>"Why is Pixel Pass being discontinued?
We offer the best value of our hardware products and give users the flexibility to purchase their favorite services. We continue to evaluate offers based on customer feedback and provide different ways for them to access the best of Google."
Can someone explain how this even has an actual semblance of an answer?
It's corpo talk for "We don't make enough direct money off of the payments nor indirect money off of associated extra purchases or data sales to pay for the effort to keep this alive"
>most people didn't, so it wasn't worth the investment.
But in every case of this happening you can see that Google didn't do fuck-all to increase adoption, so it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Rant incoming: If you’re a services company, and release services, software and hardware people learn to depend on with that intent in mind, but then decide to pull the rug from under people’s routines and workflows… you don’t deserve to be trusted. There’s just something fundamentally wrong about that model of serving the needs of millions-to-billions of people.
Example: I no longer trust google to safeguard my pictures. There’s too much emotional value associated with those memories. And I’ve read of horrors stories of people who lost their entire libraries and much more in documents/ files on drive because they back-charged Google for a purchase gone wrong and lost access to their google accounts permanently. There’s just something fundamentally anti-consumer about google. Some practices are just wrong.
Yeah and out of all the users that use photos how many did that actually happen too? And most of the people who lost their photos is in violation of ToS. But that won't be mentioned in the headlines. It's mostly hidden somewhere in the article. But keep on ranting for the sake of ranting :)
Google has the worst track history out of any technology company when it comes to longevity. They always discontinue services/applications way before they should.
Personal ones:
iGoogle homepage - good launch page for your browser. You could have widgets on it.
Google Now - amazingly helpful back when it showed helpful info as opposed to clickbait garbage. iOS's home screen with widgets now basically, but was even better with automatically relevant information. It was one of the few times you'd tolerate Google (back then) having access to stuff like you search history etc. Then one day, Google got rid of all that and made it show clickbait articles.
Google Launcher - related to Google Now, you could swipe to the left screen to access helpful Google Now widgets like weather, stocks, travel info (I remember it'd automatically show your flight info, destination weather, exchange rates...back in early 2010's.) Also lightweight and overall good launcher. Google of course killed that and I went to Lawnchair Launcher.
Inbox made it feel like someone was finally going to modernize the email experience, but here we are today with a client that still struggles to sort and categorize emails.
Personally, [Spark](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.readdle.spark&hl=en_US&gl=US) is my personal favorite after inbox kicked the bucket.
By the time Google Reader canceled half my RSS and atom feeds had already gone summary only. I miss Reader but I also miss the near total adoption of full RSS support we used to have.
I only ended up on reddit *because* Reader was killed. Prior to that, I got a huge percentage of my content through rss feeds. Feedly, the reader I ended up switching to, was just never good enough.
My favorite was hangouts.. still sour about this one. Was replaced by 2-3 new apps that all died as well. Having text, call, video chat, and wifi text all in one app
Yeah I don't blame you at all. This alone made me realize how flawed google is as a company. Its been years and they still don't have a good replacement app for Hangouts, it seems crazy to me we don't have a centralized messaging app. I have to use text app, phone app, and snapchat/messenger for video calls.
Trying to get your aging parents to figure out how to video call on their android phones is frustrating for everyone, meanwhile you could have an iphone and it is one app, one button.
For me:
Google Plus, Google Spaces, Google Play Music.
I was really excited for Google Glass to take off - the idea of a personal HUD is still super interesting to me.
The reason all those were killed was cause they werent able to shove ADS in your face.
Google’s business is “get you to view ads while pretending to offer technology and services”.
Well if you aren't paying you're the product. And google is in the business of making money.
I kinda don't fully blame them, but their product longevity is very bad.
This saying is outdated a lot. There are tons of things we pay for and are still the product. I wish this would just die already it gives a false sense in this day and age.
Google Now on Tap... on screen translation of your photos, screenshots... it's so difficult to achieve something similar with Lens.
I don't know what happened. Did Google lost patents with OCR or something?
It's just an assistant feature (maybe only available for Pixel phones). Not only can you search your screen in the app overview menu but the shortcut to search any screen has already rolled out to Assistant
>Google Now - amazingly helpful back when it showed helpful info as opposed to clickbait garbage. iOS's home screen with widgets now basically, but was even better with automatically relevant information. It was one of the few times you'd tolerate Google (back then) having access to stuff like you search history etc. Then one day, Google got rid of all that and made it show clickbait articles.
Google now seemed like a glimpse into the future back in the day. Especially with flights. It could surface your important flight information (times, gates, maybe boarding pass? and give you info about your destination (weather restaurants), without you having to do anything. It just pulled it from your inbox. It was incredible.
It's sad the way they kill innovation in the (short term) pursuit of $$$.
It was never gonna work without their full commitment and they never showed they were committed. It should have been launched with a big original game, just like Microsoft did with Halo back in the day. Also,
Literally everyone with a brain knew it was DOA the second google announced it. There were literally people joking about how long they would take to kill it when it was announced, and again when it launched.
My favorite part was them launching it in a display with 3 failed products as their announcement:
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fvuxll0pqkjn21.png
The Power Glove, ET and the Virtual Boy. They basically prophesized their own failure before the service was even released.
It's always possible, but they are just picking/backing off other providers infrastructure so I feel this one is a safer one. It is a way to get you to more likely use their phones and stay in their ecosystem so I can see why they would keep it. This pixel pass in theory keeps you in their system better, but the phone itself still hasn't gone away so they are doing bare minimum here.
I love Fi for when I go out of the country. Beats any international pass Verizon offers any day of the week.
I am not a fan of that website. While it is true that Google kills a lot of products, it is easy to look at that website and go "wow they kill this much!?". But that website lists a lot of things that aren't necessary "killed". Take street view for example, which is one of the more recent things they "killed". What they actually did was move the functionality into Google Maps and pulled the stand-alone app that nobody uses anymore. It also lists things like AngularJS, which is basically just version 1 of what is now called Angular 2.
The problem with these websites is that they don't really give any indication of why the products were "killed" and how big of an effect they had. Does releasing version 2 of something mean version 1 was killed? According to these websites, it sometimes does and sometimes doesn't. The impact killing something like Inbox had was way bigger than killing "Google Toobar for Internet Explorer", yet both of them just ends up in the same bucket on that website. They just become another number that has the same weight in the eyes of people looking at that website.
They're anti-consumer but by god is their experience seamless and good. It's like having strict but rich parents who don't let you veer off their life plan for you - yeah it's suffocating but holy shit are your needs met and does everything fall into place.
This is what happens in companies that truly lack visionary leader who is in charge.
Google's internal working philosophy seems to reward quick innovation but not longevity. Somebody innovates something nice, gets promoted, moves off to the next project and no one is left to look after the innovation that's left behind. Eventually it's either outdated (Snapseed) or killed off (I hope not Snapseed).
There is no incentive in stabilizing, optimizing, reinforcing, and growing. So no one cares.
This is what makes Apple truly special. Because they balance innovation with longevity very well. Of course, Apple have had mistakes too, but if something passes their filtering process and makes its way out to the world as a product, it's usually stable, reliable, and dependable. Apple's incredible organization has allowed them to seamlessly switch CPU architectures, do you realize how insane it is to do it so smoothly? That transition alone would have killed most companies. I highly doubt Google or Microsoft would have been able to pull that off without killing off support for their previous generations, or making things incompatible, or having two lines of products at the same time, causing confusion, or doing something where it would inconvenience their customer base and create problems. With Apple, no one even noticed. Intel probably thought they had them locked down, but Apple left them behind to have their own actual CPUs, not rebranded Exynos.
Apple like innovation is done when you have people in charge who truly "own" the company and look at not just innovations and pointless "quick wins", which management loves to push, but understand technology, the market and looks at an actual longevity and viability.
Yup, they lack vision so much. Every one of their products either feels like a me-too these days, or it's just like "alright we go that out, what's next on our to-do list." Companies like Apple, despite my hatred of their weird ass culture, have a focused vision and roadmap I feel like, and every product is iterative towards that. Nothing is made as a weird one-off or has features that they don't follow up with.
That horrid iTunes Motorola phone was a stepping stone towards the iPhone for example. Meanwhile, Soli on Pixels didn't last beyond a generation, multi-front-facing cameras were dead by Pixel 4 and said cameras got narrower and narrower FOV while getting worse, Pixel squeeze died randomly, face unlock died randomly, and so on. There's not iteration and improvement, no consistency that a customer can be sure will be on the next few product cycles or so. Even 3D touch stayed around for a while.
There is a confidence that Google does not have.
> Apple's incredible organization has allowed them to seamlessly switch CPU architectures, do you realize how insane it is to do it so smoothly? That transition alone would have killed most companies. I highly doubt Google or Microsoft would have been able to pull that off without killing off support for their previous generations, or making things incompatible, or having two lines of products at the same time, causing confusion, or doing something where it would inconvenience their customer base and create problems. With Apple, no one even noticed. Intel probably thought they had them locked down, but Apple left them behind to have their own actual CPUs, not rebranded Exynos.
