[HN Gopher] Google Ending Support for Jamboard
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Google Ending Support for Jamboard
Author : nkcmr
Score : 117 points
Date : 2023-09-28 19:06 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (workspaceupdates.googleblog.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (workspaceupdates.googleblog.com)
| eh_why_not wrote:
| I wonder in these situations: why don't they spin it off / sell
| it to some other smaller company that doesn't need a Billion
| Users to succeed?
|
| Never used it myself, but it looks like a useful product. Shame
| to have it disappear if there are still enough people who would
| buy it.
| changoplatanero wrote:
| Probably it is too tightly integrated with other google
| internal services to be able to give the code to a third party
| and have them operate the business.
| btilly wrote:
| And that also would be why they are shutting it down.
|
| Google internal services are always being rewritten, and code
| migrated from the old version of the service to the new one.
| If nobody is willing to migrate an externally visible
| product, it has to sunset at the same time that the internal
| service does.
|
| This philosophy does wonders for internal code quality and
| consistency. It also makes people outside the company wonder
| whether they should trust Google's public offerings.
| travem wrote:
| In some senses it is a bit of an indictment on Google's cloud
| offering that their teams don't build it on those.
| eklitzke wrote:
| The issue though would be the source code. Most projects at
| Google are developed in the monorepo and this makes it very
| difficult to split things out (to sell, or in some cases to
| open source) because the code likely links to all kinds of
| internal things.
| btilly wrote:
| Steve Yegge had a great rant around a dozen years ago that
| explains why their teams don't.
|
| https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611
| mey wrote:
| I use Jamboard because MS Whiteboard is impossible to share in a
| corporate environment, especially to outside users. Jamboard at
| least works under Google Drive sharing policy/folders without
| going insane...
| dcchambers wrote:
| Sigh. My team uses this quite a bit but it has always been my
| least favorite of the popular "digital whiteboard" tools. Super
| limited in capabilities, but at least it was convenient and easy
| to use.
|
| And the de-googlification of my life continues...one app at a
| time.
| frutiger wrote:
| It was a pretty bad app. I'm surprised you'll miss it.
| dcchambers wrote:
| I totally agree it wasn't great. As I said, it was super
| barebones and my least favorite of the major white-boarding
| apps.
|
| But it was already "there" because we're on
| GSuite/Workspaces/whatever they call it these days and
| everyone had access to it without needing to jump through any
| hoops or agree on a separate application to start using.
|
| Am I going to mourn the loss? Absolutely not, except for the
| inevitable 60 minute meeting we'll have where we decide on a
| replacement tool before all ultimately winding up
| disappointed in whatever we agree on.
| [deleted]
| renewiltord wrote:
| Haha, wow, I picked up one from the Twitter liquidation sale this
| Monday. HAHA! What a sucker I am!
|
| It appears to run Android, so I think we can probably pull
| something off here.
| [deleted]
| monitron wrote:
| If you have any luck, I'd love to know about it. Our
| deactivated Jamboard currently serves as nothing more than a
| mediocre large monitor for a Mac mini.
| internet2000 wrote:
| My employer owns hundreds of those across all our offices. I hope
| they auction them. I'll buy one for $50 on the off chance it gets
| hacked/jailbroken.
| chris_wot wrote:
| lol - I remember when Fairfax Media (now Nine) got these.
| Apparently revolutionary. And like all Google things, fizzled
| out.
|
| Why invest in new Google technology?
| [deleted]
| tareqak wrote:
| They are ending support, but they still own all the associated
| patents around it, correct?
|
| What if there was a corporation that bought out every entrant
| involving new technology (not necessarily monopolizing their
| already dominant verticals, but other new inventions/ideas)? They
| either have a winner, or they stifle innovation in corresponding
| area for the lifetime of any associated patents.
| parl_match wrote:
| > What if there was a corporation that bought out every entrant
| involving new technology (not necessarily monopolizing their
| already dominant verticals, but other new inventions/ideas)?
| They either have a winner, or they stifle innovation in
| corresponding area for the lifetime of any associated patents.
|
| There are companies like this: patent trolls. That's why the
| big tech companies all have patent sharing agreements now.
| tareqak wrote:
| It sounds like a corporation could impede the
| humanity/progress of countries that respect these patents by
| patent_lifetime * number_of_patents so long as they have the
| money to do so.
| skinner927 wrote:
| That's literally a feature
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| You do realize you are describing the exact thing that's
| currently plaguing the software industry, among others?
