never | gonna change. | wpietri wrote: | > The paid astroturfing felt very weird coming from Google. | | I don't doubt you at all, but how does one tell paid | astroturfing from rabid fanboys? | dougmwne wrote: | It was a few years ago, but I remember it was distinctly | obvious. Stadia was new. No one really knew much about it and | it was not launched yet. Several users with same-ish | usernames all starting giving long well written replies that | kept repeating specific talking points that were not really | part of the articles or marketing, things about the product | strategy that sounded very much like a social media marketing | brief. And they had a lot of very nice things to say about | the boss. I used to work adjacent to social media marketing | and it had the fingerprint. They were either several Stadia | marketing employees on a coffee break or being specifically | paid for the campaign. | sjs382 wrote: | > blatant double-dip business model of subscriptions + purchase | stunk | | FWIW, the subscription wasn't required. It just got you | discounts on games, access to a rotating collection of "free" | games, and 4k streaming (rather than 1080p you get without a | subscription). | | Their communication about all of this _really_ sucked though, | because most critics who didn 't try Stadia (and even some who | did) thought the subscription was required to use it at all. | dougmwne wrote: | I believe it was required for early adopters. Then they let | you claim free games while a subscriber, but you lost access | if you stopped. If you weren't subscribing you could miss | free claims. It was all very manipulative and low value. | MrWiffles wrote: | > This company is a bloated rotting carcass. The regulators | should chop it up and feed it to the seagulls. | | Hey man, there's no need to be cruel toward animals here! ;-) | totsuzen wrote: | * didn't "gain the traction with users that we expected." * | >> GCP : I'm scared out of my mind | yalogin wrote: | This is baffling. Stadia was launched with a lot of fanfare and | it got a lot of attention too. This feels like Google giving up | on something that everyone wants to succeed. In other words it | would have been a great success if it's with anyone but google. | effingwewt wrote: | Oh man were is that guy from the leak who kept insisting that | they would never do this, their paud products were perfect and | lasted forever. | | Paging @sofixa [1], [2] | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32485397 | | [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32492932 | peanut_worm wrote: | Its almost humorous at this point how many services they shut | down. Starting to get worried about my google domains. | ezekg wrote: | Wow, this is so unexpected! | sva_ wrote: | Somebody should start a betting site on what Google will shutdown | next. I think it might be Youtube Shorts. | jpeter wrote: | I don't think it will be youtube shorts. I bet it gets a lot of | views from people using it on the toilett | franczesko wrote: | Truly wasted potential. As I wrote a while ago: | | "One of the biggest problems Google has is that they excel at | engineering, but they lack proper marketing or business talent. | Stadia is really cool, yet the company did nothing to attract | players and grow the platform. I'm wondering how many of their | products were killed just because of the fact, that there was no | plan beyond letting it out in the market" | homarp wrote: | https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1575544578912178176 | | My best Stadia story was us trying to work out why a developer's | machine kept getting flagged for malware. Turns out they were | porting something to Stadia and the DRM didn't work under Linux. | The publisher refused to give them a DRM-free copy and told them | to warez one instead. | camel_Snake wrote: | My favorite Stadia story is how when Outriders launched, Stadia | was on entirely different code branch and release from the | other platforms. Weapon/armor scaling and skill effects were | different - leading to an entirely sub-meta for the Stadia | platform. Cross-play (eventually) worked and other people were | entirely confused why our wacky builds were so effective. | | Eventually things were patched to parity but our old armor | values didn't get re-aligned so were entirely too high (by a | factor of 2-3x) compared to the other platforms. | dqpb wrote: | Google: "Would you like to waste the best years of your life?" | | Engineer: "No..." | | Google: "What if I pay you slightly above average and give you | free food?" | | Engineer: "Deal!" | symlinkk wrote: | Slightly above average? | llamamare wrote: | Bring back Chromecast Audio and I forgive you! | kossTKR wrote: | This isn't just incompetence, it's a PR smokescreen that | fulfilled its purpose, to smokescreen the ad and surveillance | machine that has been Google Corp right from the beginning. | | ShadowPC has already proved that gaming over fiber+wifi is very | viable but it was never googles project - the project was yet | another toy-thing that people will think google is "doing", when | they are actually an ad and surveillance company. | seydor wrote: | I think i am shocked | hrdwdmrbl wrote: | Yup, that's exactly what everyone expected since the beginning. | And that's why publishers were not very interested, because they | always suspected that's what would happen. Why invest when Google | will get bored and shut it down in a couple years? | deelowe wrote: | I think there would have been more interest if they didn't | launch with folks having to the purchase games instead of it | just being a subscription plan like most were expecting. Of | course, pure subscriptions came later, but that was an odd way | to roll it out. | clintonb wrote: | Agreed. The upfront cost of games and a new Stadia-specific | controller was too much. I subscribed to PS Now to play | Spider-Man. I still had to buy a PlayStation controller, but | it was reusable for other PC games. | | Ironically, I am now only subscribed to a visit GeForce Now, | which requires game purchases. This is primarily due to | Sony's lack of macOS support for PS Now, and my owning an M1 | with no Bootcamp support. | Kiro wrote: | Everyone based it on inaccurate predictions though, namely that | it wouldn't work. It worked fantastic even for the most latency | sensitive games. | eropple wrote: | _> It worked fantastic even for the most latency sensitive | games._ | | Stadia was _cool_ and I think there is a future for this sort | of gaming in some genres and for some audiences, but I play | fighting games and it absolutely did not work "fantastic" | for them, even living in Boston and having a sporting | symmetric-gigabit connection. | andrewmcwatters wrote: | laughing-tom-cruise.jpg | | We all saw this coming years ago when it was first announced. | yamtaddle wrote: | I wonder if Google's tried to study & put some numbers on how | much harder it is for new products of theirs to take off, due | to their reputation, and decided it's not worth the cost to | fix, or if they just don't care to even find out. | andrewmcwatters wrote: | I think you're probably spot on about the latter. Besides, | attempting to find out if their reputation has been damaged | in a measurable way wouldn't get anyone promoted. :) | josefresco wrote: | Funny I _just_ plugged in my Stadia controller and played around | to see if the service was still active. It 's sad, I really liked | the service for a few reasons: | | 1. I don't have a gaming console, and this allowed me to easily | (with the help of my Chromecast) add gaming to my living room. | | 2. It's way easier than Steam Link/Controllers which always | require an element of "massage" to get and keep working. | | Downsides: | | My library of games on Steam, Epic, EA are obviously not | accessible with Stadia, and I wasn't about to re-purchase or | purchase exclusively any game content from a service that was | doomed. | | I've also played with Xbox Cloud Gaming and while decent I found | it unusable on mobile. | stiltzkin wrote: | If you can find your game on GeForce Now you should give a try, | works really great on PC or Android TV. | pkulak wrote: | The other big plus for me was that the backend was Linux. If it | really took off, it would have been huge for Linux gaming. | Sadly, it looks like the survivors are all Windows based. It's | all on Steam now. | partdavid wrote: | > My library of games on Steam, Epic, EA are obviously not | accessible with Stadia | | This is what convinced me to jump into streaming gaming with an | NVidia Shield and GeForce Now. | | You buy the games on standard game store platforms: Steam, Epic | and Ubisoft. So I knew when I was buying the games that if GFN | folded or I didn't like it anymore I could still play my entire | library on a PC. | | Not every game available on Steam is available to play through | GFN. For example, you can't play GTAV. But you can play | Destiny, Cyberpunk, Saint's Row, Assassin's Creed, etc. It's a | credible if not complete selection. | | The service was cheap (very cheap when I signed up with the | Founder's lifetime rate at < $5/mo.) and I needed a new | streaming device for my TV anyway (the Shield is a perfectly | capable Android TV based streaming device), so I could dip my | toe in it easily and see how it worked (basically the cost of | the controller, which aren't very expensive). I've liked it so | much I left console gaming behind and got two more Shields for | two other TVs. It's very nice to be able to play the same game | from different terminals, including my phone if need be | (phone's not great for Cyberpunk 2077 but it does Powerwash | Simulator just fine). | julienreszka wrote: | You can probably use shadow.tech as an alternative | welcome_dragon wrote: | For those of you who haven't tried it, it is the real deal. I've | tried Xbox live, playstation streaming, etc. and Stadia's | performance blows every single one out of the water. Even on 4g, | performance is unbelievable. | | You don't even need hardware or any account. You can play destiny | for free. | | It saddens me that this is going away but like most people, I'm | not surprised. | | I just hope that the technology doesn't go to waste. | BudaDude wrote: | Hopefully Valve,Sony, or Microsoft acquires the tech. | camel_Snake wrote: | it's gonna be spun off into Google Stream the white label | service. you can find the Resident Evil demo online for free | that uses this, I think it's still live. | dougmwne wrote: | Nvidia's streaming is very technically competitive with Stadia. | Most of the time it worked better. Business model rocks too, | you own the game through your normal Steam or whatever account | and rent the GPU time. | | I have also used MS cloud gaming a bunch and it stinks in | comparison. | vlark wrote: | Because of course they did. | ddalex wrote: | https://killedbygoogle.com/ does not confirm it. | | EDIT: it appeared now. This is confirmed. | chrisseaton wrote: | Was only announced today. | codyogden wrote: | Takes a couple minutes for the PR to merge. :D | ThePowerOfFuet wrote: | > https://killedbygoogle.com/ does not confirm it. | | So what? Are you in doubt of the veracity of the post? Look at | the URL. | shultays wrote: | A domain ends in google? sounds fishy | yellowapple wrote: | Yes it does; it's listed below Currents. | [deleted] | bargle0 wrote: | Can you get your game saves out of stadia and in to a portable | format? I have to imagine this is going to wreck a lot of people | who like to play games with persistent state over the long term. | haunter wrote: | Yes Google Takeout actually downloads every data including your | save files | minimaxir wrote: | The real question here is why it took _so long_ to shut down | Stadia, especially from Google. It never had any traction at any | point in its history. | draw_down wrote: | datalopers wrote: | Nobody at Google ever thought to put together the venn diagram | of: | | * People interested in playing high end games | | * People who don't own modern consoles or gaming PCs | | * People with access to fiber | camel_Snake wrote: | Nah. Google execs and others keeping making the mistake that | cloud gaming should target the high-end gamers. It should be | the middle-ground between mobile gaming and pc/console | gaming, IMO. Low barrier to entry with some AAA games. | | Stadia users often joked about how it was really 'Dadia', | since so much of the player base was younger dads that wanted | to game with their friends from time to time but couldn't | justify purchasing the required hardware. These are the users | Google should have been targeting - along with less tech- | inclined crowd. | | The entire pandemic I had this vision of a Stadia commercial | where a younger family member sends a link on the family | group chat or over zoom and then next minute everyone is | playing Among Us or some other casual party game together. | Even grandparents and click a link to open their chrome | browser. | | You don't need fiber for casual games like these. You need | enough internet to stream netflix - which almost everyone | does. | | Stadia leadership just didn't have vision. | xxs wrote: | >It never had any traction at any point in its history. | | B/c it was from google - the company the launches stuff and | stops carrying afterwards... and b/c it was marred with | promises like "negative latency". But mostly it required to | purchase the games on their platform, requesting a self-lock | in. | awill wrote: | They should have promised these refunds at launch: "We're | launching Stadia. if it were to shut down in less than X years, | you will get a refund" | | Ironically, had they done this, they would have seen more | adoption from the skeptics, and maybe not even had to shut down. | Typical Google, completely ignoring all the totally rational | fears people had about their shutdown. | | In pretty much all Stadia HN threads, the top question is always | "But Google might shut this down", and it was really comical to | see Google employees reply to that with 100% positivity, as | though people's fears were irrational. | nkrisc wrote: | That'd be great for people willing to dive in, but to me it | just says that they don't expect it to be around for long. You | might say it shows they're confident enough