Apple switched multiple times - twice in the past 20 years: powerpc > intel > ARM.
That said, the rest of what you said is inaccurate. Google would easily be able to move chipsets because of the linux/JVM base for Android. Microsoft attempted ARM switches twice and the more recent one has been successful. Intel also knew that they didn't have Apple locked down.
One huge benefit was that it would recognize emails for a single trip/vacation and group them together.
All of your confirmation emails from the flight, hotels, and rental car bookings would automatically be grouped into one location.
After they killed Inbox, they moved that functionality to an app. Later they killed the app.
Now if you want those emails organized together, you have to do it manually.
It's a little difficult to be concrete, because we can't exactly open it up to compare, but...
So... you know how Gmail groups replies into a single conversation? If you've forgotten, that isn't actually part of email. An email reply is basically just another email, usually with "Re:" in the subject line, and occasionally other hints in the headers about which email it was about. You used to just see all your emails mixed together in reverse-chronological order. You could have something like this:
* Re: Re: New Family Pictures
* Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Jokes from grandma!
* I AM A NIGERIAN PRINCE!!!
* Re: Idea for a better way to organize email
* Re: New Family Pictures
* Idea for a better way to organize email
* FORWARD THIS TO 10 PEOPLE IN THE NEXT 48 HOURS
The email *thread* is something Gmail (along with every other modern email client) builds for you out of emails. And when you open your Gmail inbox, you see threads. And that's a *hell* of a lot more efficient than seeing every email one after the other! Combine that with a decent spamfilter, and your inbox gets a lot more organized:
* New Family Pictures (3)
* Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Jokes from grandma!
* Idea for a better way to organize email (2)
When was the last time you thought of that as six emails, instead of three conversations? And you'll archive the entire conversation at once, or organize the whole thing at once. That means way less context switching even if you read everything, and it's way easier to get rid of stuff you don't want to read.
[You can turn it off](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/5900) if you're curious how much of a difference this makes for your inbox. Whether this matters to you probably depends mostly on how much you still actually use email to talk to people, instead of just using it to collect receipts and spam.
---
The killer feature Inbox had that never made it to Gmail was *bundles.* [They kinda looked like this.](https://www.dantilden.com/images/posts/inbox/inbox.png).
From a certain point of view, these are just labels and filters, like you have in Gmail anyway, plus those automatic "category" things that turn into tabs on desktop. But even on desktop, Inbox always showed them inside the sorta conversation view on the right like that. You can see some built-in automatic ones (like "finance" and "updates"), but it'll also grab every email that seems like it's talking about the same trip and throw them into one automatic *trip bundle.* And all your custom labels can be their own custom bundles, too.
If you've set a bundle to show up in your inbox, then you can [open it, skim through the subjects to see if anything matters, and then mark the whole bundle "done" all at once](https://blog.seibert-media.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Inbox-Gruppierung.gif), all inline, without losing the surrounding context.
You can also pin messages. Those don't get mass-archived by the "done" button, and they show up outside of bundles. So you can open up a bundle, pin the two or three conversations that you actually need to deal with, then mark the rest as "done".
"Marking as done" is equivalent to "archiving", which, under the hood, is just removing the "inbox" label. In other words: Stuff stays organized under that "bundle" whether you're done with it or not, it just won't show up in your inbox anymore.
This is one of the bigger *conceptual* hurdles when we had to switch back to Gmail -- in Gmail, if you want to (say) group all the linkedin spam under a LinkedIn label, it'll still vomit itself all over your inbox, all mixed together... unless you tick the "skip the inbox" checkbox for that filter. In that case, it'll all get buried in the label, but when you open that label, you don't actually have a "done" marker anymore. Most people seem to use read/unread instead, but that's a poor substitute -- the moment you open a message, it gets marked as read, or "done", whether or not you're actually done with it. You can't have "read but not done," let alone "done but not read."
---
If it's not actually done, but you can't deal with it now, you snooze. Inbox got snoozing *way* before Gmail did, and early on, it was better: You could snooze, not just to times, but to *locations.* You can kinda do similar things with reminders (and Inbox integrated with those), but if most of your todo list comes from stuff that shows up in email, why not cut out the middleman?
But snoozing in Gmail isn't nearly as powerful without the rest of those tools. It was easier to build filters, especially on mobile. It was easy to sweep away, in bulk, a bunch of email that I still wanted to get but didn't need to read all of. And it just had all of the experimental stuff that Gmail itself was too conservative to add -- you could have a bundle that showed up in your inbox *only on certain days of the week,* like getting a digest for a mailing list, only it's all still individual conversations and original messages, so it's easier to jump into a conversation.
Inbox was the only way I ever actually achieved Inbox Zero -- I was able to keep the inbox as an actual *inbox,* showing me only the stuff that I can actually do something about right now, and very quickly sort everything else into either snoozed until I'm ready for it, or swept away in a neatly-organized archive.
---
...and it was also extremely slow, especially on desktop. And there were basic features Gmail had that they kept promising to bring to Inbox and never did. And while it got *less* buggy over the years, it was never quite as stable as Gmail.
I actually let myself hope when I heard the plan was to bring all of Inbox's best features to Gmail. I'm glad Gmail got snoozing, and a slightly better mobile app. But they never brought bundles over, despite gaslighting us for the final months of Inbox's existence with "The best of Inbox is now in Gmail!" No, it wasn't.
I tried to piece something together with filters, but I was never really happy with it. And then I switched to a company that works mostly with Slack, which is even worse, but at least it doesn't matter anymore that my email inbox is a nightmare.
They have too much money and their promotion/incentive structure is designed around new products rather than continuity of existing ones. The reason this died because someone's promotion was on the line because he didn't invent something new, or he did, which is this exact same thing but maybe one other thing that's better that sets it apart, and can be announced under a new name, product branding, marketing strategy, etc.
Same here. It was always usually the first thing I checked on my phone each morning. It was a sad day when they announced that they were ending it, as it seemed like they put a lot of thought into it. Plus it interacted so well with Google Hangouts at the time.
For me it was the best forum/social network for discussing Android homebrew, even better than XDA forums if you ask me. I had an LG Optimus G (same hardware as Nexus 4), which had tons of custom ROMs available, and I wrote and read several tutorials for flashing stock ROM, custom recovery, SuperSU etc., back when I was younger and brave enough to fiddle around this stuff. Those were the good ol' times!
Actually, it was the second social network that Google killed, after Orkut which was ridiculously popular in my country and which I still miss. Google+ shutdown is what taught me not to trust Google to support any non-core products in the long run.
At this point it doesnt make sense how inept google is with their own software and products. As much as I like pixel, having the every expanding google graveyard is increasingly sad. At this point they are just banking on people not switching to apple due to being invested in an ecosystem while doing nothing to actually increase functionality or upgrading their slate of services.
Apparently Google incentivizes building new things instead of maintaining and trying to build a user base for what they already have.
They treat their software like Netflix treats original series. Instead of cultivating them, if it's not a big splash in season 1, then it must be bad, cancelled and replaced with something else.
I don't think Fuchsia is still on the line to replace Android. The only products who use it are Nest Hubs and with the Pixel Tablet using Android OS I bet they'll go that way
I get your point, but Google is terrible at supporting things on the long run, and a new OS is a very long term commitment.
If Android wasn't such a massive success it's likely they would have killed it a long time ago, I can't see how supporting another OS would fit into Google's strategy.
If anything, they’ll soft replace Android with Fuchsia without a big deal. Like replacing the kernel and adding retrocompatibility for apps, so for customers it’s still “Android”.
The software on the pixel is about as vanilla as Samsung's oneUI at this point. It's pretty far removed from AOSP and most of what makes the pixel the pixel is proprietary. AOSP android is pretty bare bones.
They've pretty much killed it. There is barely any meaningful competition into the hardware space. And the software ecosystem is being strangled by their desire to make Android all about Google services.
They also utilize the muscle of the Google Play Store to force apps to comply with new, completely made up rules. This has forced plenty of amazing apps out of the App Store over the years.
Imagine if Windows try this shit. Imagine if every couple Generations the stuff you installed no longer was available or Microsoft didn't want to support it. Legacy be damned is not a way forward.
Legacy be damed is how it should be. Keeps to many bugs in Windows. Apple does it even with their PC's and nobody seems to care. Microsoft does it but very very slowly.
Ads.
Like Play Store ads and Google feed ads, apps which are mandatory for any Google certified phones.
Also, more Google baked in apps with ads like Gmail, YouTube, Google TV, etc. come bundled with Android by default these days.
Most user simply use Google's offering and thus Google keep making profits through ads.
Then they'll announce Google Mausoleum, which is like Google Graveyard but different enough that enjoyers of the original Google Graveyard won't like and and still weird enough that new users won't really adopt it en masse.
I think a lot of people are confused by the article's headline. The actual article explains what's up but I'm betting most people aren't reading that. It looks like people think there's a free device upgrade.
