Google Is Damaging Its Brand

Earlier this week Google killed off several of its products, including Google+, Inbox for Gmail, and the goo.gl URL shortener. Google's propensity to kill off products has been bothering people for quite a while (I still haven't forgiven them for killing Google Reader) and it's beginning to make people question whether they should be using new Google products.

Ars Technica has a long article about Google's product shutdowns, what it's doing to the company's brand (it's not good), and what they might be able to do to repair the harm.

We are 91 days into the year, and so far, Google is racking up an unprecedented body count. If we just take the official shutdown dates that have already occurred in 2019, a Google-branded product, feature, or service has died, on average, about every nine days.

Some of these product shutdowns have transition plans, and some of them (like Google+) represent Google completely abandoning a user base. The specifics aren't crucial, though. What matters is that every single one of these actions has a negative consequence for Google's brand, and the near-constant stream of shutdown announcements makes Google seem more unstable and untrustworthy than it has ever been. Yes, there was the one time Google killed Google Wave nine years ago or when it took Google Reader away six years ago, but things were never this bad.

For a while there has been a subset of people concerned about Google's privacy and antitrust issues, but now Google is eroding trust that its existing customers have in the company. That's a huge problem. Google has significantly harmed its brand over the last few months, and I'm not even sure the company realizes it.

If you're a podcast fan,  episode 502 of the All About Android podcast devotes a lot of time to this subject. Their main concern seems to be what Google has done to the trust that people, especially power users of their products, have in the company.