it _will_ be around | to offer refunds if it's not around long, but nobody else | launches a product and talks about it going away so that would | make me think they they secretly don't believe in it. | wjnc wrote: | I'll chime in with a somewhat positive and opposite note. I | bought 77 + Stadia + Chromecast under the legal impression that | under EU-law I would always get a refund. They give refunds and | I've played on a pretty well working platform. This went pretty | well considering Google being Google. (Note: have not heard | anything from Google directly yet.) | malfist wrote: | But would they get developer adoption? You might refund | customers, but devs are stuck with an effort they can no longer | sell, which they may not have recouped the losses taken to get | it on the platform. | nathias wrote: | I am shocked, who could have seen this coming? | EricE wrote: | Google killing something unrelated to search or advertising? Say | it isn't so! | karmasimida wrote: | This is laughable. | | Hahahahahahah | | Google has degraded so badly in those years, its consumer product | is officially a joke. | | When is Pixel going to die, emm? | cptcobalt wrote: | Not surprised at all. | | The refunds are a very nice, unexpected touch. | lucantini wrote: | The lack of interest in Google projects because they "might" die | is a self fulfilling propechy. | paxys wrote: | I'm glad that they are refunding customers, but it must suck for | all the game studios that spent a lot of development hours (which | could have gone towards other improvements) to add Stadia support | for their games. | ilovecaching wrote: | This is absolutely insane. Everyone who has been paying for pro | and buying games will now be out $$$ while losing all of their | games. Google should provide steam codes or full refunds for | digital purchases. Google has messed around with other services, | but this is substantial amounts of money they've stolen from | customers this time. Unbelievable, and I can't understand how | anyone could trust them with their credit card at this point. | tigerBL00D wrote: | I'm surprised. It seemed like a solid platform. Why can't Google | build a business that just works and grows organically without | having to completely dominate a field? | dweekly wrote: | You know, the day Stadia launched, someone very cynically set up | http://stadiacountdown.com/ and it won't end up very far off from | the truth. _sigh_ | | Honestly, I'm glad Google was willing to take a bet this big - | they had a lot of serious infrastructure innovations to make this | work that may end up paying off in other ways, and a company | that's not willing to make big bets has a 0% chance of having a | new bet land... | falcor84 wrote: | Funny, the stadiacountdown.com counter had actually been over- | optimistic, by almost a full year, saying there are 414 days | left (extrapolated based on [0]), but with the new announcement | of a shutdown date of January 18, 2023, there are only 111 days | to go. May it rest in peace. | | As for whether Google should be taking bets that they might not | be able to support, I'm actually very much against this. I | would suggest that they pour their money into supporting | independent start-ups, e.g. via GV[1], and then possibly | acquiring them if things go well, rather than further | tarnishing the Google brand. | | [0] https://gcemetery.co/google-product-lifespan/ [1] | https://www.gv.com/ (formerly Google Ventures) | codyogden wrote: | We actually got the announcement nearly timed by averaging | user predictions: | | https://whenwillgooglekillstadia.com | dweekly wrote: | I'm somewhere between impressed and (as a Xoogler) | depressed. | gilrain wrote: | Google making big bets: I'm all in! Actually, no, I fold. | MiddleEndian wrote: | Good. Also good on them for refunding people's money. | [deleted] | beoberha wrote: | Anyone here use Stadia? Not much of a gamer but very interested | in the tech of cloud gaming. | fuzzy2 wrote: | Yes. I only tried Destiny 2 because no other game (that was | available without extra purchase) was of interest to me. It | worked very well and I _really_ liked the experience. Just open | the website in Chrome, click on the game you want to play and | it launches in seconds. Certainly faster than launching Destiny | 2 on my own PC, which is also a gaming rig. | | For comparison, I also subscribed to GeForce Now. | Technologically, it's basically... remote desktop to Steam? | From a dedicated client application. Everything felt hacked- | together. Sometimes the language was wrong, sometimes the | resolution. Almost every time I had to re-login to Steam. | Performance was so-so, sometimes with ridiculous lag and video | encoding errors. Oh yeah and waiting times, lol. | | I have not tried the Xbox cloud gaming thingy yet, I imagine it | could be more like Stadia. | | I think Google made a good choice with customized game versions | for Stadia. Not using Windows then was good, too. The custom | hardware? Probably not so much. Either way, the customized game | versions were also what killed Stadia. Establishing a new | platform and getting software on it is very hard. | | Stadio was awesome. It also never had a chance. | partdavid wrote: | I like GFN and I agree the experience is not seamless. It | still takes a long time to launch the game VM, and you feel | it; but a lot of these other issues are much better or | nonexistent now. In particular having to re-auth to Steam is | much rarer now; launching the VM for a newly-purchased game | often used to take a long time, with you waiting for the | Steam launcher go through some kind of "Preparing" state for | a long time (you don't have to be in-session for this), but | this hasn't happened for me in some time. I haven't had a | problem with any settings like language, resolution or video, | and I think performance, while highly dependent on your own | network and ISP, is much improved and hasn't been a problem | in a while. So I do think, while the "remote desktop" | approach is inevitably going to have some clunkiness, it has | improved quite a bit and continues to do so. | gbasp wrote: | I'm a little bit of an enthusiast (tried all of the major | platforms). I have shitty rural internet, Stadia is (was) by | far the best of the bunch by far, especially with the | controller. Near-native for latency and crystal clear image. | 40ms ping to Google. | | Currently I use xcloud, its "acceptable" with certain games | that don't require low latencies but its picture quality in | particular is ass in comparison to Stadia. RIP. | redox99 wrote: | Not stadia, but I tried Steam In Home streaming (basically you | stream from one PC in your house to another), with ethernet and | it was NOTICEABLY laggier (because of input lag). It was | probably like 33ms+ of added input lag. From that point I knew | cloud streaming (which is basically this plus network latency) | wasn't going to be pretty. | teh_klev wrote: | I use it and it works surprisingly well even on UK DSL (80/20). | I found it useful to play games that insist on anti-cheat | systems that deeply embed themselves into your machine. Also my | PC is a bit ancient, built in 2015 and running a 4690K, DDR3 | with a 750Ti so I get access to games that need a bit more | poke. | umeshunni wrote: | I was a user from the beginning. | | For the casual gamer, cloud gaming is perfect - no large | downloads, play from your TV or your PC or your iPad/phone when | you have 30 minutes free and don't want to buy/build/maintain a | PC or Console. | | That said, I haven't played in around a year. The games catalog | was too limited and they never got any of the AAA games (Call | of Duty, EA games etc) | beckler wrote: | I use it... and honestly I'm really bummed by this. I've | avoided owning a console mostly because I didn't want to drop | $500 just to get started. Stadia launched CP2077 with a free | Chromecast and controller, so it ended up fitting my use-case | rather well. | | They released the LG app for Stadia less than a year ago, and | so having it on my TV with no additional equipment was a god- | send. I could play Jackbox when friends either in my living | room, or with my remote team at work. I still had the | Chromecast, so then I could spin up any game from basically any | room in my house and I just needed the controller. | | I mean, this is what everyone claimed was going to happen from | the beginning... I'm just bummed because I quite enjoyed the | ride. | buffington wrote: | I've been using for about two years I'd guess. I have a pretty | fast connection and it worked pretty flawlessly at home. I used | it while traveling too, and if the connection was good enough | for streaming services like Netflix or Hulu, it was typically | totally fine for Stadia. Playing Cyberpunk 2077 at the highest | settings while playing on an iPad was pretty damn cool, and | meant I could slim down a ton when traveling. | | That said, I haven't played any multiplayer FPS games. The | multiplayer games I did play seemed totally fine, though "seems | totally fine" is obviously a subjective observation. | | The biggest gripe I had was that you couldn't use your Steam | library or bring your own games in any way. The fact that | they're refunding purchases is kind of amazing. Knowing Google, | I assumed that when Stadia shut down, that'd be it, and I was | ok with that. | vaer-k wrote: | I used it a bit. The performance was exceptional. I enjoyed | playing Cyberpunk 2077 on my phone with a Razer Kishi | controller. Although I'm not surprised Stadia struggled to find | traction, I think this is mostly due to Google's ongoing | struggle with entertainment branding, and despite this, I do | agree with their sentiment that streaming is the inevitable | future of mainstream gaming. | mrguyorama wrote: | Game streaming struggles because your average American has | like four different TERRIBLE networking devices between them | and any service. Those devices will not be upgraded just | because google wishes the internet was more like home. If you | do not have a good streaming experience, there is not a damn | thing you can do about it. | camel_Snake wrote: | used it exclusively for gaming the last year and a half. mostly | just for Destiny 2, but bought a few other games on the | platform as well. worked very well for my purposes. even pre- | ourchased the next year's content for destiny as well. I'm very | sad. | faller_slive wrote: | I've used it almost exclusively for gaming since it was | released. I've occasionally had issues with poor connection | over WiFi but most of the time it has worked flawlessly. I know | the latency is higher than a locally running game but I'm not | doing side by side comparisons so I don't notice it. With this | news I guess I'll be switching to GeForce Now which supports | higher quality and framerates but a worse UX in my experience. | In my opinion the business case for GeForce Now makes less | sense than Stadia but I guess the numbers of overs makes more | of a difference. | chrisseaton wrote: | I tried a bit. I don't have space in my life for dedicated | gaming hardware or a PC, so seemed to be a way I could play a | game once in a while without commitment. Was ok. Didn't get | hooked. | bradley_taunt wrote: | What a shame. The technology was fantastic. Good news about all | the refunds but still sad. | astlouis44 wrote: | We all saw it coming, it was only a matter of time. Shame, | because the business model was the real problem here.. the | streaming tech was and still is very viable. | pfdietz wrote: | This is the least surprising event since the last thing I wasn't | surprised about. | jjulius wrote: | Heh, the comments in this thread[1] are hilarious in hindsight. | | >Stadia will exist by the end of the summer. You don't have to | believe me. Like I said feel free to come back to this thread in | October.[2] | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32276188 | | [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32278402 | danso wrote: | Well, those comments were responding to a July 2022 article | stating: "Google Stadia denies the recent claims online that it | would be shutting down its services by the end of the summer, | promising more games to come." | | So technically, the commenter was right, as Stadia did survive | the summer and will be operational for a whole 3+ months! | calyth2018 wrote: | Aged like milk indeed. | | Writing was on that wall a long long time ago. | | Thanks for pointing it out so that I could have a good laugh :D | mindcrime wrote: | " _Yah, hear me now and believe me later._ " | ChildOfChaos wrote: | Seems the Stadia engineers were only told this morning by Google. | | https://www.reddit.com/r/Stadia/comments/xrcea4/comment/iqe3... | bspammer wrote: | I suppose this was the only way to avoid a leak, but I do | wonder how far in advance Phil knew this was going to happen. | sanxiyn wrote: | https://killedbygoogle.com/ | mrweasel wrote: | They sure do try out a lot of stuff. Google really need to do | the reverse an create "productsbygoogle.com". Many of the | products are pretty unknown, until they get publicity for being | killed. | codyogden wrote: | https://about.google/products/ | tristor wrote: | And this behavior is exactly why I didn't buy Stadia in the first | place. One more entry in the Google graveyard. | TillE wrote: | You know it's gonna be bad news when you see a title like that. | | I've always been bearish on game streaming because it's just not | practically, physically possible to solve the problem of input | lag. Even an extra 10ms is going to be noticeable and | unacceptable for many games. | anthonybsd wrote: | I disagree. The fastest human reaction time is something around | 100ms. (https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime). I've | just measured, and mine is 230ms. As such 10ms lag wouldn't | make any difference. I've used Shadow Tech PC for a while | during pandemic. With good upstream and downstream bandwidth it | was a fairly decent experience, even for playing something like | competitive Overwatch. I noticed the difference with normal | gaming PC due to some other factors (quality of sound, etc.). | Standard accessories worked seamlessly for USB-over-UDP. | least wrote: | Human reaction times have nothing to do with