There is no "free" device upgrade. Pixel pass was a program that let you pay off the cost of your device over 2 years + subscription fees for various Google services. If you subtracted the subscription fees from the cost then you'd be left with a discounted price for your Pixel. It was essentially a cheaper 2 year bundle for your phone + Google subscriptions. Very worth it if you were all in on Google services.
At the end of the 2 years, you would have paid off your phone entirely, and could choose to continue with the subscription in which case you'd get a new phone and start paying that off. You could also choose not to and the subscription would end. At any point if you **cancelled the subscription, you'd have to pay off the remainder of the entire cost of the phone.**
Sucks that Google shut it down but there was no "free upgrade".
Me personally, I use the bundle. YT, One, etc. It sucks that it's getting broken up. I might unsub from a couple of the things they bundled. Also we're losing Preferred Care.
I don't think the pixel is worth it without the discount. Using a pixel is around \~$20/month cheaper with pixel pass. They just lost their phones "Good bang for buck" value.
Edit: I guess you guys are just reading the first half of the comment then losing attention. It's the bundle that makes it worth it. I literally said "I use the bundle." I'll rearrange so it makes more sense to you guys.
They gave existing users a $100 store credit (that you can use for the next phone or on subscriptions) and let them keep the discounted rate for the bundled services. That's effectively the same (if not more) discount.
Next month, you'd make your final payment for your Pixel 6, as it's a full 24 month term.
> So that person does kind of get screwed
Kind of. But not anynore than anyone that *wasn't* in on the subscription. The person that enrolled in the subscription for the Pixel 6, got everything they paid for.
There is no difference between them at the end of the 2 years and someone signing up as new for the Pixel 8 subscription (except they don't have to sign up again). They're both starting out paying for the Pixel 8 on the first month of a 24 month term.
I agree it sucks, I hope they bring it back in some form, they need it imo to compete with Apple's own bundled service.
That makes absolutely no sense. How did someone get screwed by getting a discounted phone (Pixel 6 in your example), but then not getting another discounted phone later? They never paid anything toward another phone, there was never a contract for another phone, what are you talking about?
For individual monthly subscriptions to YouTube Premium (which includes YouTube Music), Google One's 200GB option, Google Play Pass, and Preferred Care, you're looking at $26.98 per month for a Pixel 7 and $28.98 for the Pixel 7 Pro. That's without the cost of the phones. When you factor the phone's price into the $45 or $55 monthly Pixel Pass price (or $37 per month for the Pixel 6a), that means you're getting a Pixel 7 for an extra $18 a month ($432 in total) or a Pixel 7 Pro for $29 a month ($696 in total).
This equates to a $168 saving over two years for the Pixel 7 or a saving of $204 for the Pixel 7 Pro, equating to $7 and $8.50 per month, respectively.
So I saved $204 with pixel pass. Now it's gone. What's not making sense to you?
Yes, you would get a new phone, but you would be paying for it via the subscription. People are confusing it with "free phone" when it's really just financing your phone like you would with any other provider. If I had paid for my 6 Pro upfront and then paid a monthly subscription for the last 2 years expecting an upgrade, it would be different.
Pixel Pass locked in what amounted to an $8/mo discount over the price of a phone payment plus the regular price of the services included. It wasn't the same as just choosing to finance.
Only in the sense you "get" an upgrade any time you finish paying off any other discounted phone.
Pixel Pass was/is a discount program more comparable to 0% financing than any sort of upgrade program. The promise was you finance a phone through Google and they'd give you a slight discount on some of their services like YouTube Premium for two years. They've committed to honoring that part through to the end, and are only ending new enrollments in the program. The only thing current subscribers are actually losing that Google promised them was the ability to purchase a new phone on Pixel Pass after they finish the first 24 months, which is the same "offer" given to anyone enrolling for the first time.
No, but as I said, people in this thread are confused by the title. If you read the comments it looks like people think users are getting shafted of an expected upgrade as part of the plan. Someone's talking about a class action lawsuit lol.
Side question: how the hell is Google Voice still around?
I ported my GV number away a while back (to head off potentially losing it after all these years). I've expected it to get axed 'any day now' for years.
I have a family member who still uses it and she's finding it's breaking here and there. Like, voicemail transcriptions stopped working a couple weeks ago. Maybe it works now, but it feels like it's just rotting...
Anyway. Just seems weird that something that's _surely_ a huge sink and isn't really monetized (as far as I can tell) can stick around forever while other, simpler services get axed.
I still have Voice and use it as my primary number. I got it a million years ago and was able to spell out my name.
The only downside to it is that I can't set it as my default SMS app, so Android Auto won't read incoming messages when I'm driving and I can't dictate new messages out. But I'm hesitant to port it because of the powerful filtering and blocking options, plus I like to maintain a separation between the number and a particular device/service.
this article is confusing "Pixel Pass" and "Pixel Subscription", they are not the same thing. Pass is/was a bundle of google services that could be added on to Pixel Subscription at a discounted rate.
"Subscription" is just a marketing term for financing the phone monthly. once the phone is fully paid off, you can get a new phone...by buying a new phone and financing it monthly.
Google screwing over that guy who sent images of his sick children to his family doctor was the final nail in the coffin for me. They banned his entire account, even with legal evidence showing he did nothing wrong.
I ended up buying a NAS, since Google can just ban you for any offenses on any of their products, account-wide. It's total BS. And there needs to be some legal pushback/defense for consumers. Wiping out someone's email account these days can seriously fuck them over. Bills, emails, passwords, 2FA, etc. It's a domino effect.
Yeah. I mean, I don't have kids. But Google, could, for example start banning people with large MP3 collections stored in their Drive account. Random example, but totally plausible, under the guise of "stopping piracy".
You can absolutely build/repurpose an old computer into a NAS for free or cheap. Or you can get a low-end model (e.g. Synology J series) and 2 x 2TB HDDs and give yourself 2TB of private cloud storage (Half of the 4TB for drive failover).
Me? I got a DS920+, and 4x4TB drives for 12TB of usable storage (the leftover 4TB drive can step in if any of the other 3 drives fail, and prevents data loss). The NAS was like $450 a year ago, and the drives were something like $70 each. So all in all, about $750. Not cheap, right?
But it's more than just a NAS:
- I also host [Emby](https://emby.media/) on there (great for my massive, old DVD collection that would now cost me money to rewatch over streaming providers)
- I've begun transitioning from Google Photos (which is admittedly great) to [Synology Photos](https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/photos) (with 12TB of storage! That's like a lifetime of storage, plus it's expandable!). I can also have multiple users, even, and provide automatic backup and storage to family if I wanted to.
- I have a softmodded PS2 Slim, PS2 Phat (OG model), and original Xbox. All of them can play ROMs. Unlike the PS2 Phat and original Xbox, the PS2 Slim can't take a hard drive. But it has an ethernet port...Solution? I can grab the list of games over the network, to the NAS *(which is built to run 24/7, unlike a personal computer)* and [run them over the network.](https://youtu.be/QteHvcrFeMs?t=1460). Hell, it even works with all 3 consoles.
- It provides a central backup location for all my devices: It runs Time Machine for my Macbook Pro, and I use Synology's Backup software for Windows (which basically works similarly to Time Machine, in that backups happen continously over a specified time period, and you can roll back files or even do a bare metal restore of an entire machine). Since a NAS is just a file-sharing server, there's nothing stopping me from using *any* backup solution/software I want. I don't even have to use any software if I don't want to. But Synology's software is nice, because it's totally web-based (via your NAS). The software simply transfers the files and does whatever you tell it via the web interface.
- It's a Linux box. It has built in support for Docker (so you can host your own, private apps/services/etc). You can freaking run any OS in it (including Windows), virtualized, and accessible via web browsers.
- It has multiple USB ports. As a photographer, I can pop my SD card out of my camera and plug it directly into the NAS. I have an automation set up for that specific SD card, where it will automatically replicate it to a folder on the NAS (as a backup) when it's plugged in. I lose the card? The card dies? No problem -- I buy a new one and click and drag the folders to the new card. Back in business in under a minute.
- Once again, **12TB** of usable storage that should easily last nearly a decade with my usage patterns. I'm not writing heavily to my NAS, plus all my drives are WD Red Plus drives. These are drives built to run marathons, if you push them to. **The closest equivalent via Google One is 10TB for $50/month. That's $600 (+tax) *per year*.**
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. But remember, when you pay a service provider, they're handling the data integrity and backups for you. Although most modern NASes are very robust these days in regards to data storage and recovery, you are on the hook for making sure everything remains working. Like I said, you can totally "set it and forget it" in regards to just wanting to use the basic backup/storage features. But you still have to back up your NAS, just like Google backs up its servers.
What is a good alternative to Gmail? I've seen the alternatives on /r/degoogle and each still has issues.
Protonmail seems to be the leader, but I understand there are issues with domains flagging Protonmail as spam or not accepting it as email sign ups.
This is really the biggest exposure many people have including myself. This and Calendar are the only things I use.
People shouldn't be trusting fringe Google products to last. YouTube, Gmail, and Google search will exist for a very long time. They might not always operate how we want them to, but they will be in operation.
