Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Can You Trust Google?”.
All right, we just got ta. We just got ta talk about something real quick., So one of the biggest announcements at Google’s fall event that they just had was that they’re planning on supporting the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro with seven years of OS security and feature drop updates.. This is industry leading and super awesome.. Here’S a list of some of the other promises that have been made in the smartphone world for how long down the road they plan on supporting their devices. In the world of Android.
This is unprecedented. So clearly this was one of the best announcements of the entire Google event and we are finally happy to see that.. But, on the other hand, Google has a rich history of discontinuing products and abandoning projects and services that have a lot of people using them or depending on them. So how do we square those two things Like you would think that relying on a big company is better than relying on a small one.
As far as like supporting projects down the road. Like, if I was gon na set up a new smartphone, for example, I wouldn’t wan na set up one with like a tiny startup that I don’t know if they’re gon na exist in five years’cause, then all my Smartphone stuff might not work when that company goes outta, business., So you’d think a bigger, more established company would be more reliable, but it turns out the same problem can happen when you rely on a gigantic company like Google, because something you might get invested in or Start using might just be like a small rounding error for them that they might just get rid of at any time.. So I think the thing that really summarizes this all well is: I have a friend that says that Google is super willing to spin up new projects and be aggressive and innovative all the time, but if that new project doesn’t either get a billion users or make A billion dollars, then it is liable to get axed at any time.. So that’s why, literally, just in the past few weeks, we have seen Google Domains, Google, Jamboard, Google, Podcasts and Pixel Pass all killed.
All active services, with various amounts of users just destroyed just killed. And the further back you go the more there are. Like this.
It feels like a running joke that Google will announce and kill a new messaging service every year, but just keep scrolling back. Like there’s entire webpages dedicated to chronicling the long list of things that Google has killed.. Remember, Google Plus remember the Inbox.
App., Remember Hangouts, remember Aleo., Remember Chromecast Audio Stadia. The list goes on. Now when they kill these products or services. There are often various degrees to which they’re able to replace them or support everyone that they just rug pulled.. So like something like Google Play, Music, okay, they were launching another service, called YouTube Music and it had a lot of congruent features. So they didn’t have the need to have both..
So they made it easy to port your entire library from one to the other. You’d. Still be missing, some features, but at least you still have your whole library., So that was nice.. There’S a similar thing with Google Podcasts. Like it was a pretty solid, podcast app, but they again wanted to bring those things into YouTube. Music..
So they’ve worked on an import process and some tutorials for that. And like it’s a good effort., It’s good to at least try to do that sort of thing. But it’s not always perfect. Google Jamboard, you might not have heard of Google Jamboard but weirdly enough. The old pro Ultimate Frisbee team, I’ve played on New York Empire, uses Google Jamboard for, like our scouting documents, for like writing, everything down and players and tendencies, and all that sort of thing.
And it’s gone now, or at least by the end of the year. It’Ll be gone., So I guess we’ll just find something else to use.. Google Stadia the gaming service only lasted a couple of years..
The only saving grace with this one is when it got axed. They would at least let you export your saved data, so you could use it on another platform. And then they refunded every Stadia user for every game.. But again there are no alternatives. Fun fact, and this is a true story.. I had literally just switched mkbhd.com from Squarespace to Google Domains.. It was like a big domain transfer process that took like 24 hours and I was like nervous to do it, but I finally did it and then, within a week Google killed Google Domains and sold.
All of those domains back to Squarespace., So there are no Google Domains anymore, but maybe the craziest recent one would be Pixel. Pass. Pixel Pass is crazy., So if you haven’t heard of it, it was basically a subscription plan that was launched alongside the Pixel 6 and the idea was you sign up, and then you pay 45 bucks a month.
You get the brand new phone and then you get YouTube premium: YouTube music, a bunch of Google, 1 storage and some other stuff all included, packaged together.. And then you get a new Pixel for free every two years, which I mean sounds pretty sweet right. If you use a bunch of Google services they’re all packaged together, the overall price would be a little bit lower than if you’d bought all of these things individually. And then who wouldn’t want to upgrade to a new Pixel phone roughly once every two years Sounds pretty Sweet., A bunch of people signed up and then exactly 22 months after they announced it so a month and a half before the first upgrade cycle.