perceived input | latency. There is a latency budget that is different for | every individual that determines whether or not something | will be an acceptable experience. This budget is divided | between everything in the signal chain like the input | devices, the computer/console, the monitor/tv, and any other | processors along the signal path. Streaming games adds | additional latency to the signal chain. Generously if your | target is 60fps and you have a round trip latency to their | server of 8ms, that's a half frame of added latency. On its | own it's almost certainly imperceptible to most people, but | it's not working in a vacuum and most people don't live right | next to the datacenter. It can very easily go over the | threshold for what is acceptable to most people. | streamingbro wrote: | You can easily observe how significant latency is in videos | like this: https://youtu.be/vOvQCPLkPt4?t=80 (Microsoft | Research presenting its ultra low latency displays for touch | interactions). Many mobile games have you drag and drop | things, so it's not like it's just first person shooters that | suffer from latency. | | You're a lay person, you couldn't have known this, you're | using words with very specific meaning to streaming (like | latency) and you're comparing it to human reaction times, | which are measuring something else entirely. You kind of | reasoned about from a first principle in a very | Paulgrahamarian way, and it led you deeply astray. That | happens. And you're not the only person doing this, this is a | comment section full of people who play games and parrot | stuff they seen in YouTube, and don't have a concrete grasp | of what it is they're even talking about, so it's | understandable when it's laypeople shouting at laypeople that | it's just a bunch of blah. | | One of the reasons I hate HN and write in throwaways nowadays | is that the comments section is a better example of Knoll's | law than actual journalism. | anthonybsd wrote: | Wow. Condescending much? | redox99 wrote: | A bit condescending yes but he showed a really good | example of how input lag is noticeable. | gilrain wrote: | Appropriate in response to the breathtaking arrogance-in- | ignorance of what it was responding to. | Firmwarrior wrote: | Thanks for posting this. This comment section has been | particularly frustrating to read, since it's a mirror of | what I've seen in the real world. There are teams at big | tech companies making TERRIBLE decisions about the future | of gaming because they don't actually understand how | latency affects games, and they aren't hardcore gamers so | they can't feel the effects themselves. | | Even the ~50ms total latency you get from locally streaming | over a 1ms wired network (from buffering/inappropriate | firmware design) ruins whole genres of high level gameplay. | You miss tricky shots in FPS games, you can't confirm/link | in fighters, etc. | kbelder wrote: | This is the most factually true comment that I've ever | downvoted. | Firmwarrior wrote: | That comment should be sent out as a blanket text message | to everyone who commented on this post about latency IMO | | The word needs to get out | 10000truths wrote: | The bigger issue is jitter. People can compensate for | consistent delay (e.g. by leading shots in an FPS game). But | when the delay is inconsistent and varies quickly, it becomes | much more difficult to anticipate movements and execute time- | sensitive maneuvers. | KevinGlass wrote: | Unless cloud gaming company intend to put servers in every | single city across the globe it's not going to work. Even in | Boston with good, fiber internet streaming games have too | much lag and the compression artifacts are horrible. | | When there is fast movement the compression is much more | noticeable, worse then the lag. Many reviewers doing | graphical comparisons do it with static images. It's quite | common for the whole screen to become a blur of compressed | and pixelated blocks at the slightest network hiccup. | | Also, you are misunderstanding what "reaction time of 100ms" | means. It does not mean that any event that takes less time | then 100ms imperceptible, it absolutely does not. The sound | of a clap lasts 22ms and you are able to hear even shorter | sounds. You can see light pulses of arbitrarily short length | so long as they are bright enough. | | What 100ms reaction time means is that you can't react to a | given stimulus in less then that. Here's the important | distinction, you don't _react_ to lag, you perceive it. | | To experience this for yourself, go this lag simulator | webpage [1] and experiment with various lag times. You will | quite easily be able to feel the difference in 0ms, 100ms, | and 200ms of added latency. Keep in mind this is on top of | whatever latency OS layers and browser sandboxing introduce. | | 1. https://www.skytopia.com/stuff/lag.html | mrkramer wrote: | Moore's law is our friend and in the future seamless cloud | gaming will be possible. | arc-in-space wrote: | This is confused. Reaction time is irrelevant, you can still | notice very short delays between two events. The fundamental | issue is that when you make an input that corresponds to an | action in a game, you expect that to action happen near- | immediately, and anything else feels terrible. | Veuxdo wrote: | 100ms times are cheaters; 200ms is probably closer to the | absolute lower bound of human reaction time. | dsissitka wrote: | I don't know about that. I'm off form and this was my third | try after going wired. | | https://imgur.com/a/8inHYSf | infecto wrote: | Agree. I used Shadow for a bit something like 2 years ago and | it was pretty seamless. Sure, not as good as having a PC but | it was pretty darn close. | adamsmith143 wrote: | Pro gamers can definitely feel +/- 10ms of lag. It makes a | difference at that level. | bitcharmer wrote: | Maybe not 10ms but anything above 50ms is known and proven to | degrade pro players' performance in competitive FPS games | natdempk wrote: | Humans can detect 10ms of latency easily. The problem is more | than just reacting slightly later to events, its also how | quickly the game/system responds to your inputs because its a | round-trip interaction. This ends up usually being where the | latency becomes more noticeable to most people. People can | generally adjust for consistent latency, but any latency | gains are pretty noticeable once you get used to looking for | it. | | Also 10ms ends up being close to the average input latency of | a single additional frame at 60fps, and you just have to look | to the efforts that have gone into Super Smash Bros Melee | (especially in netplay) to see how far people will go for a | single frame. | slfnflctd wrote: | Practiced musicians begin to feel discrepancies in time | starting at latencies as low as 10ms. I learned this when | investigating whether bands could practice live over the | internet (spoiler: most of them can't). Turns out that due | to limitations of physics, even absolutely optimal | connections still have enough lag/jitter to ruin it for | professional instrumentalists. | sascha_sl wrote: | I tried Shadow and, well, you could really tell they host in | a budget datacenter with how often there was stutter or | missing keyframes (they host with OVH in Europe). I never had | such issues with GeForce Now. | | Also, I found it kind of scummy how they will not actually | tell you what hardware you'll be getting beyond "4c/8t". Mine | turned out to be a low-clocked Haswell, a CPU so outdated | that Steam downloads were CPU throttled. I used it for about | an afternoon and then immediately cancelled. | npinsker wrote: | You're definitely right for most people, but even 10-20ms is | noticeable by experienced players and can be very impactful | at pro-level -- e.g. some high-level LoL players feel 35ms | ping is unacceptably high for competitive play: | https://afkgaming.com/esports/news/ls-talks-about- | why-35-pin... (though it probably doesn't matter much for | Stadia's use cases) | anthonybsd wrote: | Doubtful. Pro gamers are known primadonnas. If anyone ever | tested them and added synthetic lag with double blind study | I suspect they wouldn't identify it more accurately than | what a random chance would dictate. Sorry, but pure speed | of electrical signals/chemicals traveling in the body puts | a constraint on that. | ProfessorLayton wrote: | It's not even just "pro gamers", _the most popular | fighting game in the world_ (Smash Bros U.) is enjoyed by | casual players and pros, and has an entire mechanic based | on "two-framing" for edge guarding. | | One absolutely does _not_ need to be a pro to pull it | off, and the whole interaction window for that mechanic | is based around being able to react within ~32ms (1 /30th | of a second) to edge guard an opponent. It is | exponentially harder to pull off in online play. | foobarian wrote: | It matters for MMOs. If there are two pro gamers A and B both | with 100ms reaction time, but gamer A has 10ms ping while | gamer B has 30ms ping, gamer A has a consistent advantage. | This is not strictly a Stadia problem but it may be | exacerbated if the display data adds latency on a slower | line. | philliphaydon wrote: | Wow, this site is cool. I consistently get ~188, best was | 176ms. I wonder what some of the esport gamers get! | | After doing it several times it let me save the score. | | Reaction Time 181ms | | 74.46% percentile | arc-in-space wrote: | Top level players don't tend to do better on these than | slightly above average, because reaction time is something | you train for a specific task. | throwawaymaths wrote: | I think there is an argument that you can level the playing | field by making everyone's lag suck equally. I don't know if | stadia did that though | imbusy111 wrote: | This logic doesn't apply to single player games. I tried | playing a racing game on Stadia and it just didn't feel good. | | On the other hand, I tried the Resident Evil Village demo | first on Stadia, and eventually even bought a full copy for | PC. But that game is slow anyway. | Veuxdo wrote: | 10ms isn't even one frame at 60 FPS. Modern consoles have more | "native" input lag than that. | UncleMeat wrote: | Yep if people were bothered by 10ms then everybody would be | on CRTs. But... nobody is doing this except some extreme | speedrunners and fighting game players. | blibble wrote: | your typical high end gaming monitor is now 360hz | | CRTs were nowhere near that | emasirik wrote: | Typically, not even fighting game players. The last | holdouts are retro enthusiasts and Smash Bros. Melee | players. | Cyberdog wrote: | 10ms is an extremely generous estimation of the amount of lag | you'd get playing with a device like Stadia at any rate. | sascha_sl wrote: | Jitter is what really kills it. I found out that my ISP | (who own switches in the basement) limits bandwidth based | on a rolling time window, so whenever someone in the house | starts a download they can briefly saturate the entire | link. Wish they'd know how to configure QoS on their very | expensive network gear. | twicetwice wrote: | I use GeForce now for singleplayer games and I'm super happy | with it as long as I'm on an ethernet connection. | gberger wrote: | (For context, this thread originally linked to | https://blog.google/products/stadia/message-on-stadia-stream... | "A message about Stadia and our long term streaming strategy") | bob1029 wrote: | Latency really isn't a problem in many contexts. I've got some | prototype streaming solutions running in an azure region near | me and I can't perceive any round trip latency compared to | localhost. | | There are certainly more edge cases and things to go wrong when | streaming the entire experience, but the networks are only | getting better over time. | | Streaming games are also a big answer to many forms of | cheating. Not all, but it would make a night-day difference for | any competitive game today. | KMnO4 wrote: | I'll disagree on that. An extra 10ms is not perceptible in 99% | (99.9%?) of cases. | | Consider that a good gaming monitor has input lag of ~3ms, a TV | in game mode has input lag of ~12ms, and in regular mode the | input lag is >100ms. | | I would argue that our brain is just really good at correcting | for minuscule timings like that, and less than 1% of the | population could even tell the difference between 20ms and 30ms | lag. | | I've used Game Pass Ultimate to stream hundreds of games with | 80ms ping, and I can attest that you adapt very quickly. Even | first person shooters were easily playable. The only ones that | gave me trouble were Forza and GRID, both very fast paced | racing games. | | But let's face it: there are _many_ people who are happy to | stream Civ, XCOM, and even Elder Scrolls, where input lag isn't | as much of an issue. | LegitShady wrote: | the 10ms or whatever the real amount is, is in addition to | tbe monitor lag, etc. | | i tried to play tekken 7 on xbox cloud and it was torture. | maybe if you never played it locally youd br ok with the | control response times, but not if youd played it running | locally. | kmac_ wrote: | Local lag was significantly reduced over recent years, low | latency modes of TVs/monitors, 60 and more fps even for | console games, etc. So the baseline moved. That affects | remote gaming also, but in a much smaller proportion. | Remote gaming quality is as good as ISP quality, and most | of ISPs are sh*. | riversflow wrote: | > 10ms is not perceptible . . . less than 1% | | The popularity of 120hz gaming would beg to differ, everyone | I know who games on a PC has a high refresh rate monitor and | can easily tell if their game isn't running with optimal fps. | High refresh rate is certainly something you adapt to, so you | might be right about the general population, but were talking | specifically about gamers here. And the fact that high | refresh rate panels are coming into phones makes me much more | doubtful that it's just gamers. Human beings heavily rely on | reaction time just by being bipedal(tripping and not catching | yourself can mean death). | | Also, Highly responsive systems are just more fun, see also | cars. | | Agree that many casual people don't care much, but casual | people also tend to rely on more knowledgeable friends, or | wouldn't be in the know