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Google this week revealed it's killing Inbox by Gmail in March 2019 and killing Fabric in mid-2019. Both announcements were made on Apple's iPhone Day, largely burying the news.
Coincidence? I think not!
(In all seriousness, I'm sure Google wants to get the message out that these services are going away.
Google is often criticized for proposing too many duplicative apps as well as shutting down beloved products. It's a joke in the tech industry: Do not get too attached to any Google service you love.
And while there is no way of predicting what you can do, it is one way to minimize the potential impact on you of the inevitable fallout: steer clear of any duplicate Google services.
I never committed to Inbox by Gmail because I knew it was going to kill it. Well, that's not quite true: Inbox replaces Gmail, but it's been here forever. I have two personal Outlook.com email addresses, an unused personal Gmail account for my Android devices, and a work Gmail account I can not avoid. I use the desktop Outlook app for two reasons: I prefer desktop software for one, but it also means I'm not affected by any Gmail user interface changes.
For Allo, almost everyone saw the writing on the wall of the very beginning. No support for text messages or video calls? Useless, no matter how nifty some of the features were.
The fabric and firebase example offers another suggestion for what to look for: Sometimes you do not have to wait for the following to appear in your workflow:
Chances are Google is not doing all that work just to make your life easier. The functionality is being moved to the other side of the world. It happened with Allo, it happened with Inbox, and it's going to happen again and again.
From a business perspective, it makes no sense for Google to keep it going. It launches them to experiment, test, and iterate, but finally there is a last man standing. Or sometimes, like in the box of Google Reader, no man standing.
Hell, Google probably would have killed Gmail if it could not figure out how to monetize it with G Suite for businesses and ads for consumers. Like every other company, Google is a business at the end of the day.
I could say twice about using Google services, full stop. But that's another story.
ProBeat is a column in which Emil rants about whatever crosses him that week.
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