> Since Google basically prints money, I don't think money could be the issue. Since Google is overflowing with engineers, I don't think throwing more engineers at the problem would help.
That's why Google Reader is gone, I suppose. Google just couldn't save it, no matter how much money and engineers' time was spend on it. And we all know how much exactly it were.
> Rather, I think that removing annotations is a good sign that Google is trying to do something smarter: manage the scale of YouTube.
Consistently removing the features which is not popular among majority of users is not smart at all. That's the dumbest way to manage the scale actually.
Think of Google as an airship. Platforms and features have mass. They've done everything they can to rise without dumping platforms or features. Now they're shedding excess mass to continue rising.
This means streamlining platforms and trimming excess/old code.
I've seen 'code debt' and 'technical debt' mentioned more than a few times in this thread and I think these are why Google is so aggressive about dropping support for things. They don't have time, and the engineers don't want to be forced into someone else's pet project (face it, that's where a lot of these platforms and features come from).
> I considered working at Google last year after a recruiter reached out to me, but their decision to backtrack on their promise in China changed my mind
I get the feeling that Google and Alphabet as a whole is pretty broken on the inside. I will admit that even though I support what Google is doing to make YouTube's platform more scalable, they do plenty of other things to screw things up for not just themselves but loyal content makers and users — the suggestions algorithm, subscriptions that aren't really subscriptions, etc.
To borrow a famous quote, Google is like an ship with a hole in the bottom, leaking water, and they seem to be trying to get the ship pointed in the right direction.
Still, whilst the ship's not yet overrun, I can't blame the individual teams for trying to throw as much water back overboard as they can muster.
That's why Google Reader is gone, I suppose. Google just couldn't save it, no matter how much money and engineers' time was spend on it. And we all know how much exactly it were.
> Rather, I think that removing annotations is a good sign that Google is trying to do something smarter: manage the scale of YouTube.
Consistently removing the features which is not popular among majority of users is not smart at all. That's the dumbest way to manage the scale actually.