Pivoting is seen as a tremendously good thing in the startup community. If you have a product that isn't working and isn't getting users, you do something different or your company dies. You simply cannot keep throwing developer time at such a product.
Google has a lot more money than a startup and can afford to waste developer time, but it still isn't good. "We tried this thing out and it didn't get a lot of users" is an absolutely reasonable argument for killing a product. Google just gets known for killing products because they are so big and therefore start so many new products.
>This is bizarre to me. Pivoting is seen as a tremendously good thing in the startup community.
What's good for the startup community is not the same for the entrenched behemoth community.
>. If you have a product that isn't working and isn't getting users, you do something different or your company dies. You simply cannot keep throwing developer time at such a product.
Google however can. But instead of developing their product further, they announce it as the next thing, get millions of users, and then forget about it, don't update it, don't promote it anymore, and eventually close it pissing off all those users and failing to attract more users due to their own inaction.
(See the ex-googler's comment above about how this process goes).
Nobody misses products that aren't working, or that aren't satisfying anyone's needs. In the very article you are commenting on, the author says "Good riddance" to the Chrome extension that has been superceded by Gmail's offline capability.
Killing a thriving service is not the same as pulling the plug on one that no one uses.
Pivoting is seen as a tremendously good thing in the startup community. If you have a product that isn't working and isn't getting users, you do something different or your company dies. You simply cannot keep throwing developer time at such a product.
Google has a lot more money than a startup and can afford to waste developer time, but it still isn't good. "We tried this thing out and it didn't get a lot of users" is an absolutely reasonable argument for killing a product. Google just gets known for killing products because they are so big and therefore start so many new products.