enough to try out a streaming game | service that wasn't advertised much. | outworlder wrote: | 10ms is completely fine for any game you can possibly think of. | Including competitive FPS e-sports. We are not superhumans and | your monitor alone probably adds more lag than that. | | What's not acceptable is _jitter_. If it 's a constant 10ms | delay, it's easy to compensate - for both humans and machines. | That's even more so if everyone is subject to a similar delay. | | If latency is constantly changing, that's where it can become | unacceptable. Your machine better be on a wired network. If | it's on wifi, this whole point is moot. | stiltzkin wrote: | Highly disagree. Seems you have not tested current game | streaming as Gamepass or GeForce Now. | legohead wrote: | I was cloud gaming for 2 years and recently switched to PC. | I've been gaming for about 30 years or more. I can confidently | say you wont notice anything up to around 60ms latency. I could | still twitch aim and play and compete in online shooters no | problem. | | Beyond 60ms, the other devil is packet loss. If your connection | starts to become unstable, even if it's a fast connection, it | becomes extremely aggravating. I could actually deal with up to | 200ms latency, but throw in a tiny amount of packet loss and | I'm out. | sgtnasty wrote: | I tend to only play "non-competetive" solo games, so I dont | care much about input lag. Wasnt a problem for me in Destiny, | Assasins Creed or Cyberpunk. | Kiro wrote: | That's completely false. Streaming works great even for latency | sensitive games. | SideQuark wrote: | >extra 10ms | | That won't even get a signal across the US at the speed of | light, so real lag will be much, much higher. | s3r3nity wrote: | I disagree, because for 99% of gamers not trying to play | competitive games, it's virtually unnoticeable. | | I like to play Spiritfarer and some other family games with my | partner on Stadia, and we've never noticed any significant | problems - even when using non-stadia controllers. | | Overall I'm bullish on cloud gaming, because I don't want to | invest hundreds of dollars regularly to update my PC or console | hardware just to play games like Stray or something like that. | There are new handheld consoles coming out focused on the cloud | gaming market, and even the Switch supports "cloud version" | games now, like Resident Evil. Also, Amazon's Luna service | continues to grow and improve. | AshamedCaptain wrote: | > I don't want to invest hundreds of dollars regularly to | update my PC or console hardware just to play games like | Stray or something like that. | | Something like Stray that doesn't really require "hundreds of | dollars regularly". Stray plays fine on a 8 year old PC that | was definitely < $1000 on its day. Probably not 4K but then | also not on the cloud... | | On the other hand, it's highly likely that you won't be able | to play Stray on the cloud within the next 8 years as | providers will drop it down (or outright close...). | s3r3nity wrote: | Maybe? But I'm also ok investing the $10-20 per month in a | service that can guarantee 4k @ 60fps on any hardware I'm | using. | nh23423fefe wrote: | in what way is a subscription an investment | outworlder wrote: | It's still $10-20 forever, monthly(assuming they never | increase prices). Versus a few larger sums every few | years. If you don't buy the latest and greatest, a $200 | yearly budget can definitely keep your hardware up to | date. If it's a PC, you can even use it for other | purposes. | darkwizard42 wrote: | Let's do a little math. Let's say you want to buy a | gaming PC and have a budget of $1000. Let's also assume | you play 1 hour of video games a day, 5 days a week. That | is 20 hours a month. | | At 20 hours a month you would have to play for 50 months | (4 years) on your machine before you pay off the machine. | Alternatively, you could spend that same money on the | streaming service. I think the math doesn't hold up if | you are a casual gamer. Building a PC and maintenance | just isn't worth it. | | That being said, if you play a lot more, maybe even 15-20 | hours a week, I think it makes a lot of sense to build | your own machine (I have one and it was very worth it | when I was a serious LoL player). | nh23423fefe wrote: | why would playtime affect duration of payments | drusepth wrote: | Within the context of Stadia here, you could purchase a | game at cost and play it forever (or, until the service | shut down, heh) without paying any monthly subscription | fee, which does change the math somewhat. | trap_goes_hot wrote: | If there is demand, and the tech is fine, then why is Google | shutting down Stadia? | kevingadd wrote: | Splatoon 3 is already one of the best-selling Switch games | ever released - a competitive online shooter on a console | most popular with casual gamers. Games like Fortnite and | Overwatch are massively popular. 99% is a real over- | estimation. | [deleted] | redox99 wrote: | > I disagree, because for 99% of gamers not trying to play | competitive games, it's virtually unnoticeable. | | If you take a look at the 25 games with the most current | players[1] I would argue at least 20/25 would either be | annoying to play with increased input lag, or outright highly | disadvantageous. | | [1] https://steamcharts.com/top | benhurmarcel wrote: | This ignores consoles | onion2k wrote: | All that means is that people who choose games where lag is | annoying pick Steam because that's where the lag is lowest. | It's not a canonical list of all games. | throitallaway wrote: | When Super Mario 3D All-Stars for Switch came out I did | alright on Super Mario 64 until I encountered a level that | required precisely timed wall jumps in order to advance. I | consistently missed my jumps and wondered what was up. I | plugged in my controller via USB and was still failing to do | the jumps properly. What finally fixed it was putting the | input on my TV into "game" mode, which reduced the amount of | processing/latency. If local display latency can cause issues | with gaming, network latency would be a non-starter in a lot | of cases. | Grazester wrote: | Super Mario 3D all star is running emulation on the switch. | How much latency is introduced with just that? It was not | like the emulation was even top notch either. | fluoridation wrote: | It's hard to say. If the emulation to compute a single | frame finishes before the frame deadline elapses then the | latency caused by emulation is effectively zero. | redox99 wrote: | Those "old games" were designed around the technology of | the time, which had drastically lower latency than anything | today except for high end gaming (and sometimes not even | that). | | - Controller buttons caused CPU interrupts, so basically 0 | latency | | - No OS getting in the way | | - N64 era would be double buffered and then straight to the | CRT | | - NES era would literally calculate the pixels in real time | as the CRT beam moved across the screen | | - CRTs have virtually no latency, same with the analog | signal chain because there is no buffering | | So when people try to play them in modern systems, things | that were easy back then are quite hard now. | | There's a reason anybody speedrunning SM64 will play on a | CRT. | hbn wrote: | In 2015 I found myself a decent deal on my old childhood | console, the Super Nintendo which I had sold at a garage | sale years ago (and later regretted) | | I bought a Japanese copy of Super Mario World on ebay | (Japanese copies of games were peanuts at the time, I | assume they're more now), and found an old CRT for cheap | on a local used site. I continued to play SMW many times | over the years on various platforms and emulators, and | I'm pretty damn good at the game. | | But man, did it blow my mind feeling as little input | latency as I did the first time I booted it on a CRT | after all those years. It actually took a little bit of | time to adapt to. It's like that phenomenon where if a | button activates a light with low enough latency, people | think the light is predicting when they'll hit the | button, i.e. turning on before the button is pressed. | People don't realize the latency we started dealing with | when everything went from analogue to digital! | Kye wrote: | >> _" NES era would literally calculate the pixels in | real time as the CRT beam moved across the screen"_ | | Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raster_interrupt# | Nintendo_Ente... | hedgehog wrote: | Surprisingly the display latency on TVs is regularly over | 100ms, way more than latency at most homes these days | (about 10ms for Comcast here). | pathartl wrote: | That is amazingly inaccurate. If you count the entire | chain from input to processing to display you'll be under | 40-50ms. | Sohcahtoa82 wrote: | It really depends on the TV. And if your gaming console | is plugged into a receiver, it could add more. | | My previous TV had about 150 ms of video latency. Even if | I enabled Game Mode, it was 75 ms, which was still | noticeable. | | With my current TV, I have no idea what the latency is | because I stopped gaming on console and so I'm not | playing Rock Band which had a calibration option to | compensate for video and audio latency. | pathartl wrote: | I've had a TV that were nearly 200ms, but it was the | absolute cheapest panel I could find. | | If you don't configure your TV correctly sure, you could | get massive amounts of lag. Even with an OLED display if | you turn on all the post processing you're going to have | problems. That's not really a fault of the TV though. I | disable almost all post processing on my TVs and get a | better picture without the downsides. | | With digital receivers adding lag is minimal at best. | Especially with newer models that don't draw on top of | the source signal. | hedgehog wrote: | I only know for sure from the few displays I've looked at | myself but this table from a quick Google search is | consistent: | | https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/inputs/input-lag | pathartl wrote: | Yeah, I mean if you enable post processing (which is most | likely garbage) you're going to get bad input lag. | carpenecopinum wrote: | Nah, it's definitely true. I have seen plenty of | (especially larger-format) TVs where, with "game mode" | (or the respective equivalent) disabled, it's unbearable | to even do latency-forgiving tasks like office work on | them. | p1necone wrote: | Yeah, the latency on a lot of TVs outside of "Game Mode" is | _really_ atrocious, commonly in the order of 100 - 200ms, | which is way higher than even network latency on game | streaming services assuming you 're close to the data | center. | hbn wrote: | Worth noting, I'm pretty sure by default when you plug a | Switch controller into the dock, it just charges and | continues to communicate over Bluetooth. Someone can | correct me if I'm wrong | hitpointdrew wrote: | > I disagree, because for 99% of gamers not trying to play | competitive games, it's virtually unnoticeable. | | I agree with your disagreement here. For me streaming game | services don't have a lot of technical hurdles. | | > Overall I'm bullish on cloud gaming, because I don't want | to invest hundreds of dollars regularly to update my PC or | console hardware just to play games like Stray or something | like that. | | I disagree here. I hate the idea of streaming/cloud gaming. I | will never sign up for such a service. I don't want a monthly | bill, I enjoy building computers. I want to have the content | on my local machine thank you very much. | | The subscription model I think has already proven it self be | consumer hostile. I don't want to subscribe to Adobe, I don't | want to subscribe to Office, just let me buy the damn thing | outright. | s3r3nity wrote: | > I hate the idea of streaming/cloud gaming. I will never | sign up for such a service. I don't want a monthly bill, I | enjoy building computers. I want to have the content on my | local machine thank you very much. | | I totally think this is fair - and I think the market can | support both models. | | E.g.: I like paying for Netflix / Hulu / [insert video | streaming service here], but I wouldn't hate on others who | prefer buying the DVD. Same thing for Apple Music vs. | people who prefer CDs / records. | munificent wrote: | It's absolutely noticeable. The question is whether it's | tolerable, and people do seem to tolerate increasing latency | both from networks and their TV. | | But, personally, I find the experience much less _enjoyable_ | as the latency goes up. It 's not about being competitive | either. (I don't play games online.) It just feels sticky and | sluggish and I don't enjoy it. I miss the crisp | responsiveness of older consoles. :( | ElevenLathe wrote: | I think this is right for games that are ported to streaming | from a traditional PC or console release, but presumably if | some studio cared, they could design games with streaming in | mind. As an extreme example, imagine the original NES Final | Fantasy, or the SNES Monopoly on Stadia: with mainly turn-based | interaction, they would be basically indistinguishable from | playing locally. | SideQuark wrote: | >extra 10ms | | That won't even get a signal across the US at the speed of | light, so real lag will be much, much higher, even with servers | scattered around (speed in wires, networking device lags, | etc... ) | sevenf0ur wrote: | It's quite a feat this was even possible. You have to own a lot | of the Internet pipes to make a service like this playable to the | masses. | throwaway4good wrote: | Maybe the refunds are a hint on just how few devices they sold | ... | rockostrich wrote: | The controller is pretty nice. I wish it worked wirelessly | outside of Stadia, but it's plug and play with usb-c so still | pretty great. | Kukumber wrote: | Another proof that gamers do not want cloud gaming | dont__panic wrote: | Direct from the horse's mouth: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33022775 | jjulius wrote: | Also from the horse's mouth: | https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656 | | Not saying it to argue with your point, just to highlight that | we generally shouldn't put much trust into Google. | neogodless wrote: | But this is from 60 days ago, and Google has now