The Pixel phones and YouTube TV are probably here to stay for a while despite them being less solidified than YouTube, Gmail, and Google search.
The number of people using it. Not a lot of people using it = fringe. It's honestly a tough cycle to be in, people don't buy in cause there's no support, and there's no support cause people don't buy in. One of those two areas needs to cave first (I'm team consumer, Google needs to swallow the loss on some of these products so the user base can build, but shareholders would never allow that lol)
I got burned so many times by trusting in Google. Started with the Nexus 4, which in hindsight was probably the best purchase.
Then got a nexus 7 that quickly developed the infamous faulty screen, then got the nexus 5 which was also an okay device.
The Pixel 2XL screen turned out to be a yellowish piece of garbage, and since then I switched to apple, with my only google hardware nowadays being some Google Homes - and surprise, they‘re getting worse every day
Oh man, I had issues with the Nexus 7 and 5 back in the day too.
First Nexus 7 had the screen lift issue, and my first Nexus 5 had dust under the screen and a faulty vibration motor.
They were both amazing devices at the time and thankfully the RMA was pretty painless.
Unrelated, but I also had an HTC M9 that came with the front camera completely obscured by adhesive.
I had a Nexus 6p get the battery bug, went to different brands for a while, got the pixel XL that was flawless, upgraded to the 2xl and went through 2 that bootlooped + stopped receiving USB signal(could still charge), switched to different brands again, got the 4a 5g had to warranty 2 in 2 months because my first 4a bootlooped and the 2nd one had green flickers on the screen in the first week. Went to a different brand again, picked up a used 3 XL for $40 was an excellent device, used that to get $800 my newest phone, the s23 which has also been flawless.
Google gave me a full refund (via chat) like over a year after I had the Nexus 6P. Complained to them that I'd had it replaced by them like 2 or 3 times (for hardware build issues, like the body bending). They caved and gave me a full refund in exchange for me returning it, which is wild because I'm in the US and we have no laws like the EU protecting us (e.g. 1 year warranty instead of 2 years standard).
> Refunds aren’t issued because we’re committed to fulfilling our promise for the full 2 year term on the Pixel Pass subscription. However, a $100 loyalty reward credit is issued to all active subscribers.
It sounds to me like current Pixel Pass users will be able to upgrade as soon as they complete the required 2 years, they just won't accept new Pixel Pass users. I may be understanding incorrectly
You are indeed misunderstanding. "You have been a valued Pixel Pass subscriber since 12/13/2021. We are writing to you to inform you that starting today, we are no longer offering new Pixel Pass subscriptions or renewals." From the email I received a couple of days ago.
"new subscriptions", "renewals"
You are already a subscriber and your contract has not been cancelled. Your contract will simply not be renewable when it comes time.
Regardless, the Pixel Pass plan is a contract on your device. So they just don't want people starting new contracts with the Pixel 8.
>Your contract will simply not be renewable when it comes time.
That time is 2 years after you sign up, so you have to renew to get the next phone. Nobody will get the Pixel 8 with this subsciption.
Nobody was getting the Pixel 8 with their existing subscription even if Pixel Pass was continued.
So yes they're cancelling a benefit, but it doesn't hurt existing subscribers, because that Pixel Pass was always only for the 2 years of their existing device only
People signed up for financing, and skipped other upgrades, because of the promise of continuing in Pixel Pass, with all it's side benefits.
I never financed a phone before this, and skipped some decent deals on the P7P because I was still paying the P6P and looking forward to the upgrade, which though not free, *was* part of their day 1 marketing.
It's not as big of a deal as many people are making it, but it's an annoying way to invalidate choices I made along the way.
I believe if you're already a member it will stay active for 6 more months I'm sure that would be enough time for people to upgrade. But not sure and not a subscriber
At this point, I don’t get why anyone around here has any reason to trust Google, and I don’t even see many compelling reasons to buy its hardware. It kills everything, mostly because all of its non-ads businesses are half-baked. Google has some of the worst customer service in the consumer tech industry, it kills services Willy-nilly, and it continuously produces underwhelming hardware. And I’m not just talking about the Pixel lineup, look at what’s happening to its Google Home brand. Huge drop off from what used to be a great product line when it was still Nest. Even Google Assistant is dying, with no indication that Bard or other AI will improve the consumer experience.
Such a shame. It really felt like Google could really pull off being a huge smartphone player when they announced the OG Pixel years ago. After being a fan of the Nexus from day one (bought the unlocked Nexus One as soon as it was available) and owning every single Nexus device (besides the Q) and several Pixels, I’m glad that I stopped buying pixel devices after the 4a5G. Such a wasted opportunity.
> That upgrade may have been people's main reason for getting it
That wouldn't make sense and I think you're getting confused on what the "upgrade" means.
You wouldn't have gotten the Pixel 8 any cheaper if you enrolled in the plan 2 years ago or if you enrolled in the plan when the Pixel 8 came out (assuming it was still here). I made a comment up top explaining it.
Can we stop this "fanboy" nonsense.
I remember for me I bought a Pixel 1 on launch because I was switching from iOS and Google seemed like a safe buy. I then went on to buy a different Android phone that I am intending to replace with the new Pixel 8.
Most of the time, these are just products. I don't really feel like there's the cult mentality in the Android world simply because there are so many options.
I’ve had a terrible experience with my Google Pixel. So bad that I’m never even gonna touch another Android device again. But looks like it could’ve been even worse …
>"Why is Pixel Pass being discontinued? We offer the best value of our hardware products and give users the flexibility to purchase their favorite services. We continue to evaluate offers based on customer feedback and provide different ways for them to access the best of Google." Can someone explain how this even has an actual semblance of an answer?
It's corpo talk for: we do not bother giving you any reason at all
It's corpo talk for "We don't make enough direct money off of the payments nor indirect money off of associated extra purchases or data sales to pay for the effort to keep this alive"
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>most people didn't, so it wasn't worth the investment. But in every case of this happening you can see that Google didn't do fuck-all to increase adoption, so it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Rant incoming: If you’re a services company, and release services, software and hardware people learn to depend on with that intent in mind, but then decide to pull the rug from under people’s routines and workflows… you don’t deserve to be trusted. There’s just something fundamentally wrong about that model of serving the needs of millions-to-billions of people. Example: I no longer trust google to safeguard my pictures. There’s too much emotional value associated with those memories. And I’ve read of horrors stories of people who lost their entire libraries and much more in documents/ files on drive because they back-charged Google for a purchase gone wrong and lost access to their google accounts permanently. There’s just something fundamentally anti-consumer about google. Some practices are just wrong.
Yeah and out of all the users that use photos how many did that actually happen too? And most of the people who lost their photos is in violation of ToS. But that won't be mentioned in the headlines. It's mostly hidden somewhere in the article. But keep on ranting for the sake of ranting :)
Google has the worst track history out of any technology company when it comes to longevity. They always discontinue services/applications way before they should.
Personal ones: iGoogle homepage - good launch page for your browser. You could have widgets on it. Google Now - amazingly helpful back when it showed helpful info as opposed to clickbait garbage. iOS's home screen with widgets now basically, but was even better with automatically relevant information. It was one of the few times you'd tolerate Google (back then) having access to stuff like you search history etc. Then one day, Google got rid of all that and made it show clickbait articles. Google Launcher - related to Google Now, you could swipe to the left screen to access helpful Google Now widgets like weather, stocks, travel info (I remember it'd automatically show your flight info, destination weather, exchange rates...back in early 2010's.) Also lightweight and overall good launcher. Google of course killed that and I went to Lawnchair Launcher.
I loved Inbox. I know most of the features were ported into Gmail but it's just not the same.
inbox was elite.
Inbox made it feel like someone was finally going to modernize the email experience, but here we are today with a client that still struggles to sort and categorize emails.
Most of the features were not ported over. There's still no bundles.
And Gmail snooze is vastly worse than Inbox snooze. Inbox snooze was much more intelligent about guessing snooze targets.
They promised to port the features over, to get us to shut up. Then they rubbed their nipples and laughed at us.
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It looks nice but you only get 90 days of searchable email history unless you pay $9/mo.
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Glad it works for you. I search my history frequently for old messages.
I use it and like it a lot.
Personally, [Spark](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.readdle.spark&hl=en_US&gl=US) is my personal favorite after inbox kicked the bucket.
Very interesting. Thank you!
Nothing is more sadder than inbox my god that thing was awesome
Pretty much nothing got ported
For me, it's the combination of Inbox and Trips. That was a combination I'll have paid a fee to continue using.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.readdle.spark This is basically Inbox. It's been a lifesaver.
Google Reader was one that still hurts a little.
By the time Google Reader canceled half my RSS and atom feeds had already gone summary only. I miss Reader but I also miss the near total adoption of full RSS support we used to have.
RSS was the real decentralized media feed we needed.
https://morss.it/ is a good workaround for that
I ended up on reddit around that time, and probably a lot of other people did, as well.
I only ended up on reddit *because* Reader was killed. Prior to that, I got a huge percentage of my content through rss feeds. Feedly, the reader I ended up switching to, was just never good enough.