| Raed667 wrote:
| This is a bummer, I use Jamboard (the software not the hardware)
| to draw diagrams during Zoom calls and send the link to
| participants after. I mostly use a Wacom tablet to do the actual
| drawing.
|
| Any good free alternatives out there ?
|
| Edit: The proposed alternatives they mention in the update
| (FigJam, Lucidspark, and Miro) really don't fit that workflow.
| BasilPH wrote:
| I've been enjoying Excalidraw a lot[^1]. It lets you share
| diagrams without accounts and you can even collaborate in real-
| time.
|
| [^1]: https://excalidraw.com/
| akshayKMR wrote:
| For a tool that combines both, meetings like zoom and
| embedded Excalidraw, check out https://oorja.io ; You create
| a room, click on "+" button inside to add Excalidraw.
|
| Disclaimer: This is my side project.
| fathyb wrote:
| Seconding Excalidraw! A feature I really like: you can export
| diagrams in PNG with the scene data embedded in the image
| metadata. This lets you modify the diagram by opening the PNG
| image directly.
| gcr wrote:
| TLDraw is really nice: http://tldraw.com
|
| As is Excalidraw
| ssivark wrote:
| Twiddla?
| ohthatsnotright wrote:
| You can try Milton https://www.miltonpaint.com/
| pawelwentpawel wrote:
| I built https://flat.social that has whiteboarding
| functionalities (among others). Not as advanced as Miro or
| FigJam but useful for quick diagrams during meetings /
| brainstorming.
| monsieurgaufre wrote:
| https://mural.co/
|
| Mural has a free tier. I did not used it much but was nice.
| Lammy wrote:
| Interesting how the term "Auto Update Expiration (AUE)" shifts
| the focus to being about the device rather than about Google.
| Something about giving it an initialism too, makes it sound like
| Google are describing some fundamental law of the world to you
| (like MTBF) where their hands are tied rather than it being an
| arbitrary business decision. How many psychologists do they have
| on payroll to come up with these things?
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| [stub for offtopicness]
|
| (come on you guys, anything this repetitive is off topic on HN.
| we want _curious_ conversation here...)
| koromak wrote:
| Why do they even make new products at this point
| [deleted]
| solardev wrote:
| If they don't make new products, what are they going to shut
| down?
| thrillgore wrote:
| Typical Google.
| [deleted]
| uptown wrote:
| Google doing what Google does. Anyone have a good rec for an
| alternative to Nest doorbell with 24/7 coverage and no monthly
| subscription? May as well get ahead of that end-of-life
| notification.
| [deleted]
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| For fuck's sake. Have so many of these in the office.
|
| Never buying a Google product again. This is beyond ridiculous
| at this point.
| [deleted]
| half0wl wrote:
| And one more to the casket - https://killedbygoogle.com/
| SXX wrote:
| OMG I completely missed they killing Google Podcasts.
|
| Just terrible since I dont want to deal with anything
| YouTube.
| [deleted]
| havnagiggle wrote:
| It needs a graph over time. It seems like it's going
| exponential based on HN headlines.
| jchw wrote:
| Interesting. A full year of notice is actually pretty good for
| a Google shutdown if my memory serves correctly.
| ferfumarma wrote:
| I think it's reasonable to say that shutdowns are their core
| competency at this point.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| [flagged]
| nikolay wrote:
| Wow! What a bunch of shortsighted people manage Google! First,
| they launched half-baked products and spend zero effort to
| evolve them, then, second, they say: "Oh, I didn't attract much
| adoption." Well, people are NOT stupid - nobody wants to be
| dealing an agonizing body as it will be a complete lost of time
| and effort knowing the sure fate in Google's graveyard!
| [deleted]
| indigo0086 wrote:
| Does anyone have the link showing that many of these now dead
| projects are just competition projects for Google developers to
| wrestle for internal status and power, or to escape Google
| grunthood?
| [deleted]
| wg0 wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| kotaKat wrote:
| It is the day after Google's 25th birthday, where we celebrated
| not only 25 years of ruining the Internet, but also the 289
| products they brought to market and then unceremoniously dumped
| away.
|
| And now today [as of 9/28/2023 at 3:18 PM ET] we celebrate the
| 290 products they brought to market and then unceremoniously
| dumped away.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Hey, that's not fair. Google spent about ten years being a
| net positive for the internet. They used to have a program
| where they'd pay for pizza delivery for anyone who was up
| late coding. They've been churning out good FOSS for most of
| their existence. Given they've been more harm than good for
| several years now, but let's not rob them of their bright
| beginnings.