announced | they _are_ shutting Stadia down. | | While "cover your ass" posts may need a grain of salt, | there's no logic in "we're killing a product/service" being | lip service. | falcolas wrote: | These decisions are not made over the course of days or a | couple of months. They're made quarters or years in | advance. | lijogdfljk wrote: | So.. what's your point? Are you saying that Google saying | they're not shutting down 60 days ago was wrong? Or that | the current post is wrong? Or that neither should be | trusted? Or..? | falcolas wrote: | That PR statements are lies and not to be trusted. Trust | what they do, not what they say they're going to do. | | And not just Google, but every company. | lijogdfljk wrote: | I agree, just not sure what your comment meant in regards | to that. Ie the decision is made by quarters, yea, what | does that have to do with the parent comment? | neogodless wrote: | I'm not sure what your point is. | | I'm not arguing that internally, no one at Google knew | this 60 days ago. They may have. I'm saying that it makes | sense to cast doubt on public relation statements that | cast a company in a good light, but it makes much less | sense to doubt an announcement that casts them in a bad | light. Why would they "lie" about killing a product or | service? | falcolas wrote: | I'm saying that their statement 60 days ago was a lie. A | lie that leadership knew was a lie, yet they let the PR | statement be generated and broadcasted regardless. | | Google will have financially benefited from that positive | PR (from interest on invested money, if in absolutely no | other way). | neogodless wrote: | Right - if you re-read what I said, it was that you can | believe negative PR ("we are shutting it down") while | taking any positive PR ("we are totally not shutting it | down!") with a grain of salt. | jjulius wrote: | >... it makes much less sense to doubt an announcement | that casts them in a bad light. Why would they "lie" | about killing a product or service? | | If you are suggesting that I'm saying that we shouldn't | trust Google's announcement that they are shutting down | Stadia, then you are misunderstanding my comment. | neogodless wrote: | You replied to a post saying "this is news direct from | Google" with the comment | | > to highlight that we generally shouldn't put much trust | into Google | | It seemed like a logical conclusion. Given your argument | now, I assume you simply meant "don't trust anything they | say" (which would include their announcement today) but | it's not exactly the spirit of what you mean. Your | initial intent was not clear (in my opinion.) | jjulius wrote: | Just a general, friendly reminder to take whatever comes | out of Google's mouth with a gigantic grain of salt, | circumstantially. In this circumstance, I would trust | that they are shutting it down. | refracture wrote: | Fans of this service just seemed convince Google was in it for | the long haul.. I hated being the cynic that would reference the | Google Graveyard... wishing I'd be wrong but here we are again. | MrPatan wrote: | Didn't they already? It's hard to keep track | drusepth wrote: | There's been a "Google will shut down Stadia soon" news story | almost every single month for the last 3 years. | | This time, it's actually sourced from Google though. | codemac wrote: | Really unfortunate, and I think Google is making a long term | mistake here. Stadia worked extremely well for me and some | friends who all basically didn't want to invest in a gaming | tower. | | I had a theory though, that if you were a serious gamer, you | probably stream or do a bunch of other things on your computer. | As the serious gamer would need a reasonable GPU either way to | accomplish this, the benefits of Stadia didn't make sense for | them. Google should have implemented the missing pieces as part | of the stadia experience, thus only requiring a laptop to be a | mildly successful streamer. | | In my head they should have worked on something that could stream | directly to youtube gaming, and they should have paid $$$$ to get | some streamers to use Stadia exclusively for their streams. | totaldude87 wrote: | I wonder what will happen to semi essential services like | | 1) Google fi 2) google nest lineup | | And things like Google tv .. | moomin wrote: | The only part of this that most people didn't foresee _when | Stadia was originally announced_ is the refund policy. | Farbklex wrote: | I hope there will be one last update for the Stadia controllers. | They are pretty good but they don't work as normal bluetooth | controllers right now. You can use them via USB C though. | ploppyploppy wrote: | Yet another reason not to buy into Google. Reader was the last | straw | ZiiS wrote: | They must be aware Stadia was always just a "sudden but | inevitable betrayal" meme. | otabdeveloper4 wrote: | That was quick. | moandcompany wrote: | F | jrpt wrote: | Even if it wasn't massively popular as a gaming platform, I | thought it could be pretty profitable as marketing for games, | where you can actually demo the game from a web browser and try | it before buying it. This could be either directly on e-commerce | sites or ads on Google.com. I'm surprised that they didn't do | more with that before killing it. If you could show having a | Stadia demo increases conversion rates and sales, it would be | really useful even if gamers don't acquire Stadia gaming | libraries. | | I wonder if they could've sold it off to Netflix or something | instead of killing it. | | I have a Stadia and actually liked it even though I thought the | go to market execution was bad. Also the latency made it | problematic for multiplayer games, so I just played single player | content. | msoad wrote: | I genuinely think Apple's Arcade strategy will prevail in the | long run. Apple doesn't necessarily need AAA games to eat a big | chunk of this market. A lot of very popular games like Roblox, | Minecraft and FIFA are not even AAA quality. | | Being able to run a game on both your phone and your console | (Apple TV in this case) is a huge advantage. | whatshisface wrote: | I think google cloud is a lot cooler than AWS but no way am I | using it with news like this coming out every few months. | bilekas wrote: | It was always a strange sell, especially since you had more | accommodating options like nVidias GeForce Now. | AlbertCory wrote: | Translation, for those unfamiliar with internal Google politics: | | _We have already promoted and transferred all the product | managers and senior developers who created Stadia. None of them | will suffer any ill effects from this disastrous waste of | Alphabet resources. | | All our other struggling products, though: we're still fully | committed to those. Really. You can believe us this time._ | foobiekr wrote: | I would love to know how many promos and packages Stadia | generated. Was it at last efficient by this measure? | | So many google projects seem to be quite inefficient in this | regard - a handful of people get a promo and abandon the | project, millions spent. | bogwog wrote: | Maybe (probably not) this high profile disaster will finally | make the leadership at Alphabet realize how ridiculously | dysfunctional the organization is, and things will finally | start to change. (doubt it) | AlbertCory wrote: | I also doubt it. | | The standard playbook for an ambitious PM or L7 SWE is: | | 1) sell product internally 2) launch 3) get credit for | "impact" and get promoted thereby 4) transfer within | Alphabet, or quit 5) rinse and repeat | babypuncher wrote: | It was clear to me that Google was completely unprepared to enter | this market when their little display outside the big reveal was | a Sega Dreamcast, NES Power Glove, and a copy of E.T. for Atari | 2600. It was practically foreshadowing. | | I wouldn't be surprised if that display was pitched as a joke, | and some executive approved it knowing nothing about these | products. They just saw "Sega", "Nintendo", and "Atari" logos, | and loved their product launch being compared to these instantly | recognizable titans of the video game industry. | Ninjinka wrote: | Can we stop posting links from The Verge until they revert their | redesign? | drumhead wrote: | What a surprise! | retrocryptid wrote: | Google shuts down service. Film at 11. | MichaelCollins wrote: | I wonder if, in future months/years, we'll still see comments | complaining that Google's reputation for killing products is | unfair and exaggerated by a loud minority who are bitter about | Google Reader. I recall a few comments making this argument in | defense of Stadia's long-term viability. | solardev wrote: | Google's product strategy.. | | Google: We're going to launch a fancy new product in an already- | crowded field, not market it at all, and everyone will jump on | board and love it! | | Everyone else: No way, it's a PITA to port to, and knowing | Google, they're going to sunset it soon. | | Google: No we won't, we're fully dedicated to this thing | | Everyone else: No way, they haven't added meaningful features in | years and they're going to sunset it soon. | | Google: We're shifting our focus but we're still fully committed | to this thing. | | Everyone else: No way, they never cared about the home gaming | segment and they're going to sunset it soon. | | Google: We promise, we're in it for the long haul. | | Everyone: No way, they're going to sunset it soon. | | Google: Sorry, there's no way we could've seen this coming. We | devoted an entire month of resources to this project and thought | that was enough! Sadly it hasn't met our expectations. We're not | sure why more publishers and players didn't get involved, but | we're going to have it to shut it down. | | Everyone: No shit, lol. | | At least they're giving refunds. | Nokinside wrote: | Partial list of products where this applies: Meebo, Buzz, | Orkut, Google+, Notebook, SideWiki, Schemer, Spaces, Checkout, | Directory, Sync, Hangouts, iGoogle, Knol, Lively, Moderator, | .... | keewee7 wrote: | >not market it at all | | I noticed that too. Google never adversises its producta. | Google is almost like the startup founder who thinks their side | project is so good it doesn't need marketing or sales. | _visgean wrote: | I remember a talk given by chief of czech google at our | highschool, she told us that we are one of the few countries | where they had to use marketing to compete with for search | market (I remember seeing ads for Google chrome in metro when | it was new. ).. I think as a monopoly they just usually dont | feel the need for marketing when there is no else running | ads... | IntelMiner wrote: | I've been seeing ads for Chrome around northern Seattle | (Shoreline) area | | At first I was baffled why they would possibly need to | advertise Chrome in the US. But in retrospect it might just | be feather ruffling in Edge (Microsofts) backyard? | tmathmeyer wrote: | There's also the big one right here: https://www.google.c | om/maps/place/47%C2%B036'07.6%22N+122%C2... when you get | to downtown from the ID (where the 3d view shows a | verizon ad, it's now a "no place like chrome" ad. | stoplying1 wrote: | Are these new? Reddit had a particularly Firefox-meme | laden week last week after all of the MV3 chrome | discussions. | mrisoli wrote: | Chrome is core to Google's business so it's worth it | advertising, they also advertise the Pixel phone a lot in | high-end places in global cities because they need to | gain market share for mobile browsing and phones against | Apple. | | Anything else, not that important, even GCP which is | their major bet doesn't really get any ads because it's a | business product so not much sense in doing so. | | They seem to believe word of mouth/viral marketing works | because it worked for gmail and chrome, so they didn't | double down on Stadia before product market fit, and that | caused Stadia to fail(along with Google's short attention | span reputation). | ghaff wrote: | >Google never adversises its producta. | | Not really true (e.g. Chrome) but it's probably true they | advertise relatively little given their size. | yetanother4968 wrote: | They absolutely inundated YouTube with ads for Stadia for a | couple of months, to the point that it felt like half the ads | I saw were Stadia ads. So that's something, at least? | peeters wrote: | I wonder what the overlap is between Stadia's target market | and people who watch YouTube without blocking ads. | | It's not zero, because Chromecast doesn't block ads and | that's the natural fit for Stadia. But it's definitely not | 100% either. | johnnyanmac wrote: | I don't see ads at all, period. I either Ublock origin or | pay for a subscription. I pay for youtube premium. | | How would an ad reach me? Youtubers? Can Google use its | "contractors" to promote its own product? That just feels | weird. | permo-w wrote: | I have seen plenty of (annoying) stadia adverts | xendo wrote: | They just know first hand that online advertising is not | worth the money! | endtime wrote: | I mostly agree with you, but I downvoted your comment because | | > We devoted an entire month of resources to this project and | thought that was enough! | | ...is not just wildly inaccurate, but also disrespectful to the | people who spent years working on it. | sbierwagen wrote: | yifanl wrote: | What relationship does this anecdote have to this scenario | exactly, other than tenuously drawing a connection between | Google and baby grinding? | bastardoperator wrote: | I think what they're trying to say is that the stadia | engineers should have seen the writing on the wall, | coupled with the questionable history/actions of their | employer when it comes to products regardless of their | own good faith efforts as an employee. | literalAardvark wrote: | As a third party with no skin in the game: no idea but it | was hilarious. | doliveira wrote: | Dude, they're making half a million dollars a year, they're | gonna be fine | solardev wrote: | Sorry, but as a player, I honestly can't tell where that | effort went... feels like they abandoned it as soon as it | launched. | | Even at the time of its death, crossplay, cross save etc. | didn't work except for a tiny handful of games. The Stadia | Plus Chrome extension made a bunch of improvements on their | own. There was never