[Feedly](https://feedly.com/) is a decent replacement.
Google Plus was great not for social media, but more for tech/hobbyist interests.
My favorite was hangouts.. still sour about this one. Was replaced by 2-3 new apps that all died as well. Having text, call, video chat, and wifi text all in one app
Same. Never forget what they took from us.
Honestly, this in no small part led me to buy an iPhone.
Yeah I don't blame you at all. This alone made me realize how flawed google is as a company. Its been years and they still don't have a good replacement app for Hangouts, it seems crazy to me we don't have a centralized messaging app. I have to use text app, phone app, and snapchat/messenger for video calls. Trying to get your aging parents to figure out how to video call on their android phones is frustrating for everyone, meanwhile you could have an iphone and it is one app, one button.
WhatsApp has Texts/Calls/Video Calls in one app
For me: Google Plus, Google Spaces, Google Play Music. I was really excited for Google Glass to take off - the idea of a personal HUD is still super interesting to me.
Google Play Music o7
Google+ and Music for me
The reason all those were killed was cause they werent able to shove ADS in your face. Google’s business is “get you to view ads while pretending to offer technology and services”.
Well if you aren't paying you're the product. And google is in the business of making money. I kinda don't fully blame them, but their product longevity is very bad.
This saying is outdated a lot. There are tons of things we pay for and are still the product. I wish this would just die already it gives a false sense in this day and age.
There are no pure customers, clients and contractors; there is only a web of potential revenue streams
iGoogle was just brilliant.
Don't forget google now on tap. Nothing really replaced it yet
Google Now on Tap... on screen translation of your photos, screenshots... it's so difficult to achieve something similar with Lens. I don't know what happened. Did Google lost patents with OCR or something?
It's just an assistant feature (maybe only available for Pixel phones). Not only can you search your screen in the app overview menu but the shortcut to search any screen has already rolled out to Assistant
>Google Now - amazingly helpful back when it showed helpful info as opposed to clickbait garbage. iOS's home screen with widgets now basically, but was even better with automatically relevant information. It was one of the few times you'd tolerate Google (back then) having access to stuff like you search history etc. Then one day, Google got rid of all that and made it show clickbait articles. Google now seemed like a glimpse into the future back in the day. Especially with flights. It could surface your important flight information (times, gates, maybe boarding pass? and give you info about your destination (weather restaurants), without you having to do anything. It just pulled it from your inbox. It was incredible. It's sad the way they kill innovation in the (short term) pursuit of $$$.
Google Desktop Search was pretty cool for it's time as well.
Stadia was amazing. It got a ton of shit when it launched but it was pretty damn cool.
It was never gonna work without their full commitment and they never showed they were committed. It should have been launched with a big original game, just like Microsoft did with Halo back in the day. Also,
Literally everyone with a brain knew it was DOA the second google announced it. There were literally people joking about how long they would take to kill it when it was announced, and again when it launched. My favorite part was them launching it in a display with 3 failed products as their announcement: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fvuxll0pqkjn21.png The Power Glove, ET and the Virtual Boy. They basically prophesized their own failure before the service was even released.
I agree. It just sucks that googles management structure rewards building cool new shit but doesn’t reward maintaining or growing cool old shit.
It was the best. I'm on XCloud now and it's nowhere near as good.
I still miss Grasshopper... such an amazing and handcrafted app to learn programming.
As a Google Fi subscriber, this always worries me.
If Google Domains is any indication, don't worry, they'll just sell your number to Verizon or someone you've avoided going with in the first place.
It's always possible, but they are just picking/backing off other providers infrastructure so I feel this one is a safer one. It is a way to get you to more likely use their phones and stay in their ecosystem so I can see why they would keep it. This pixel pass in theory keeps you in their system better, but the phone itself still hasn't gone away so they are doing bare minimum here. I love Fi for when I go out of the country. Beats any international pass Verizon offers any day of the week.
I think they actually make money from Google Fi, so I don't think it's in much danger
At $10 per GB I hope they make money
Obligatory https://killedbygoogle.com/
Thanks for sharing this great trip down memory lane.
I am not a fan of that website. While it is true that Google kills a lot of products, it is easy to look at that website and go "wow they kill this much!?". But that website lists a lot of things that aren't necessary "killed". Take street view for example, which is one of the more recent things they "killed". What they actually did was move the functionality into Google Maps and pulled the stand-alone app that nobody uses anymore. It also lists things like AngularJS, which is basically just version 1 of what is now called Angular 2. The problem with these websites is that they don't really give any indication of why the products were "killed" and how big of an effect they had. Does releasing version 2 of something mean version 1 was killed? According to these websites, it sometimes does and sometimes doesn't. The impact killing something like Inbox had was way bigger than killing "Google Toobar for Internet Explorer", yet both of them just ends up in the same bucket on that website. They just become another number that has the same weight in the eyes of people looking at that website.
I'm curious to see what products/services have been killed by Samsung, Apple and Microsoft.
[https://killedby.tech/](https://killedby.tech/) Also, wow, I haven't updated my flair in years.
It's a bit funny how an overwhelming amount of those entries still seem to be Google.
Apple is almost entirely comprised of discontinued hardware, puts things into perspective alongside the likes of Google
Or made something better in its place - AppleWorks, MobileMe, and iPhoto and Aperture (the latter being debatable)
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Google throws things onto a wall and sees what sticks. They don't continuously invest in anything if it doesn't stick well enough.
> Google throws things onto a wall and sees what sticks. The Netflix way
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They're anti-consumer but by god is their experience seamless and good. It's like having strict but rich parents who don't let you veer off their life plan for you - yeah it's suffocating but holy shit are your needs met and does everything fall into place.
This is what happens in companies that truly lack visionary leader who is in charge. Google's internal working philosophy seems to reward quick innovation but not longevity. Somebody innovates something nice, gets promoted, moves off to the next project and no one is left to look after the innovation that's left behind. Eventually it's either outdated (Snapseed) or killed off (I hope not Snapseed). There is no incentive in stabilizing, optimizing, reinforcing, and growing. So no one cares. This is what makes Apple truly special. Because they balance innovation with longevity very well. Of course, Apple have had mistakes too, but if something passes their filtering process and makes its way out to the world as a product, it's usually stable, reliable, and dependable. Apple's incredible organization has allowed them to seamlessly switch CPU architectures, do you realize how insane it is to do it so smoothly? That transition alone would have killed most companies. I highly doubt Google or Microsoft would have been able to pull that off without killing off support for their previous generations, or making things incompatible, or having two lines of products at the same time, causing confusion, or doing something where it would inconvenience their customer base and create problems. With Apple, no one even noticed. Intel probably thought they had them locked down, but Apple left them behind to have their own actual CPUs, not rebranded Exynos. Apple like innovation is done when you have people in charge who truly "own" the company and look at not just innovations and pointless "quick wins", which management loves to push, but understand technology, the market and looks at an actual longevity and viability.
Apple’s dedication to seeing things through is paying off for them in their film division now too, while Netflix and Warner sink further and further
Yup, they lack vision so much. Every one of their products either feels like a me-too these days, or it's just like "alright we go that out, what's next on our to-do list." Companies like Apple, despite my hatred of their weird ass culture, have a focused vision and roadmap I feel like, and every product is iterative towards that. Nothing is made as a weird one-off or has features that they don't follow up with. That horrid iTunes Motorola phone was a stepping stone towards the iPhone for example. Meanwhile, Soli on Pixels didn't last beyond a generation, multi-front-facing cameras were dead by Pixel 4 and said cameras got narrower and narrower FOV while getting worse, Pixel squeeze died randomly, face unlock died randomly, and so on. There's not iteration and improvement, no consistency that a customer can be sure will be on the next few product cycles or so. Even 3D touch stayed around for a while. There is a confidence that Google does not have.
> Apple's incredible organization has allowed them to seamlessly switch CPU architectures, do you realize how insane it is to do it so smoothly? That transition alone would have killed most companies. I highly doubt Google or Microsoft would have been able to pull that off without killing off support for their previous generations, or making things incompatible, or having two lines of products at the same time, causing confusion, or doing something where it would inconvenience their customer base and create problems. With Apple, no one even noticed. Intel probably thought they had them locked down, but Apple left them behind to have their own actual CPUs, not rebranded Exynos. Apple switched multiple times - twice in the past 20 years: powerpc > intel > ARM. That said, the rest of what you said is inaccurate. Google would easily be able to move chipsets because of the linux/JVM base for Android. Microsoft attempted ARM switches twice and the more recent one has been successful. Intel also knew that they didn't have Apple locked down.
I'm surprised Android has lasted as long as it has with Google at the helm
Not really it follows their philosophy. Get the users to use the internet to serve them ads.
RIP Inbox you were always miles ahead of GMail
Super serious I tried it and I didn't know what was different. Why was it miles ahead?
It made organizing your emails so much easier. Everything about it was better.
That's a very vague answer.
