Yep. This is definitely the flip-side of Google's process.
It makes some sense; take a step back, and the story is "If Google software engineers don't care enough to make it good, and Google users don't care enough to keep using it in spite of its flaws, why is Google throwing money at it at all?"
Google is a weird company because so many priorities are set by software engineers, not managers; some projects die because they literally run out of passionate engineers to work on them and management isn't incentivized to force engineers to work on projects they hate, instead asking the question "If nobody wants to work on this, is it worth it to keep doing it?"
I mean... on the other hand, managers like to bring out some shiny new projects... noone gets praise for "we continued supporting this project..." at quarterly and yearly meetings.
Atleast I think so... what else can explain so many chat platforms that came out of google and died soon after?
It makes some sense; take a step back, and the story is "If Google software engineers don't care enough to make it good, and Google users don't care enough to keep using it in spite of its flaws, why is Google throwing money at it at all?"
Google is a weird company because so many priorities are set by software engineers, not managers; some projects die because they literally run out of passionate engineers to work on them and management isn't incentivized to force engineers to work on projects they hate, instead asking the question "If nobody wants to work on this, is it worth it to keep doing it?"