| [deleted]
| belter wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| beggers wrote:
| "The next phase of digital whiteboarding for Google Workspace"
|
| A classic Google cancellation title if I've ever seen one.
| [deleted]
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I'll hold out for the next next phase
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Google is the perfect example of living off just a couple of
| good decisions made in the past. I wonder how many rich people
| behave just like Google, i.e. they are touted as being business
| geniuses but in reality got their wealth from a luckily
| investment and it has been a struggle ever since
| [deleted]
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Most companies are this. If you look into detail at the vast
| majority of successful companies, there is a single product
| or service that makes the vast majority of their money and it
| was a combination of hard work, right timing, luck, 6 other
| things and it's not repeatable.
|
| Frank Slootman (CEO of several public companies, now
| Snowflake) talks about this in his book. He basically says
| "don't try to build new products, you aren't going to catch
| lightning in a bottle twice". There are a few great counter
| examples, (amazon with AWS being the most obvious) but not
| many.
| throwaweuy2193 wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| grumpy-it wrote:
| [flagged]
| morkalork wrote:
| My job is all in on google. Gmail, meets, gcp, everything. Never
| heard of jamboard. We'd probably have been using it too, if we
| ever knew it existed! How is it that closure announcements are
| when we find out about these things? Especially from a company
| whose revenue comes from advertising?
| dekhn wrote:
| We have these scattered around my offices (a large
| pharma/biotech). They go mostly unused. The idea is good. But
| it was outside of google's wheelhouse (they have been
| traditionally weak in consumer hardware except for phones).
| [deleted]
| Raed667 wrote:
| I first heard of it when Google sent a couple of free boards
| for evaluation to a company I used to work at. We were fully on
| GSuite + GCP, but the hardware was too expensive and not that
| useful, so we ended up sending them back.
| [deleted]
| jsnell wrote:
| Because you're clicking through a HN story when the title is
| about Google shutting down a product, but did not click through
| the HN stories when it was announced or when it became
| generally available. (But those product announcement
| submissions did actually get a surprising amount of attention
| on HN, https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true
| &que...)
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| My PM will be in shambles. How will we ever do retrospectives
| now???
| [deleted]
| monknomo wrote:
| I like retrium, but it's much more structured than a
| whiteboard-style tool
| Raed667 wrote:
| My current team uses Miro, a previous one used retrotool.io
|
| Both handle it in different ways
| kgeist wrote:
| We use Miro as well, it's pretty solid. Our PMs use it for
| almost everything. Developers, however, prefer draw.io
| jiveturkey wrote:
| woosh
| monitron wrote:
| This has been a long time coming. My company owns a Jamboard (the
| hardware). They were selling it hard when we bought it. We got to
| use it for a year before the service contract expired. All the
| major features stopped working, there was no way to renew online
| and the salespeople were no longer answering phone calls or
| emails.
|
| So now we have an expensive, heavy albatross on our hands. Really
| makes you want to avoid depending on Google for anything again.
| [deleted]
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Have one in my living room: 100 lb bright red deadweight. Does
| get excited questions from guests though!
|
| I'm pretty intimately familiar with Android hardware devices
| having launched some myself and planned on creating for some
| sort of "jailbreak" (really you'd want to break into the
| Jamboard MDM system, not the OS) but it hasn't been a priority.
|
| You can pick these up for cheap sometimes when people realize
| it needs a $1000 a year license to function...
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I've hit a related problem with my interactive display from
| A.G. Neovo.
|
| For use as a whiteboard, I really want low latency from (a)
| dragging the stylus to (z) the display catching up with what
| I've drawn.
|
| Their built-in Android app is great in that regard, but it's
| proprietary so it's not good for collaboration.
|
| Unfortunately, there's much _worse_ input-to-update latency
| if I use it as an external touch display, or if I use it 's
| built-in Chrome browser with whiteboard websites.
|
| Without the ability to root the device, I can't really
| investigate the source of that extra latency.
|
| And it's not Google Play certified, so I can't install native
| whiteboarding apps from some the well-known vendors I've
| tried. (Those vendors require installation via Google Play.)
|
| It's been a frustrating and expensive experiment.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| This touches on a fundamental problem with the current
| electronic-whiteboard market: poor cross-vendor compatibility.
|
| It adds seriously risk to a widespread deployment in any
| organization.
| sailorganymede wrote:
| Oh goddamnit - I really liked Jamboard and used it tons for
| myself and my team. Guess we have to actually Google for
| alternatives.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2023-09-28 23:02 UTC)