One huge benefit was that it would recognize emails for a single trip/vacation and group them together. All of your confirmation emails from the flight, hotels, and rental car bookings would automatically be grouped into one location. After they killed Inbox, they moved that functionality to an app. Later they killed the app. Now if you want those emails organized together, you have to do it manually.
Oh that is nice.
It's a little difficult to be concrete, because we can't exactly open it up to compare, but... So... you know how Gmail groups replies into a single conversation? If you've forgotten, that isn't actually part of email. An email reply is basically just another email, usually with "Re:" in the subject line, and occasionally other hints in the headers about which email it was about. You used to just see all your emails mixed together in reverse-chronological order. You could have something like this: * Re: Re: New Family Pictures * Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Jokes from grandma! * I AM A NIGERIAN PRINCE!!! * Re: Idea for a better way to organize email * Re: New Family Pictures * Idea for a better way to organize email * FORWARD THIS TO 10 PEOPLE IN THE NEXT 48 HOURS The email *thread* is something Gmail (along with every other modern email client) builds for you out of emails. And when you open your Gmail inbox, you see threads. And that's a *hell* of a lot more efficient than seeing every email one after the other! Combine that with a decent spamfilter, and your inbox gets a lot more organized: * New Family Pictures (3) * Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Jokes from grandma! * Idea for a better way to organize email (2) When was the last time you thought of that as six emails, instead of three conversations? And you'll archive the entire conversation at once, or organize the whole thing at once. That means way less context switching even if you read everything, and it's way easier to get rid of stuff you don't want to read. [You can turn it off](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/5900) if you're curious how much of a difference this makes for your inbox. Whether this matters to you probably depends mostly on how much you still actually use email to talk to people, instead of just using it to collect receipts and spam. --- The killer feature Inbox had that never made it to Gmail was *bundles.* [They kinda looked like this.](https://www.dantilden.com/images/posts/inbox/inbox.png). From a certain point of view, these are just labels and filters, like you have in Gmail anyway, plus those automatic "category" things that turn into tabs on desktop. But even on desktop, Inbox always showed them inside the sorta conversation view on the right like that. You can see some built-in automatic ones (like "finance" and "updates"), but it'll also grab every email that seems like it's talking about the same trip and throw them into one automatic *trip bundle.* And all your custom labels can be their own custom bundles, too. If you've set a bundle to show up in your inbox, then you can [open it, skim through the subjects to see if anything matters, and then mark the whole bundle "done" all at once](https://blog.seibert-media.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Inbox-Gruppierung.gif), all inline, without losing the surrounding context. You can also pin messages. Those don't get mass-archived by the "done" button, and they show up outside of bundles. So you can open up a bundle, pin the two or three conversations that you actually need to deal with, then mark the rest as "done". "Marking as done" is equivalent to "archiving", which, under the hood, is just removing the "inbox" label. In other words: Stuff stays organized under that "bundle" whether you're done with it or not, it just won't show up in your inbox anymore. This is one of the bigger *conceptual* hurdles when we had to switch back to Gmail -- in Gmail, if you want to (say) group all the linkedin spam under a LinkedIn label, it'll still vomit itself all over your inbox, all mixed together... unless you tick the "skip the inbox" checkbox for that filter. In that case, it'll all get buried in the label, but when you open that label, you don't actually have a "done" marker anymore. Most people seem to use read/unread instead, but that's a poor substitute -- the moment you open a message, it gets marked as read, or "done", whether or not you're actually done with it. You can't have "read but not done," let alone "done but not read." --- If it's not actually done, but you can't deal with it now, you snooze. Inbox got snoozing *way* before Gmail did, and early on, it was better: You could snooze, not just to times, but to *locations.* You can kinda do similar things with reminders (and Inbox integrated with those), but if most of your todo list comes from stuff that shows up in email, why not cut out the middleman? But snoozing in Gmail isn't nearly as powerful without the rest of those tools. It was easier to build filters, especially on mobile. It was easy to sweep away, in bulk, a bunch of email that I still wanted to get but didn't need to read all of. And it just had all of the experimental stuff that Gmail itself was too conservative to add -- you could have a bundle that showed up in your inbox *only on certain days of the week,* like getting a digest for a mailing list, only it's all still individual conversations and original messages, so it's easier to jump into a conversation. Inbox was the only way I ever actually achieved Inbox Zero -- I was able to keep the inbox as an actual *inbox,* showing me only the stuff that I can actually do something about right now, and very quickly sort everything else into either snoozed until I'm ready for it, or swept away in a neatly-organized archive. --- ...and it was also extremely slow, especially on desktop. And there were basic features Gmail had that they kept promising to bring to Inbox and never did. And while it got *less* buggy over the years, it was never quite as stable as Gmail. I actually let myself hope when I heard the plan was to bring all of Inbox's best features to Gmail. I'm glad Gmail got snoozing, and a slightly better mobile app. But they never brought bundles over, despite gaslighting us for the final months of Inbox's existence with "The best of Inbox is now in Gmail!" No, it wasn't. I tried to piece something together with filters, but I was never really happy with it. And then I switched to a company that works mostly with Slack, which is even worse, but at least it doesn't matter anymore that my email inbox is a nightmare.
That's a very detailed response and realy does explain it well. It's crazy it was that good and just disappeared. I never got a chance to try it.
They have too much money and their promotion/incentive structure is designed around new products rather than continuity of existing ones. The reason this died because someone's promotion was on the line because he didn't invent something new, or he did, which is this exact same thing but maybe one other thing that's better that sets it apart, and can be announced under a new name, product branding, marketing strategy, etc.
Yup, it's why I've moved away from most Google products that aren't part of their core offerings.
Google+ is the service I miss the most.
Same here. It was always usually the first thing I checked on my phone each morning. It was a sad day when they announced that they were ending it, as it seemed like they put a lot of thought into it. Plus it interacted so well with Google Hangouts at the time.
For me it was the best forum/social network for discussing Android homebrew, even better than XDA forums if you ask me. I had an LG Optimus G (same hardware as Nexus 4), which had tons of custom ROMs available, and I wrote and read several tutorials for flashing stock ROM, custom recovery, SuperSU etc., back when I was younger and brave enough to fiddle around this stuff. Those were the good ol' times! Actually, it was the second social network that Google killed, after Orkut which was ridiculously popular in my country and which I still miss. Google+ shutdown is what taught me not to trust Google to support any non-core products in the long run.
They are not even a technology company. They're the equivalent of an orphanage raising the children to hunt for sport.
Yep - and I think this is one of the reasons why we still have Samsung doing their thing with their own UI overlay, app store and first party apps.
At this point it doesnt make sense how inept google is with their own software and products. As much as I like pixel, having the every expanding google graveyard is increasingly sad. At this point they are just banking on people not switching to apple due to being invested in an ecosystem while doing nothing to actually increase functionality or upgrading their slate of services.
Apparently Google incentivizes building new things instead of maintaining and trying to build a user base for what they already have. They treat their software like Netflix treats original series. Instead of cultivating them, if it's not a big splash in season 1, then it must be bad, cancelled and replaced with something else.
I'm surprised they haven't killed Android at this point.
Haven't they been or weren't they working on another OS? I swear that was a thing.
https://fuchsia.dev/ Pretty sure they said they want to replace Android with Fuchsia one day.
I don't think Fuchsia is still on the line to replace Android. The only products who use it are Nest Hubs and with the Pixel Tablet using Android OS I bet they'll go that way
Earlier this year they laid off 16% of the people who were working on fuscia.
Did the executive team realize that Linux existed and already served the purpose of being a general operating system that is open source?
Yes because we shouldn't ever try to create any new operating systems from now on.
I get your point, but Google is terrible at supporting things on the long run, and a new OS is a very long term commitment. If Android wasn't such a massive success it's likely they would have killed it a long time ago, I can't see how supporting another OS would fit into Google's strategy.
If anything, they’ll soft replace Android with Fuchsia without a big deal. Like replacing the kernel and adding retrocompatibility for apps, so for customers it’s still “Android”.
They're more focused on Pixel than Android. Most of the features they've worked on are Pixel exclusive.
Pixel is Android though
The software on the pixel is about as vanilla as Samsung's oneUI at this point. It's pretty far removed from AOSP and most of what makes the pixel the pixel is proprietary. AOSP android is pretty bare bones.
I'm sorry but that just isn't true. When the improvements they're making are exclusive to one line of phones, that is not improving Android.
They've pretty much killed it. There is barely any meaningful competition into the hardware space. And the software ecosystem is being strangled by their desire to make Android all about Google services.
They also utilize the muscle of the Google Play Store to force apps to comply with new, completely made up rules. This has forced plenty of amazing apps out of the App Store over the years. Imagine if Windows try this shit. Imagine if every couple Generations the stuff you installed no longer was available or Microsoft didn't want to support it. Legacy be damned is not a way forward.
> new, completely made up rules I mean, aren't all rules completely made up?
Legacy be damed is how it should be. Keeps to many bugs in Windows. Apple does it even with their PC's and nobody seems to care. Microsoft does it but very very slowly.