a desktop app. No ultra wide support. No | RTX. Never got vsync working right. | | In the years it was alive, what did they add? How come | GeForce Now saw such activity and Stadia got... nothing? I | wouldn't blame the people working on it, but some manager in | Google really screwed that up. | robotnikman wrote: | GeForce now also had the major advantage of being able to | play games your already bought on Steam | solardev wrote: | Yeah, and it was a single switch that publishers could | check on/off, instead of having to port their entire game | to Linux and Vulkan (what a sibling post said) | chrsig wrote: | I can see where you're coming from. | | I think it's appropriate enough to interpret the commenter in | jest and see that their point is that google spent 1/nth of | the required time/resources necessary for it to succeed. | | In that light, it reads to me more like having some | understanding for the people working on it that they were set | up to fail, and the failure is not a reflection of their | effort. | parkingrift wrote: | >...is not just wildly inaccurate, but also disrespectful to | the people who spent years working on it. | | Fortunately you are here to be anonymously offended on their | behalf. | endtime wrote: | I'm not anonymous; it's easy to figure out my identify from | my HN profile. | | I didn't work on Stadia, but I did work on Google Fiber for | a couple years only to have almost all that work cancelled, | and I'm still sad about it many years later. At the time, I | really wouldn't have appreciated people on HN rubbing salt | in the wound. | causi wrote: | _but also disrespectful to the people who spent years working | on it._ | | Something being tragic doesn't make it not a waste of time. | The writing was on the wall since _day one_. Nobody was going | to pay full price for games that evaporate the moment the | servers shut down being offered by the most ADHD company in | existence. If you chose to spend your time and energy working | on that and expected to accomplish anything other than being | paid you were a fool. | endtime wrote: | The excerpt I quoted isn't about whether it was a waste of | time or a savvy career move, just about the total amount of | work that went into it. | lgats wrote: | https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656 | | @GoogleStadia "Stadia is not shutting down. Rest assured | we're always working on bringing more great games to the | platform and Stadia Pro. Let us know if you have other | questions." Jul 29, 2022 | | 2 Months ago | permo-w wrote: | how is this relevant to what they said? | tofuahdude wrote: | When the people who make the product literally publicly | lie (while being paid extremely well), comments like the | OP's (that are obviously tongue in cheek) are certainly | not "wildly inaccurate, but also disrespectful". | endtime wrote: | Why would you conflate some VP with the PMs and SWEs who | built the thing? | johnnyanmac wrote: | It's not a lie if they believed it. And I don't see how | this justifies calling the developers lazy. | dshpala wrote: | Disrespectful is interpreting words in bad faith. Obviously | OP didn't literally mean 1 month. | exolymph wrote: | It's exaggeration for rhetorical effect, an extremely common | stylistic device. | johnnyanmac wrote: | when everyone is "exaggerating" about how Google shuts | every single thing under the sun down, it ceases to seem | like a joke. | jamesgeck0 wrote: | > Everyone else: No way, it's a PITA to port to, and knowing | Google, they're going to sunset it soon. | | I've seen a few developers (Ryan Gordon, IIRC?) saying that the | Stadia SDK was actually great. It was basically just a bog | standard Vulkan/Linux environment with much fewer unpleasant | surprises than consoles. | cmrdporcupine wrote: | The whole stack was great. Google engineers worked their | asses off on it. Very smart people throughout. The management | was _awful_ though. | | In the 10 years I was at Google I never really had to face a | "crunch" situation but there I was right before Christmas | working til midnight on the very tiny bit of Stadia I had | somehow been dragged into despite telling my manager I didn't | want to be anywhere near it because it was _radioactive_ (My | rule learned the hard way was always stay away from the | "hot" project at a company like Google. It just becomes a | feeding frenzy of empire building and egos, and steady | incremental contribution will get you nowhere.) | | I had it much better than most though. If I recall: The | original app setup (integrated into the existing Home app) | was tossed at the last minute. The entire out of box process | for the controller redone in the process. In literally the | last few weeks before ship date. | | The controller folks I knew were heroes. It's sad to see | their hard work thrown away. | | There's no way Stadia in its entire existence made enough | revenue to cover the sheer number of SWE-hours put into it, | especially the spent SWE-hours caused by last minute product | changes; which nobody further up ever had to pay a | consequence for. | solardev wrote: | VS GeForce Now, where you check a box saying "I want my game | to be streamable" and then... you're done. | | https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/cloudgaming | johnnyanmac wrote: | Yup... until one day the game is taken off the story and | that checkbox removed. Big business is rough. | solardev wrote: | Then you lost the 15 minutes you took filling out that | form? And your players can still stream it elsewhere, | like Shadow or Luna? Doesn't seem terrible. | | VS the days/weeks/months it took you to port to Stadia, | only to have the entire service shut down. | | The point is that there are many PC streaming services | that are basically "no porting required", whereas Stadia | opted for a strange sort-of-console, sort-of-not model | (despite PSNow and XCloud already being able to stream | actual console games already) that required you to spend | dev hours porting your game. | | It backfired because most devs didn't want to (or | couldn't afford to) port their x86 game targeting Windows | to some tiny proprietary platform, ESPECIALLY when it's | Google hosting it. Of the few that did (Orcs Must Die), | Google arranged some exclusivity deal with them, lying | that Stadia could do things no gaming PC or cloud | streaming service could do due to Stadia's special scale | or something. It was a lie. When the exclusivity expired, | it showed up on Steam and GeForce Now and ran perfectly | fine, and got a lot more players to boot. | | Stadia had some really awesome tech -- namely the UX of | being able to boot straight into a game without waiting | for Steam Big Picture -- and some nifty (but relatively | useless) side features like being able to capture a | memory snapshot and resume that later, emulator-style. | But I don't think their management really understood the | PC gaming culture and what was truly important to its | user base, and failed to take years of pleading and | feedback into consideration. They just arrogantly did... | something else (or nothing much? I can't really tell)... | with Stadia and drove it into the ground. So sorry for | all the engineers who worked on it and had to see it | nosedive like that due to managerial incompetence. | | None of this was a surprise to any gamer actually | watching this space. Stadia came late, delivered less, | and exited early. Google's product culture doomed it from | the get-go. | gilrain wrote: | Aside from the unpleasant surprise of there not being an | audience. | dougmwne wrote: | There must have been hardly anyone stupid enough to buy many | games. It's probably not even much money to refund. | solardev wrote: | Not many games, but they didn't often have sales (so many | were stuck at MSRP for years), and they also had some | hardware sales (controllers, etc.) | | For Google it's chump change, I'm sure, but I still | appreciate it. I bought like two titles on there before | realizing it was a doomed effort... meanwhile GeForce Now | sees _very_ active improvements and a much bigger library. | jpeter wrote: | Would be cool if I could use stadia hardware for GeForce | now | solardev wrote: | Yeah, too bad those controllers don't work as generic | Bluetooth ones :( | | (if you didn't know, though, xbox controllers do work | great with geforce now) | dougmwne wrote: | GeForce now is great and if I ever get a new gaming PC, I | can play every last game on my own GPU. The tech works | perfectly, the free tier is generous and the subscription | is a value. Stadia was behind the moment they launched and | flat out refused to give an inch to improve the product. | | This is a company so obviously in love with its incredible | success from ages gone by that it thinks we still owe it | our brand loyalty. We do not. | oofbey wrote: | Beautiful observation on Ars Technica[1]: "Google's damaged | reputation made the death of Stadia a self-fulfilling prophecy. | No one buys Stadia games because they assume the service will be | shut down, and Stadia is forced to shut down because no one buys | games from it." | | [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/google-stadia- | offici... | avereveard wrote: | Surprising no one, | type0 wrote: | _As expected(tm)_ for a Google project | tpmx wrote: | So since Google is refunding the likely relatively small number | of hardware purchases, the losers here are: | | - Game developers who spent time/focus/money on porting their | game(s) to Stadia. | | - Google. | pauby wrote: | [deleted] | xkbarkar wrote: | I use gmail, photos and youtube, thats it. Pretty much anything | from google that I have used in the past has shut down in a few | years. | | So I dont touch anything new from them at all. Pointless. | | Good job google. | Yhippa wrote: | I wish they'd refund my Stadia Pro monthly subscription fees. | erwinh wrote: | The main thing that initially got me excited with Stadia were the | ideas around having much bigger shared gaming worlds enabled by | google-scale cloud expertise. | | Too bad that all it turned out to result in was video streaming | optimisation. | n8cpdx wrote: | At what point does working for Google (on anything released after | 2008) go from being prestigious to embarrassing? | tshaddox wrote: | Well, we're still at the point where, for nearly everyone who | worked on Google products between 2008 and now, it was | financially lucrative and great for their resumes. | scottyah wrote: | Why are so many of you here so bitter against this company? | short_sells_poo wrote: | They have/had incredible potential. Imagine what a company | with Google's resources _could_ do. They have simultaneously | the sharpest minds on the planet and a vast treasure chest of | unprecedented proportions at their disposal. | | What do they do? They invent ever more insidious ways of | extract more money from advertising. Yes there are plenty of | side shows and feel good projects, but everything is drowned | out by systematically abusive behavior in the ad business and | a seeming inability to deliver any other product and keep it | functioning. | | It feels like a terrible misallocation of resources. Maybe it | isn't, but it certainly feels like it. | BiteCode_dev wrote: | Because in the 2000, many of use got fooled believing "do no | evil" and their hacker heart, only to see unfold the next 2 | decades with sadness. | yamtaddle wrote: | They turned evil when they started putting ads inline with | search results. The main utility of that is to trick | unsophisticated or unwary users, so basically they're preying | on the elderly (among others), but it made the line go up and | to the right, so they don't care. | | Plus any company with a core business model of "being a | super-creepy stalker... but at scale and with an eternal | memory" is inherently terrible and shouldn't exist. | [deleted] | mrweasel wrote: | I think it stems for their beginning. The Google search page | was innovative, in showing that you didn't need to be flashy, | just good at what you do. The same for Gmail, which was an | awesome product and completely changed how people use email. | Even the original Google ads where viewed extremely | favorable, as it showed that you could make money on ads, | without them being obnoxious. | | Google was, for a long time, viewed as the answer to | everything that was wrong with search, emails, ads, office | work and much more. Rather than changing the world, Google | adopted all the things we had hoped they'd save us from, just | so they could make more money. | | That being said, I just ignore anything coming from Google | these days. The only two Google products I use are Google | Maps and YouTube. Oh, three maybe as I do like Go. | Kye wrote: | I remember the first time I saw someone mention Google. It | was just so obviously better than what came before. That's | rare. Most improvements on technology have to prove | themselves over time and slowly build a following. Google | was so amazing it grew to IPO through the .com crash and | the early 2000s recession. For a time, everything they | launched was gold. No one seemed to notice or care that | everything was still "beta" years after sweeping each | market. | n8cpdx wrote: | It's not just Google, but the cause for embarrassment at | other formerly prestigious places is different and not | relevant. | | I used to dream of working on the Windows experience, but I | can't imagine how awful those roles must be. And having to | tell someone I had a hand in creating the Windows 11 UI | cluster**. I think I'd rather say I work at Oracle. | dekhn wrote: | Mainly because of wasted potential, in my case. They | revolutionized the internet (repeatedly) with a great product | and found a reasonably unobtrusive method to monetize it, | then moved into creating replacements for Microsoft products | (browser, calendar, email, documents) and I thought they | would then pivot into cloud as a good competitor to AWS, | whilst also spending their copious profits on long-term | scientific research projects and helping bring ML advances to | the larger community. | | It's even worse for me because I worked there for over a | decade, was successful beyond my wildest dreams, helped | leadership build and launch products, produced papers