> Has Google launched one successful new product in the last 10-15 years?
What exactly is considered a success here? That it lives on for at least a decade? More than N active users per month?
I think the reason they graveyard so many products is because their line of "successful" is much higher than what a scrappy startup would consider success. So even products with thousands of active users would be put to their death bed instead of iterated upon.
Sure, but that sounds like an awful business strategy. I would imagine people who have been burned by google dropping support being less likely to use new google products in the future
So where can I buy the original Pixel, new, with warranty, and with the latest software? I can't, because new version have come out since, just like, for example, Google's chat applications have been "killed", but a new version has always been made
Pixel is a line of hardware products, and to stay competitive in Google's target market, new hardware releases are essentially necessary. Likewise the common thinking in the industry (correct or not, and most likely case-by-case) is that keeping production of older models up and running isn't viable. That's the same reason you can't get first-gen iPhones anymore.
With software, you have the benefit of not having to scrap the entire product at once -- you can keep the sites, domains, brand, whatever -- and because the vast majority of users on something like Hangouts used the official client, you could get away with arbitrary API and interface changes without losing (nearly as much) brand momentum.
Is this really preventing users from using old hardware? Are old devices being bricked?
Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see drivers getting open sourced when they're going out of support, but on its own, not doing so isn't preventing people from using old hardware in most cases.
In any case, in your opinion, does a successful hardware product have to open-source its drivers and specs at EOL? Is any other hardware product a failure by that metric?
What exactly is considered a success here? That it lives on for at least a decade? More than N active users per month?
I think the reason they graveyard so many products is because their line of "successful" is much higher than what a scrappy startup would consider success. So even products with thousands of active users would be put to their death bed instead of iterated upon.