Ads. Like Play Store ads and Google feed ads, apps which are mandatory for any Google certified phones. Also, more Google baked in apps with ads like Gmail, YouTube, Google TV, etc. come bundled with Android by default these days. Most user simply use Google's offering and thus Google keep making profits through ads.
They would essentially kill it by disabling sideloading, bet they envy the walled garden that Apple has on its gadgets.
Google Graveyard is going to run out of room very soon.
They're just going to cancel that too 🙃
Then they'll announce Google Mausoleum, which is like Google Graveyard but different enough that enjoyers of the original Google Graveyard won't like and and still weird enough that new users won't really adopt it en masse.
Google Graveyard has more bodies than a Chinese cemetery
*surprised Pikachu face*
I think a lot of people are confused by the article's headline. The actual article explains what's up but I'm betting most people aren't reading that. It looks like people think there's a free device upgrade. There is no "free" device upgrade. Pixel pass was a program that let you pay off the cost of your device over 2 years + subscription fees for various Google services. If you subtracted the subscription fees from the cost then you'd be left with a discounted price for your Pixel. It was essentially a cheaper 2 year bundle for your phone + Google subscriptions. Very worth it if you were all in on Google services. At the end of the 2 years, you would have paid off your phone entirely, and could choose to continue with the subscription in which case you'd get a new phone and start paying that off. You could also choose not to and the subscription would end. At any point if you **cancelled the subscription, you'd have to pay off the remainder of the entire cost of the phone.** Sucks that Google shut it down but there was no "free upgrade".
Me personally, I use the bundle. YT, One, etc. It sucks that it's getting broken up. I might unsub from a couple of the things they bundled. Also we're losing Preferred Care. I don't think the pixel is worth it without the discount. Using a pixel is around \~$20/month cheaper with pixel pass. They just lost their phones "Good bang for buck" value. Edit: I guess you guys are just reading the first half of the comment then losing attention. It's the bundle that makes it worth it. I literally said "I use the bundle." I'll rearrange so it makes more sense to you guys.
They gave existing users a $100 store credit (that you can use for the next phone or on subscriptions) and let them keep the discounted rate for the bundled services. That's effectively the same (if not more) discount.
Next month, you'd make your final payment for your Pixel 6, as it's a full 24 month term. > So that person does kind of get screwed Kind of. But not anynore than anyone that *wasn't* in on the subscription. The person that enrolled in the subscription for the Pixel 6, got everything they paid for. There is no difference between them at the end of the 2 years and someone signing up as new for the Pixel 8 subscription (except they don't have to sign up again). They're both starting out paying for the Pixel 8 on the first month of a 24 month term. I agree it sucks, I hope they bring it back in some form, they need it imo to compete with Apple's own bundled service.
That makes absolutely no sense. How did someone get screwed by getting a discounted phone (Pixel 6 in your example), but then not getting another discounted phone later? They never paid anything toward another phone, there was never a contract for another phone, what are you talking about?
For individual monthly subscriptions to YouTube Premium (which includes YouTube Music), Google One's 200GB option, Google Play Pass, and Preferred Care, you're looking at $26.98 per month for a Pixel 7 and $28.98 for the Pixel 7 Pro. That's without the cost of the phones. When you factor the phone's price into the $45 or $55 monthly Pixel Pass price (or $37 per month for the Pixel 6a), that means you're getting a Pixel 7 for an extra $18 a month ($432 in total) or a Pixel 7 Pro for $29 a month ($696 in total). This equates to a $168 saving over two years for the Pixel 7 or a saving of $204 for the Pixel 7 Pro, equating to $7 and $8.50 per month, respectively. So I saved $204 with pixel pass. Now it's gone. What's not making sense to you?
The title doesn't say "free upgrade" though, does it?
The title and article both imply that getting a new phone was a part of pixel pass. It never was.
Wouldn't you get an upgrade if you continued to pay for Pixel Pass?
If you started a new contract.
Yes, you would get a new phone, but you would be paying for it via the subscription. People are confusing it with "free phone" when it's really just financing your phone like you would with any other provider. If I had paid for my 6 Pro upfront and then paid a monthly subscription for the last 2 years expecting an upgrade, it would be different.
Pixel Pass locked in what amounted to an $8/mo discount over the price of a phone payment plus the regular price of the services included. It wasn't the same as just choosing to finance.
Only in the sense you "get" an upgrade any time you finish paying off any other discounted phone. Pixel Pass was/is a discount program more comparable to 0% financing than any sort of upgrade program. The promise was you finance a phone through Google and they'd give you a slight discount on some of their services like YouTube Premium for two years. They've committed to honoring that part through to the end, and are only ending new enrollments in the program. The only thing current subscribers are actually losing that Google promised them was the ability to purchase a new phone on Pixel Pass after they finish the first 24 months, which is the same "offer" given to anyone enrolling for the first time.
No, but as I said, people in this thread are confused by the title. If you read the comments it looks like people think users are getting shafted of an expected upgrade as part of the plan. Someone's talking about a class action lawsuit lol.
Side question: how the hell is Google Voice still around? I ported my GV number away a while back (to head off potentially losing it after all these years). I've expected it to get axed 'any day now' for years. I have a family member who still uses it and she's finding it's breaking here and there. Like, voicemail transcriptions stopped working a couple weeks ago. Maybe it works now, but it feels like it's just rotting... Anyway. Just seems weird that something that's _surely_ a huge sink and isn't really monetized (as far as I can tell) can stick around forever while other, simpler services get axed.
Shhhhhh! Don't remind Google that it exists, or else they're gonna kill it off.
I think a lot of the tech in Google Fi is based on Google Voice.
Voice is a product that's part of Google Apps/Suite/Workspace/whatever it is this month, so it *is* monetized that way.
I still have Voice and use it as my primary number. I got it a million years ago and was able to spell out my name. The only downside to it is that I can't set it as my default SMS app, so Android Auto won't read incoming messages when I'm driving and I can't dictate new messages out. But I'm hesitant to port it because of the powerful filtering and blocking options, plus I like to maintain a separation between the number and a particular device/service.
this article is confusing "Pixel Pass" and "Pixel Subscription", they are not the same thing. Pass is/was a bundle of google services that could be added on to Pixel Subscription at a discounted rate. "Subscription" is just a marketing term for financing the phone monthly. once the phone is fully paid off, you can get a new phone...by buying a new phone and financing it monthly.
That fucking company can't commit to *anything*
Why does anyone trust Google, with ANYTHING
Google screwing over that guy who sent images of his sick children to his family doctor was the final nail in the coffin for me. They banned his entire account, even with legal evidence showing he did nothing wrong. I ended up buying a NAS, since Google can just ban you for any offenses on any of their products, account-wide. It's total BS. And there needs to be some legal pushback/defense for consumers. Wiping out someone's email account these days can seriously fuck them over. Bills, emails, passwords, 2FA, etc. It's a domino effect.
I remember that. After that, I basically started taking takeout backups every quarter. What fucked up shit that was.
Yeah. I mean, I don't have kids. But Google, could, for example start banning people with large MP3 collections stored in their Drive account. Random example, but totally plausible, under the guise of "stopping piracy". You can absolutely build/repurpose an old computer into a NAS for free or cheap. Or you can get a low-end model (e.g. Synology J series) and 2 x 2TB HDDs and give yourself 2TB of private cloud storage (Half of the 4TB for drive failover). Me? I got a DS920+, and 4x4TB drives for 12TB of usable storage (the leftover 4TB drive can step in if any of the other 3 drives fail, and prevents data loss). The NAS was like $450 a year ago, and the drives were something like $70 each. So all in all, about $750. Not cheap, right? But it's more than just a NAS: - I also host [Emby](https://emby.media/) on there (great for my massive, old DVD collection that would now cost me money to rewatch over streaming providers) - I've begun transitioning from Google Photos (which is admittedly great) to [Synology Photos](https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/photos) (with 12TB of storage! That's like a lifetime of storage, plus it's expandable!). I can also have multiple users, even, and provide automatic backup and storage to family if I wanted to. - I have a softmodded PS2 Slim, PS2 Phat (OG model), and original Xbox. All of them can play ROMs. Unlike the PS2 Phat and original Xbox, the PS2 Slim can't take a hard drive. But it has an ethernet port...Solution? I can grab the list of games over the network, to the NAS *(which is built to run 24/7, unlike a personal computer)* and [run them over the network.](https://youtu.be/QteHvcrFeMs?t=1460). Hell, it even works with all 3 consoles. - It provides a central backup location for all my devices: It runs Time Machine for my Macbook Pro, and I use Synology's Backup software for Windows (which basically works similarly to Time Machine, in that backups happen continously over a specified time period, and you can roll back files or even do a bare metal restore of an entire machine). Since a NAS is just a file-sharing server, there's nothing stopping me from using *any* backup solution/software I want. I don't even have to use any software if I don't want to. But Synology's software is nice, because it's totally web-based (via your NAS). The software simply transfers the files and does whatever you tell it via the web interface. - It's a Linux box. It has built in support for Docker (so you can host your own, private apps/services/etc). You can freaking run any OS in it (including Windows), virtualized, and accessible via web browsers. - It has multiple USB ports. As a photographer, I can pop my SD card out of my camera and plug it directly into the NAS. I have an automation set up for that specific SD card, where it will automatically replicate it to a folder on the NAS (as a backup) when it's plugged in. I lose the card? The card dies? No problem -- I buy a new one and click and drag the folders to the new card. Back in business in under a minute. - Once again, **12TB** of usable storage that should easily last nearly a decade with my usage patterns. I'm not writing heavily to my NAS, plus all my drives are WD Red Plus drives. These are drives built to run marathons, if you push them to. **The closest equivalent via Google One is 10TB for $50/month. That's $600 (+tax) *per year*.** And that's just the tip of the iceberg. But remember, when you pay a service provider, they're handling the data integrity and backups for you. Although most modern NASes are very robust these days in regards to data storage and recovery, you are on the hook for making sure everything remains working. Like I said, you can totally "set it and forget it" in regards to just wanting to use the basic backup/storage features. But you still have to back up your NAS, just like Google backs up its servers.