and | intellectual property with my computing heros, and finally, | couldn't really work in any of the parts of the company it | made sense to, because of gatekeepers and assholes, and | repeatedly had to explain to my managers how everything they | were asking for (to make the VPs happy) were making Google's | products worse. What's really sad is that there is a | technical core of people there I truly enjoyed working with | and learning from, and few of them get to do the stuff they | know would help google, and instead spend most of their time | fighting bureaucracy to get even the simplest changes pushed. | my_usernam3 wrote: | As an ex fanboy (or fanboy lite) who has circled into hater | section of recent, I can give you MY reasoning. | | For starters theres the whole "we're not evil", and slowly | becoming evil with obsessive data mining. But it's a huge | company, so only strike 1. | | They haven't released any useful innovation in my eyes, | despite hoarding all the smartest people. Strike 2. | | And the biggest strike to me is the significant decrease in | product quality that I use. My google searches suck now, maps | has become bloated with ads, and I don't even know what | happened to messenger, but its pretty unusable for my friends | and I that even the ones that work at google now text. Maybe | a lot of this is the fault of companies aggressively | marketing irrelevant things to get clicks, but to me, it's a | platform problem. Strike 3, I'm a hater. | | Again YMMV, but this is my reasoning. | questime wrote: | They have by far the most awful customer service of any big | tech company. One or two experiences of dealing with issues | (in my case Google Fi) turns you into a life long hater. | rizzaxc wrote: | Because they started out good ("dont be evil" and all), | providing an exceptional yet fundamental internet service but | somewhere along the way they lost the plot. They now hoard | enormous wealth by shoving ads to our faces yet have done | nothing with the money. Not to mention their engineering | culture goes directly against the spirit of this site (rest'n | vest vs startup's hustle culture). They're the hero turned | villain all start ups fear they'll become | [deleted] | keepquestioning wrote: | emptyfile wrote: | When they literally had to remove "don't be evil" as their | company slogan, on account of how evil they are, that did it | for me. | xtracto wrote: | I am not a fanboy, have never been a fanboy and never cared | about the "do no evil" marketing motto or any other Google | crap. I am bitter against Google because it plainly sucks. | Their products suck, they have "soft monopolies" and they | have used them to Embrace Extend and Extinguish any | alternatives. They are what Microsoft was in the 1990s-2000s. | If you are young enough to remember the 90s and 00s Microsoft | you will understand. | | Note that I not _only_ hate Google, I hate Google, Apple, | Facebook and the current state of the web. I guess that makes | me an old fart. | cbozeman wrote: | You're being downvoted, and I have _no idea_ why. | | It _is_ embarrassing. It 's not just embarrassing, it's | _fucking_ embarrassing. | | Google Stadia could have been enormously successful. What | killed it? The same thing killing all manner of innovation in | this country - poor broadband Internet service. | | But... oh God, if only... if only Google had _something_ they | could use... something they could _do_ to solve this problem!? | | Oh... wait, yeah. They _have their own fucking fiber ISP_! | Google _could have_ ponied up money and started building out | their fiber infrastructure massively, dumping whatever loads of | cash were required, and they could easily have eaten up huge | chunks of metro and suburban areas in America and might even be | one of the leading ISPs in the nation. | | But this speaks to the utter weakness and spinelessness of | Google leadership up and down the entire chain. If you're | stupid and/or naive enough to think Comcast and Spectrum and | Verizon and Charter and AT&T are just going to let you waltz in | and _steal their customers_ (and yes, these ISPs do think this | way - you are THEIR customer - to be milked of money), you | should never have entered into the ISP business in the first | place. You have to throw sharp elbows. You have to gouge out | eyes. You have to break bones. ISPs are ruthless. | | If Google had been willing to sacrifice some of their profits | for the past 12 years and bribe - sorry, """""""lobby""""""" | all the necessary local, county, state, and federal officials - | they could have moved in on all the shitty ISP's territories, | laid down a ton of fiber, and might even have a majority | control of Internet access both residentially and commercially. | | But Google has long suffered from two overlapping problems: | fear of failure and intolerance for anything less than instant | success. The road to becoming America's best ISP will be a | long, hard, miserable, expensive one for any company... but | when you've got literally billions of dollars of cash at your | disposal, you could throw the shit away on short-term dipshit | Wall Street investors... _or_ you could build something that | would last for 50+ years and generate an enormous amount of | revenue in a decade or two. | | Too bad they're focused on short-term dipshit Wall Street | investors. | throwaway991122 wrote: | Full disclosure: I work at AT&T but not directly on fiber. My | views are my own and do not represent my employers. | | Scaling fiber is hard and expensive. It's a labor intensive | process to get all the permits and get people to go and dig | trenches and wire up homes. In sparsely populated areas you | have the cost of laying lots of fiber and not ever having the | hope of recovering your investment. In densely populated | areas you need to relay cable and rewire apartments and | homes. It's a slow along and the USA is a really BIG place. | | I'm not privy to the politics but Google has oodles of $$. | They could lobby effectively if they were interested. | Lobbying happens - and like anything else its a tool to use. | Google would use it against competitors if they were able to. | so ISPs use it. They could have bought 5g spectrum. They | could have started something like Starlink instead they play | around with balloons. They had the $$ to muscle into that. | So, the only thing I can guess is that they aren't / weren't | interested in the ISP business to begin with. The Fiber | misadventure was just that - something they thought they | could easily scale, tried it and got out when they understood | the reality on the ground. | | Also- I don't think working for Google is embarrassing. They | deprecate products quickly before they become a ball and | chain on your bottom line. Working for Google remains as | prestigious as ever. | pkulak wrote: | If you're a manager, why the hell are you going to risk your | career trying to get the last guy's project to work? There | are two incentives in corporate America: start a project to | get the praise for something new, and kill a project to get | the praise for saving money. Is it any wonder projects keep | popping in and out of existence? | colejohnson66 wrote: | > You're being downvoted, and I have _no idea_ why. | | Because calling people's job choices "embarrassing", no | matter how right you may be, isn't a good starting argument | against the people in those jobs. Not to mention that it | comes off as pretentious. | cbozeman wrote: | Cole, do you know what working at Google is fast becoming | like? | | It's like going to Harvard. | | You don't want to advertise that you went to Harvard. | People who attended Harvard not only admit this, they don't | even actively proclaim they went to Harvard any longer. Why | is that? Because a bunch of really shitty people have | sullied the reputation. | | It isn't that way with Google _for the general public_ , | but the SV folks know that Google of 2022 is nothing like | Google of 2012, and _certainly_ nothing like Google of | 2002. | | My great fear is that it won't be much longer before saying | you work at Google in say, 2025-2032 is like saying you | work at Hewlett-Packard or IBM in 2022. The prestige is | long gone. | ohgodplsno wrote: | No, Google upper management is a bunch of incompetent | clowns, and they should rightly be called out for it. | | Working at Google today, you better be in just for the 200k | salary, because your options there are to sell ads or work | on a product that's going to be shut down in a week. | encryptluks2 wrote: | What major projects get shut down in the same week and | what ads do you think they are selling? | zeruch wrote: | "fear of failure and intolerance for anything less than | instant success...focused on short-term dipshit Wall Street | investors" | | A nice distillation of most of SV these days. | wcfields wrote: | Love the foreshadowing of it being a total flop from the launch | exhibition: | https://twitter.com/AllGamesDelta_/status/119683308108220416... | | "Remember when Google compared Stadia with the Powerglove, Atari | ET and the Dreamcast?" | bogwog wrote: | The thing I remembered most from that launch was when Sundar | Pichai walked on stage of this massive product launch, in front | of the entire gaming industry filled with skeptics, and the | first words out of his mouth were "I'll admit, I'm not much of | a gamer". | nemanja wrote: | Really grateful for the major contribution Google made to the | WebRTC over the years, driven by the Stadia effort. They | relatively quickly turned it into a viable, production worthy, | real-time protocol. Brought up the state of the art in browser- | based streaming and reduced complexity in a big way. There were | things you simply couldn't do in the browser before WebRTC (e.g. | UDP streaming) and many other things were significantly more | complex and browser-specific (e.g. tapping into hardware | decoders). They were also very receptive to external | contributions, which is really nice to see in a major corporate- | driven open source project. | saurik wrote: | While Stadia did cause them to do more work on WebRTC (AFAIK | mostly with latency), their WebRTC efforts--and you are | referencing high-level stuff, not low-level Stadia-specific | details--was mostly driven by Google Hangouts, not Stadia. | oramit wrote: | I was expecting there to be some satisfaction at this news as I | (and many others clearly from the comments) predicted this would | happen. But honestly it just feels kind of sad at this point. | Google used to be, at least from an outside perspective, one of | the most innovative and forward thinking companies, constantly | releasing new and interesting products. Not everything was good, | of course, but I was always eager to give things a try. | | Now Google is a paint-by-ads corporate behemoth. I've been burnt | so many times that I'm now skeptical of every new thing they | release instead of excited. I hate feeling that way, especially | because Stadia itself is so technically impressive, but how else | can I feel? | dougmwne wrote: | I was done feeling sad many years ago. It has been absolutely | ages since there was anything interesting from them. I can't | even recall the last product that seemed like a real | innovation. Possibly the first chromecast in 2013? That's 10 | years without a hit. At this point they are covered in cobwebs. | acheron wrote: | AppleTV had already existed for years by then, including with | Airplay. | | I would say 2005 with Google Maps. | dougmwne wrote: | Alright, I admit it was not incredibly ground breaking. | Reason it impressed was that it was a very small, cheap and | simple UI device that showed how to execute an IOT device | well. It went on to be very popular and it was obvious from | the start that it would be successful. And as far as I | understand it was developed internally, not acquired like | basically every other google product from the past 20 | years. | | Google maps was quite impressive, but it was also cobbled | together from several acquisitions. In fact, Google Earth | Desktop is still basically the same software they bought | from Keyhole in 2004. | timmg wrote: | > Google used to be, at least from an outside perspective, one | of the most innovative and forward thinking companies, | constantly releasing new and interesting products. | | Honestly, I think the change from a SWE CEO (Schmidt -- and | less so Larry) to a PM CEO, Sundar, is probably the main | reason. | | I get why, though. At the time of Sundar's rise, it was clear | that Apple was _way_ better at making "products". (Now they're | just a _lot_ better :) | rvz wrote: | Unsurprising, as I knew it was going to shut down already as I | said in 2021: [0] | | >> I'm from the future. Stadia (was) a platform that tried to | change gaming and replace consoles or gaming PCs by using the | cloud to play games on any screen. Unfortunately, the gamers said | no and ignored it. Then it shut itself down and went to the | Google graveyard. [0] | | This is the second time I have seen them shutdown as I already | said this before: [1] | | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27039202 | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32278255 | jordanmorgan10 wrote: | The most inevitable gaming news in the history of ever. | nope96 wrote: | well, I have this shrink wrapped Stadia box I got from the | Cyberpunk deal I procrastinated on, and never opened. Is it | worthless or does the controller work on other platforms? I think | it also came with a gen 2 Chromecast, but I think that's pretty | obsolete now too? | falcolas wrote: | This is a great example of why you can _never_ trust PR | statements. They outright lie. We 're not working on X. We won't | shut down Y. Bald faced lies. | | Edit: Missed that they're doing refunds. That part's good. | | EDIT2: Why I'm calling it a lie: These decisions are not made on | a whim. They're made months if not years in advance. A public | company making public statements about how you're not shutting | something down while you're internally mapping out the shutdown | process... that's a lie. | kshacker wrote: | Wonder if the CEOs can be made to sign (and stand behind) such | statements, like CEOs/CFOs were made to stand behind financial | statements. | | Although I