Barnes TechGoogle is once again killing off another product. I don’t think it’s terribly surprising if you have been paying attention to the amount of effort Google has(n’t) been putting in to the product over the last few years, but it’s a cool idea, and it’s a shame Google continues to be allergic to putting any effort in to products.
Google is telling users to go to alternatives like Miro for the app functionality, and 3rd party digital boards for the actual hardware. On the one hand, the 3rd party options are much better than what Jamboard ever offered. I’ve been testing out Miro recently and it’s very nice. We’ll likely end up using that internally at work. But on the other hand, part of why they are so much better is because Google completely ignored their own product for years.
It’s frustrating that now users have to pay for yet another recurring monthly cost for something that was included in Google Workspace already. Oddly enough, Google isn’t lowering the price for Google Workspace as they continue to remove apps and functionality… In fact it keeps going up in price, while the pace of products seems completely stagnant.
Once again, Google frustrates me, not because they can’t make good products. They do. But They just cannot focus on keeping them around or improving them. In the productivity space, I FAR prefer Google over the Microsoft alternatives with their 1,000,000 license types, and completely unnecessary complexity, as well as their superpower for vendor lock-in. Google Workspace by comparison is in my opinion much nicer to use, but the more Google does this, the more difficult it is to continue to rely on them for anything, business or personal. I can’t believe they don’t see this as a critical problem internally.
We desperately need a real 3rd competitor in the productivity suite space… Someone needs to compete with Microsoft and Google, the duopoly is not good for anyone.
The Verge - Google’s whiteboarding app is joining the graveyard