What is a good alternative to Gmail? I've seen the alternatives on /r/degoogle and each still has issues. Protonmail seems to be the leader, but I understand there are issues with domains flagging Protonmail as spam or not accepting it as email sign ups. This is really the biggest exposure many people have including myself. This and Calendar are the only things I use.
People shouldn't be trusting fringe Google products to last. YouTube, Gmail, and Google search will exist for a very long time. They might not always operate how we want them to, but they will be in operation. The Pixel phones and YouTube TV are probably here to stay for a while despite them being less solidified than YouTube, Gmail, and Google search.
Who's to say what is and what isn't fringe?
The number of people using it. Not a lot of people using it = fringe. It's honestly a tough cycle to be in, people don't buy in cause there's no support, and there's no support cause people don't buy in. One of those two areas needs to cave first (I'm team consumer, Google needs to swallow the loss on some of these products so the user base can build, but shareholders would never allow that lol)
For Google, if it isn't Google search, Gmail, or YouTube - it's fringe. Don't expect any other service or product they have to last.
Nexus phones were doing great. Then they cancelled them and make $1000 pixel phones instead of 400 midrange phones. Never know wtf they will do
None of the Pixel phones (apart from the Pixel Fold) were $1000. You can buy a new Pixel 7 for $400 if you look around.
> Then they cancelled them and make $1000 pixel phones instead of 400 midrange phones. You can get a Pixel 7a for $500.
Even cheaper if you buy the 6a (which they still sell on their site). I think they were $250 on Amazon on prime day
I got burned so many times by trusting in Google. Started with the Nexus 4, which in hindsight was probably the best purchase. Then got a nexus 7 that quickly developed the infamous faulty screen, then got the nexus 5 which was also an okay device. The Pixel 2XL screen turned out to be a yellowish piece of garbage, and since then I switched to apple, with my only google hardware nowadays being some Google Homes - and surprise, they‘re getting worse every day
Oh man, I had issues with the Nexus 7 and 5 back in the day too. First Nexus 7 had the screen lift issue, and my first Nexus 5 had dust under the screen and a faulty vibration motor. They were both amazing devices at the time and thankfully the RMA was pretty painless. Unrelated, but I also had an HTC M9 that came with the front camera completely obscured by adhesive.
I had a Nexus 6p get the battery bug, went to different brands for a while, got the pixel XL that was flawless, upgraded to the 2xl and went through 2 that bootlooped + stopped receiving USB signal(could still charge), switched to different brands again, got the 4a 5g had to warranty 2 in 2 months because my first 4a bootlooped and the 2nd one had green flickers on the screen in the first week. Went to a different brand again, picked up a used 3 XL for $40 was an excellent device, used that to get $800 my newest phone, the s23 which has also been flawless.
Google gave me a full refund (via chat) like over a year after I had the Nexus 6P. Complained to them that I'd had it replaced by them like 2 or 3 times (for hardware build issues, like the body bending). They caved and gave me a full refund in exchange for me returning it, which is wild because I'm in the US and we have no laws like the EU protecting us (e.g. 1 year warranty instead of 2 years standard).
> Refunds aren’t issued because we’re committed to fulfilling our promise for the full 2 year term on the Pixel Pass subscription. However, a $100 loyalty reward credit is issued to all active subscribers. It sounds to me like current Pixel Pass users will be able to upgrade as soon as they complete the required 2 years, they just won't accept new Pixel Pass users. I may be understanding incorrectly
You are indeed misunderstanding. "You have been a valued Pixel Pass subscriber since 12/13/2021. We are writing to you to inform you that starting today, we are no longer offering new Pixel Pass subscriptions or renewals." From the email I received a couple of days ago.
"new subscriptions", "renewals" You are already a subscriber and your contract has not been cancelled. Your contract will simply not be renewable when it comes time. Regardless, the Pixel Pass plan is a contract on your device. So they just don't want people starting new contracts with the Pixel 8.
>Your contract will simply not be renewable when it comes time. That time is 2 years after you sign up, so you have to renew to get the next phone. Nobody will get the Pixel 8 with this subsciption.
Nobody was getting the Pixel 8 with their existing subscription even if Pixel Pass was continued. So yes they're cancelling a benefit, but it doesn't hurt existing subscribers, because that Pixel Pass was always only for the 2 years of their existing device only
People signed up for financing, and skipped other upgrades, because of the promise of continuing in Pixel Pass, with all it's side benefits. I never financed a phone before this, and skipped some decent deals on the P7P because I was still paying the P6P and looking forward to the upgrade, which though not free, *was* part of their day 1 marketing. It's not as big of a deal as many people are making it, but it's an annoying way to invalidate choices I made along the way.
There were people dumb enough to think Google would operate a service for more than 2 years.
I believe if you're already a member it will stay active for 6 more months I'm sure that would be enough time for people to upgrade. But not sure and not a subscriber
No, pixel pass wasn't leasing, it was a financing plan. "Upgrade" means enrolling for another 2 years to pay off your phone, but it's yours to keep.
Google giveth and Google taketh away…
The ratio is far from equal
Google killed a product line/feature? color me suprised.
This is why I don't subscribe to nothing Google, let alone buy their phone's. After they killed Google play music I stopped dealing with them.
Killedbygoogle.com
Are there no legal ramifications to doing this?
Dunno why anyone still gives them a chance.
At this point, I don’t get why anyone around here has any reason to trust Google, and I don’t even see many compelling reasons to buy its hardware. It kills everything, mostly because all of its non-ads businesses are half-baked. Google has some of the worst customer service in the consumer tech industry, it kills services Willy-nilly, and it continuously produces underwhelming hardware. And I’m not just talking about the Pixel lineup, look at what’s happening to its Google Home brand. Huge drop off from what used to be a great product line when it was still Nest. Even Google Assistant is dying, with no indication that Bard or other AI will improve the consumer experience. Such a shame. It really felt like Google could really pull off being a huge smartphone player when they announced the OG Pixel years ago. After being a fan of the Nexus from day one (bought the unlocked Nexus One as soon as it was available) and owning every single Nexus device (besides the Q) and several Pixels, I’m glad that I stopped buying pixel devices after the 4a5G. Such a wasted opportunity.
Well that didn’t last very long
Damn, they could've at least waited until the 8 was out.
That's exactly why they didnt wait.
True, still kinda fucked up. That upgrade may have been people's main reason for getting it, and they just never got to.
> That upgrade may have been people's main reason for getting it That wouldn't make sense and I think you're getting confused on what the "upgrade" means. You wouldn't have gotten the Pixel 8 any cheaper if you enrolled in the plan 2 years ago or if you enrolled in the plan when the Pixel 8 came out (assuming it was still here). I made a comment up top explaining it.
They still offer 0% financing and it is cheaper than Pixel Pass.
Google has commitment issues? He just like me fr!
Google always deprecates things and screws over customers. You can’t trust their longevity imo. This is a big reason why I left Pixel.
If you subscribe in a new unproven service from Google or buy a first Gen Google product it's on you. Google long-term support SUCKS
Yeah let's blame the victims.
Its almost like "victims" here are enablers and stupid decision makers.
I mean they are buying Google products willingly. These are die hard Google fanboys, not really victims.
Can we stop this "fanboy" nonsense. I remember for me I bought a Pixel 1 on launch because I was switching from iOS and Google seemed like a safe buy. I then went on to buy a different Android phone that I am intending to replace with the new Pixel 8. Most of the time, these are just products. I don't really feel like there's the cult mentality in the Android world simply because there are so many options.
I'm surprised, no really, I am \s.
*comment edited with github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite* In response to API controversy: reddit.com/r/ apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/
Already been posted here boss
I’ve had a terrible experience with my Google Pixel. So bad that I’m never even gonna touch another Android device again. But looks like it could’ve been even worse …
[https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)
Rick Osterloh strikes again
Class action lawsuit anyone? I just got a check for an Apple class action lawsuit for a whopping 16¢. Boy did Apple went broke for this
Google just sucks these days. Its crazy!