Ask HN: Why Google shut down business.site website feature?

[ms7892]

Hi HN,

I was wondering why Google shut down the business.website feature it helped me to bring a handful of orders for my local bakery.

Any clue or insight why Google did this?

[i4i]

Anything that Google does apart from make money selling ads and turning the internet into an ad cesspool functions as a smoke screen to fool the public (and their employees) into thinking they do anything of real value or that serves the community. All of it https://killedbygoogle.com/ serves as a (relatively) inexpensive marketing tool.

[LargeWu]

Google operates like a slot machine. They place a bunch of bets, some big, and some small, and see what pays off. Most of them don't, and they get shuttered. At the end of the day all Google cares about are the jackpots.

[alberth → LargeWu]

The mantra of "fail-fast" can be painful for customers (even though it's cheered in these forums) ...

Especially when the definition of what "success" looks like is defined by a major player who expects major outcomes.

[KomoD]

Probably didn't make them enough money. But you can still use Google Sites, at least until they decide to shut that down too :)

[kennydude]

Google likes to shutter things all of the time which is a bit of a shame. It does show that having a website which shows your business is a good thing.

Sadly while not free, having your own site could help plug the gap from the service (happy to discuss this on email/call)