guess financial statements are quarterly, PR | statements are dime a dozen. | xd1936 wrote: | July 29: | | https://twitter.com/GoogleStadia/status/1552989433590214656 | drcongo wrote: | This is also a great example of why you can never trust Google. | ugjka wrote: | They shut down everything that does not "print" money for | them. I guess they were expecting to beat Steam and that | didn't happen so... bye bye | scottyah wrote: | Or the PR teams are just misinformed? | | Some intern doing customer support on twitter isn't going to be | invited to long term strategy/budget meetings | [deleted] | tshaddox wrote: | That's still a lie from whichever individual or group of | individuals you consider to have agency over the matter. Like | sure, maybe the individual who physically typed the tweet had | little or no agency, but it's still reasonable to call it a | lie when the responsible agent was deliberately making a | false statement. | mr-yamasi wrote: | Is it even in the realm of possibility that Google, of all | companies, has an intern with zero insight into the long term | strategy manage the twitter account AND make definitive | public statements? | jnwatson wrote: | Or even more likely, management changes their mind. | | It is obvious that Google is battening the hatches for a | recession. Economic conditions looks worse than just a few | months ago. They've already reduced their Area 120 | investments. This makes sense to cut as well. | | Disclosure: Googler but have no inside info. | Karunamon wrote: | That remains a lie by incompetence. Just because Google can't | be bothered get their product and PR people on the same page | doesn't excuse the entity named Google from making misleading | statements. | falcolas wrote: | That's a leadership problem, not a rogue intern problem. | | And I'm sure some Google Shareholders will be grumbling about | it too, since this represents a non-trivial loss of revenue | thanks to the (IMO appropriate) refunds, since it represents | a material change in the value of stocks purchased between 60 | days ago and today. | foobiekr wrote: | As a rule, with corporations, official denials can be thought | of as unofficial confirmations. Occasionally this is not true, | but for the most part they wouldn't be responding unless the | issue was credible and at least a few parties had strong reason | to believe whatever it is they're denying. | encryptluks2 wrote: | I was hoping they would open source the technology for this. | Also, instead of flat out killing it having an option of running | it yourself on your own hardware would have been pretty | phenomenal. | Reason077 wrote: | Hopefully this means they will release the streaming rights for | PUBG, so it can finally come back to GeForce NOW? | | Ever since they banned keyboard & mouse PUBG play (forcing you to | use the game controller) I pretty much gave up on Stadia. | skerit wrote: | Are they even capable of launching any new products? Nobody | trusts Google to keep anything. | snthd wrote: | Google need to open source and unlock the controllers - otherwise | they just created a mountain of e-waste. | sphars wrote: | I agree, I have the controller and it's pretty decent | ergonomics-wise for me. Just hate that I have to use it wired | if I want to use it for other PC games. | MrWiffles wrote: | You know, this gave me an idea: I'd love to see legislation | that states that when a company the size of Google, Microsoft, | etc. launches a product like this, then kills it off, that they | MUST open source the proprietary parts inside of it. Not just | for hardware like controller firmware etc. but also for | software they used to create it. Obviously the games themselves | in the case are IP owned by other firms so that would be | exempt, but I think this would go a long way to forcing | companies to stick it out with supporting products and | customers they create over longer periods of time or not launch | things flippantly in the first place. | onion2k wrote: | _they MUST open source the proprietary parts inside of it_ | | This would have no impact on anything. If they had to share | IP after shutting it down they'd just restructure the | business so that Stadia licensed IP from Google Streaming | Gaming Technology LLP, and do the all the real work in that | absolutely-definitely-a-separate-company-look-the-logo-is-a- | different-shape part of Alphabet instead. | MrWiffles wrote: | Eh, there's probably ways to mitigate that from a | legislative point of view. The point of this was to make | the act of shutting products down all willy-nilly like this | less attractive, and if they keep doing it at least the | world at large gets a little something out of it. But | you're not wrong in pointing out they'll do everything they | can to sidestep accountability and screw the little guy, | either. I'm just hoping there's some way we can make that | more trouble than it's worth. | bogwog wrote: | Maybe it would work if it was based on the production | volume and product category, not the size of the company. | Not sure how the IP thing would work, but making it | possible to reuse/recycle electronics that would | otherwise end up in a landfill due to no other reason | than software locks is a good idea. | | But forcing a company to relinquish its intellectual | property just because they're successful seems counter- | intuitive. Maybe they just need to make it possible to | install alternative firmware (whether or not it exists) | in a reasonable way for no additional cost. | MrWiffles wrote: | Yeah I should have thought that through a bit more before | posting it. | | > Maybe it would work if it was based on the production | volume and product category, not the size of the company. | Not sure how the IP thing would work, but making it | possible to reuse/recycle electronics that would | otherwise end up in a landfill due to no other reason | than software locks is a good idea. | | THIS! | | > But forcing a company to relinquish its intellectual | property just because they're successful seems counter- | intuitive. Maybe they just need to make it possible to | install alternative firmware (whether or not it exists) | in a reasonable way for no additional cost. | | Well, this too, with a twist... | | I'm not saying they have to relinquish their IP. There's | a difference between open sourcing something and | relinquishing intellectual property. One says "the world | can USE this" and the other says "the world can use this | and somebody can PROFIT FROM IT." I'm saying exclusively | the former. I'm not OK with them being forced to allow | somebody else to pick up their work and make money on it | without them getting a cut purely because the government | forced that function, that's not ok. So maybe if there's | going to be a forcing function here there needs to be | some kind of licensing that allows their IP to be used | purely in non-profit contexts. | | ...but then again, coming back to my whole "should have | thought it through before posting" notion, no profit | might mean no maintaining body. So...I dunno. | | It just rubs me the wrong way that Google launches new | products and kills just as many every single year, and | loads of people worldwide get screwed in the process | while they get away with it every single time. If they're | going to keep doing this, and let's face it, they are, | the world at large oughtta get a little something out of | it. Seems like having them open source the thing they're | clearly not going to make any money on anyway is the | right thing to do here. | Grazester wrote: | This! I would love this! | rocky1138 wrote: | They aren't just regular old Bluetooth? | 0x457 wrote: | No, that how google was able to achieve better latency and | allowed using it on Chromecast devices. The controller has | Bluetooth used only for setting it up, from there it's Wi-Fi | that used to send input directly to the cloud instead of "BT | to showing the stream and then to the cloud". | | I wish they enable Bluetooth for it because it's an excellent | controller. I use it to play Halo on xCloud via iPad... | SV_BubbleTime wrote: | >I wish they enable Bluetooth for it because it's an | excellent controller. I use it to play Halo on xCloud via | iPad... | | He's too dangerous to allow to live. | 0x457 wrote: | haha, I know it's very cursed setup. | lokar wrote: | Wifi | waltbosz wrote: | A friend gave me a Amazon Luna controller he didn't want. | | I was pleasantly surprised that the controller synced via BT. | I was able to play non-Luna FireTV games with no problems. | | It even worked without the Luna software installed on my | FireTV Stick (I don't recommend you buy a FireTV stick, nor | any FireTV product really). | | The concept of the Luna software is interesting: Cloud | streamed HD gaming on low-end hardware. Game play was really | responsive. Very little video artifacts. But like all other | FireTV products, the UX was geared towards sales, not user | ergonomics. | | I plan to uninstall the Luna app and just play the few FireTV | games that I have. Sadly Alto's Adventure is too resource | intense for my FireTV Stick. | shadowgovt wrote: | They're WiFi, I believe. | Hamuko wrote: | If I remember correctly, they do have Bluetooth hardware | inside them but I think it might only be used for pairing. | Not sure if someone could hack it to work via Bluetooth as | well. | | Of course, USB remains an option. | | EDIT: Yup, official Google Store specs list "Bluetooth" and | "Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) 4.2". | sphars wrote: | They have bluetooth and wi-fi hardware but currently locked | and can't be used outside of Stadia. Wired USB works as a | normal controller though. | gpt5 wrote: | They can be used over USB | tpmx wrote: | There must be several thousands of them! | PAPPPmAc wrote: | I got one of the free promotional Controller + Chrome Cast | Ultra "Premier Edition" bundles they were seeding to YouTube | Premium customers out of sheer curiosity. I tried it for the | free month, and hadn't taken the controller out of its box | since (I do get a fair amount of use out of the Chromecast). | | The whole system is a _staggering_ technological achievement of | (unnecessary) complexity getting a pile of devices closely | synchronized over the network with ... absolutely no realistic | use case. | | I just dug the controller out, it does work wired as a USB-C | HID1.1 Gamepad device (18D1:9400). 2 analog sticks, 2 analog | triggers, 15 buttons (including pressed/not pressed for the | analog triggers), and an analog alias for the D-Pad (just | returns min/max when pressed). Doesn't look like the 3.5mm | headphone jack does anything when connected via USB, I'm not | seeing a bonus audio device or anything. | | It doesn't look like it presents as a normal Bluetooth | controller (by testing or by the docs | https://support.google.com/stadia/answer/9338851?hl=en ), I | think the weird hybrid WiFi for comms/Bluetooth for pairing | thing they did would require some hacking and/or published | specs to use it wirelessly with anything other than a Stadia | setup - or for Google to politely release a firmware update to | enable normal BT controller behavior since they imply it's | possible. They are apparently pretty nasty to get apart ( | https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Google_Stadia_Controller ) for | physical tampering, though there is a fairly substantial | computer system in it | http://en.techinfodepot.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Google_Stadia_(H2... | . | | It's actually a pretty comfortable controller, but it just | became an amusing collectors item so I think mine will continue | to sit in its box. | icelancer wrote: | It's a great controller, you're right! Very comfortable and | my goto on emulators. | | I also looked into the weird WiFi/Bluetooth hybrid protocol | stack. It's really impressive, and as far as I know, not | jailbroken. Also massively overengineered. | | They tried really hard with Stadia, at least at the hardware | and streaming level. It's just that no one wanted it. They | are before their time; PS Plus and GeForce Go are seeing | adoption for streaming games. I bet it'll be popular in 3-5 | years, maybe sooner. It's just that Google isn't a reliable | carrier for this service, and they don't have enough | patience. | jpace121 wrote: | Lol. At this point Google needs to be very careful about the | reputation they have about support for anything outside their | core. | pjmlp wrote: | Really?!? What a surprise! /s | | They wanted game devs, with a strong Windows development culture, | to port their games into a Linux distribution, using bare bones | tooling vs Windows/Console devkits, a huge investment into a | company that is known for quickly dropping products when not | profitable enough. | | Naturally most didn't even bothered. | balozi wrote: | I expect a half-hearted rebranding effort followed by another | ill-fated relaunch in the near future. Because Google is Google. | groestl wrote: | "make it available to our industry partners" Read: the military, | right? | pootpucker wrote: | dqpb wrote: | Google has built an incredible self-fulfilling prophecy. | lakomen wrote: | I'll just say this... If you can't pirate on it, it won't | succeed. | mrkramer wrote: | This is Google's modus operandi; if they can't dominate the | particular market and gain monopol, they will simply shut it | down. Why bother losing money or breaking even when you can go to | some other niche and try to dominate it and monopolize the | market. | ohgodplsno wrote: | I still have fond memories of users here telling me that I | shouldn't shit on Stadia, that it was the future of gaming and | that Phil Harrison is a fucking hack that keeps failing upwards | despite fucking up every single product he has been on. | | Thanks Phil for proving you truly are a bottomless pit in which | companies can throw money in to make it disappear. | pqwEfkvjs wrote: | IMO Stadia was born dead because of the lag built into its | design. Most googlers I talked to when it was announced did not | think about it at all, it was all about how cool the stack behind | it was, but from a gamer's perspective I was just terrified about | the idea. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-09-29 23:00 UTC)