Most people knew this day was coming, however on September 29th, Google seemingly abruptly decided they were throwing in the towel on Stadia. With a blog post and a few emails, Google announced they were done with Stadia -

Stadia - A message about Stadia and our long term streaming strategy

I wish I could say I was surprised, but honestly, Google is kind of a joke at this point with their attention span on products, regardless of how good they are. I wanted to write a few thoughts on Stadia specifically and on what I see as a huge problem for Google, which somehow they seem unaware of (or worse, they don’t care).

First, a bit about Stadia.

I tried out stadia a long time ago when it was just a beta test of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey in 2018. While it was far from perfect, I immediately saw the appeal. It worked shockingly well for streaming a game entirely in your browser.

When Stadia was officially announced, I signed up for the Founders Edition. I would not classify myself as a hardcore gamer, but I play games quite a bit. I also love being an early adopter of tech, so this was a no-brainer. Throw in the fact that you could choose a Gamertag before everyone else so you can get a really good name? No question, I’m sold.

I want to start by saying, I really like(d) Stadia. To this day, I use it almost every day. However, there were some signs from the very beginning that were concerning, especially given Google’s track record with… Everything.

When it was released, it was definitely a “minimum viable product”. Several features mentioned during the initial announcement were just not ready yet. For companies that have a really good track record, this is not always very concerning. Apple, for instance, will usually preview the next year of software when they announce macOS or iOS. Some features don’t make the first release of the new OS, but it’s rare that those features don’t get added before the next iteration. Google, on the other hand, loves to talk things up, then either underwhelm, or change their mind.

But, who knows? Many of the features were pretty ambitious and it’s totally fair that some of them might not be ready on day 1. Particularly since many of them would clearly require game developers to support on their end, even if the platform itself was ready. But that’s why Google had their own gaming studio, right? Did I expect some amazing AAA games from Google’s brand-new game studio? Absolutely not. They were new to this, and gaming is a very difficult industry. But surely they could make some proof-of-concept games to show the massively scalable infrastructure, right? Or the Google Assistant being integrated right into the game from the controller? Right? Surely YouTube Streaming directly from Google Cloud was one of the highest priorities for this whole project… Right?

Well, they delivered on some of the hype. Eventually. Kind of. And some of it worked really well! YouTube took MUCH longer to integrate than I would have thought (and frankly, much longer than it should have), but it worked really well when it came out. I don’t feel the need to stream to YouTube, but I understand the appeal. I tried doing it a few times just for fun, and it was pretty flawless.

All of these should have been signs. The big games starting to bail were also pretty clearly bad signs, but then once in a while, you would get a glimmer of hope. When Cyberpunk 2077 first came out, it was an absolute mess. It was not built well and was not able to take advantage of the newest generation of game consoles. Only high-end PC hardware was handling it ok, except for Stadia. All of a sudden, the appeal of a cloud-based console was popping up in articles all over the place. First of all, it WORKED. That was a huge bonus. Then, as they started rolling out enormous patches trying to fix the game, Stadia was again in the news since you never had to update anything. 100GB update? Not if you were using Stadia!

Well apparently that was not enough. For me, I never really saw it as a next-gen console competitor. It seemed unlikely that it could compete with a fairly high-end console I have right here in front of me, plugged right into my TV, and 10 feet from my controller. However, it absolutely worked great for most of the gaming I do. I played Destiny on there a LOT, and it was great. Cyberpunk also worked great. Anything, where I was not competing with player vs. player (which I don’t do on Destiny very often), was absolutely awesome. I fantasized about playing hardware-heavy games like Civilization 6 on there (even if it required a keyboard and mouse). It’s a CPU-heavy game, but a small amount of lag won’t matter. Also, the updates and add-ons are enormous. Seems perfect. Or even if I could play some of my very favorite retro games, that would be amazing. Even without that, I still played it a lot.

I used it primarily on my phone. Apple decided these kinds of apps can’t exist (which is a whole other topic) but they released browser support for iOS and it frankly worked nearly flawlessly. I have a phone mount for my Stadia controller and it’s awesome. If I want to dive into a game and get the best experience, I would play on my Xbox, however, if we’re watching some mindless TV at the end of the day and I want to grind some resources or do some Vanguard playlists on Destiny, it was phenomenal for that.

I have tried Nvidia’s version of this and Microsoft’s and Amazon’s. To be honest, from a technology standpoint, Stadia in my experience, was far superior.