They quietly killed the program and nobody got their free phone upgrade because they killed it right before they were supposed to. And there have been no announced alternatives. And the list goes on and on and on.
But clearly this type of behavior erodes your trust in anything. Google. Me personally, I was thinking about maybe switching to Google Fi. There’s a bunch of other carriers out there.. I was gon na, maybe try it., The integration with the Pixel seems cool, but I cannot be sure that it’ll still exist in a year or two.
So I’m not gon na do it.. So my point is launching ambitious new things, which is what Google does is easy. Supporting those ambitious new things for a long time is hard., And this new announcement of seven years of software updates for the Pixel is the most ambitious software support plan we’ve ever seen In the smartphone world. And that’s what makes it so awesome and so hard to believe at the same time. Like if I was at Google and honestly watching this, I would really want to make this promise come true.. I think it’s a great promise..
Clearly, I hope more companies see Google’s announcement and try to follow and do the same thing, because making people’s devices more useful and more secure for a longer time is a win for everyone for the users for security for the environment. If people use their phones longer. So like, if this pans out the phones people are buying, today will be up to date till 2030, which is an eternity in the tech world that is so sick..
So I wan na give them credit for an awesome promise. But it’s a promise. And Google breaks promises all the time.. That’S where we’re at right now.! I want it to be real, but but we’ll see. Will the Pixel even be around. In seven years We don’t know.. The Nexus program only lasted five years before they killed that and then started Pixel stuff.
And we are on year eight of the Pixel now.. Will it last seven more years I don’t even know., But then actually this also ties into another bit of a mini trend. We’Ve observed lately that I wanted to talk about, which is new announcements from tech companies that have features that are coming soon., And this isn’t just Google. This has happened across the board, but this has happened where a device will come out, but then the new features aren’t available at launch., So reviewers aren’t even able to test the new features until well. After the thing is in the wild., You know, Google just did this with the Pixel.. The Video Boost feature. They talked about on stage that they said is coming later.. Video Night Sight is also not available at launch.. That’S coming later. But, like I said not just Google. Apple’s done this actually many times with iPhone camera features and they’ve done it again this year with a bunch of stuff., The Journal app on the iPhone is still not there.
Coming later, this year., The airdrop transfer via the internet feature, is also not in the phones yet.. That’S still coming later, this year. And the double tap feature for the Apple Watch, which is one of the biggest new features of the entire watch, was announced on stage, but it’s still in beta a month later and coming soon..
I’Ve just noticed a bunch of these. Over the past couple months., It kind of feels like I tweeted about this.. It kind of feels like the gaming industry precedent where a lot of gaming studios will release like a half finished game kind of to just get it out there and maybe test the waters.
And if it hooks, then maybe they’ll throw a bunch of patches at it. And updates at it., But releasing half finished games is just not great.. So I definitely don’t love this trend for tech and for smartphones and hardware, but for slightly different reasons.
One just because it makes them much harder to review if the new feature’s not out, and we can’t test it and then we review what’s out. But then the big new feature comes later tough., But I guess I’ll just stick with the thing that I’ve said from the beginning, which is never buy a new piece of tech based on the promise of future software. Updates.. Just don’t do it. Just buy it for what it is today. And, if there’s stuff coming later, and it actually gets delivered on the promise. Some are better at delivering that than others. Then it’s a bonus.
It just it’s an extra value. Add for the thing that you are already happy with, but never buy it just based on the promise of future updates.. So that’s it. I just had some thoughts I wanted to get out into the world..
Hopefully, Google and Apple and others are listening., Hopefully they’re able to deliver on these promises, but also, hopefully they’re able to deliver on things that they promise at launch when they can. And we’ll keep an eye on Pixel.. I’M testing the phones I’ll be reviewing’em., Subscribe to see the review when it comes out.. That’S it for now. Thanks for watching. Catch you in the next one peace.
(, upbeat, music, ), .