So why did Stadia fail? Well, obviously, it doesn’t have enough users to justify keeping it up. It seems like maybe it was a good idea, but there is no future or market for it, right? Well… I don’t know how much I agree with that. I think a big part of this is a core problem with Google. If there was no market for this kind of gaming, I don’t think you’d see Nvidia, Microsoft, and Amazon all directly competing with this.

From day 1, all across the internet, and even among my social circles, people would joke that Google was just going to kill it, so why bother? On Reddit, fans of Stadia would get incredibly heated in their defense. This is a superior technology and experience. The world will see. There’s no way Google will kill this. Matter of fact, Google would repeatedly promise that they were taking it seriously and were not going to kill it off.

But I, like many on the internet, had my doubts. Google kills things off at a comical rate. Often, it’s because they have some crazy ideas, and unlike many companies, they will try them out instead of just talk about it. Other times, they kill off products that many people love, or even heavily rely on, to the point where it’s basically a joke on the internet. There are sites dedicated to just keeping track of the Google products that they have killed, such as - Killed by Google

Some of these pretty clearly no one cares that much about. Most people probably didn’t even know they existed. However, some of them were key products that people relied on. When Google Reader shut down, it nearly killed off the entire RSS reader industry. There are some great alternatives now, but the broader internet has still never recovered to the point it was at when Google Reader was shut down. Others are even part of their paid products. Google Cloud IoT Core had some great ideas, but they killed it off. Google Hire was an AI-driven hiring tool that was meant to be an add-on for Google Workspace Enterprise. I used it briefly at my last job, and it honestly felt like magic. Google App Maker was a low-code automation/app-building tool that was part of Google Workspace. All of these were just killed off. If you had invested a significant amount of time into any of these products, well… Tough luck. In some cases, there was a replacement, in others, just tough luck.

I have been a Google Partner in both of my last 2 jobs. I really like a lot of what Google does. Chrome is excellent. No one scales products across the internet quite like Google does. The way the infrastructure is built for Google Cloud is just better than the other big clouds. I love the way you can use really robust apps right in the browser. I love the “internet first” approach to apps, and frankly, the way the company completely restructured after China hacked them and essentially rocked the entire cybersecurity industry with their Zero Trust methodology, as well as their contributions to continuous delivery methods, hyper scale applications, and data… There is a huge list of things that Google is second to none in the world.

But if you don’t believe that a company will keep something around, why would you invest in it? Why would you build on Google Cloud if you don’t even know if the tools that run the app will still be there? If you’re a customer, why would you buy Stadia and invest time into these games if they just kill it off in a few years?

In contrast, Microsoft is relentless with these things. Do they kill off products? Absolutely, but it’s not their reputation. They will come into a market they have no business being in, and just iterate year after year and just stay with it until it bears some fruit.

Sometimes it feels like Google lacks focus. Or maybe it’s lacking direction. It’s hard to say. Even for products that don’t get killed off, look at the mess that they continually create for themselves with their messaging platform. To a lesser degree, but still similar, their video messaging with Duo vs. Meet. I follow this space very closely, and it’s hard for me to keep track of what they are doing with all of their products. I understand consolidating and things like that but they never seem to even be able to successfully do so, and you end up with changed plans a million times, and confusion and frustration from users.

At work we use Slack instead of Google Chat. I like Slack, but why should I pay for a messaging tool when our Google Workspace (Enterprise, nonetheless) has a chat platform built in? Well partially because it’s a mess. One day it’s a separate app. They announce some cool features, then back track on those, then they merge it into the Gmail interface for some kind of “Unified messaging” platform, then they let you back track from that. At least temporarily. All the while barely actually adding functionality beyond more emoji or things like that.

I could go on with countless other examples, but I think the point is clear, and I don’t think Google realizes how big of a reputation problem they have by killing off products like Stadia. When big Google fans (like myself) have a hard time trusting that Google will keep something around, we are hesitant to even try new things. What if we like it, and start to rely on it, then it’s gone? I personally am really tired of it, and I know I’m not alone. If your promoters and early adopters are scared to use your new products, and you’re a company that thrives on innovation, that’s a huge problem. Google desperately needs to address this image or it will really hurt them in the future. Either stick with products even if they lose money, and use those learnings on future products, or hold your cards to your chest longer so things can bake more before you release them.