- All right, we just gotta,
we just gotta talk about something real quick.
So, one of the biggest announcements at Google's fall event
that they just had was that they're planning
on supporting the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro
with seven years of OS security and feature drop updates.
This is industry leading and super awesome.
Here's a list of some of the other promises
that have been made in the smartphone world
for how long down the road they plan
on supporting their devices.
In the world of Android, this is unprecedented.
So, clearly this was one of the best announcements
of the entire Google event,
and we are finally happy to see that.
But on the other hand, Google has a rich history
of discontinuing products and abandoning projects
and services that have a lot of people using them
or depending on them, so how do we square those two things?
Like you would think that relying on a big company
is better than relying on a small one,
as far as like supporting projects down the road.
Like if I was gonna set up a new smartphone, for example,
I wouldn't wanna set up one with like a tiny startup
that I don't know if they're gonna exist in five years
'cause then all my smartphone stuff might not work
when that company goes outta business.
So, you'd think a bigger, more established company
would be more reliable, but it turns out,
the same problem can happen when you rely on
a gigantic company like Google
because something you might get invested in
or start using might just be like a small rounding error
for them that they might just get rid of at any time.
So, I think the thing that really summarizes
this all well is I have a friend that says
that Google is super willing to spin up new projects
and be aggressive and innovative all the time,
but if that new project doesn't either get a billion users
or make a billion dollars,
then it is liable to get axed at any time.
So, that's why literally just in the past few weeks,
we have seen Google Domains, Google Jamboard,
Google Podcasts, and Pixel Pass all killed,
all active services with various amounts
of users just destroyed, just killed.
And the further back you go, the more there are.
Like this, it feels like a running joke
that Google will announce
and kill a new messaging service every year,
but just keep scrolling back.
Like there's entire webpages dedicated to chronicling
the long list of things that Google has killed.
Remember Google Plus, remember the Inbox app.
Remember Hangouts, remember Aleo.
Remember Chromecast Audio, Stadia, the list goes on.
Now, when they kill these products or services,
there are often various degrees to which they're able
to replace them or support everyone
that they just rug pulled.
So, like something like Google Play Music, okay,
they were launching another service called YouTube Music
and it had a lot of congruent features,
so they didn't have the need to have both.
So, they made it easy to port your entire library
from one to the other.
You'd still be missing some features,
but at least you still have your whole library.
So, that was nice.
There's a similar thing with Google Podcasts.
Like it was a pretty solid podcast app, but they again,
wanted to bring those things into YouTube Music.
So, they've worked on an import process
and some tutorials for that.
And like it's a good effort.
It's good to at least try to do that sort of thing,
but it's not always perfect.
Google Jamboard, you might not have heard
of Google Jamboard, but weirdly enough,
the old pro Ultimate Frisbee team I've played on,
New York Empire, uses Google Jamboard
for like our scouting documents,
for like writing everything down
and players and tendencies and all that sort of thing.
And it's gone now, or at least by the end
of the year it'll be gone.
So, I guess we'll just find something else to use.
Google Stadia, the gaming service only lasted
a couple of years.
The only saving grace with this one is when it got axed,
they would at least let you export your saved data,
so you could use it on another platform.
And then, they refunded every Stadia user for every game.
But again, there are no alternatives.
Fun fact, and this is a true story.
I had literally just switched mkbhd.com
from Squarespace to Google Domains.
It was like a big domain transfer process
that took like 24 hours and I was like nervous to do it,
but I finally did it and then within a week,
Google killed Google Domains
and sold all of those domains back to Squarespace.
So, there are no Google Domains anymore,
but maybe the craziest recent one would be Pixel Pass.
Pixel Pass is crazy.
So, if you haven't heard of it,
it was basically a subscription plan that was launched
alongside the Pixel 6, and the idea was you sign up
and then you pay 45 bucks a month,
you get the brand new phone,
and then you get YouTube premium, YouTube music,
a bunch of Google 1 storage, and some other stuff,
all included packaged together.
And then, you get a new Pixel for free every two years,
which I mean, sounds pretty sweet, right?
If you use a bunch of Google services,
they're all packaged together,
the overall price would be a little bit lower
than if you'd bought all of these things individually.
And then, who wouldn't want to upgrade
to a new Pixel phone roughly once every two years?
Sounds pretty sweet.
A bunch of people signed up,
and then, exactly 22 months after they announced it,
so a month and a half before the first upgrade cycle,
they quietly killed the program
and nobody got their free phone upgrade
because they killed it right before they were supposed to.
And there have been no announced alternatives.
And the list goes on and on and on,
but clearly this type of behavior erodes your trust
in anything Google.
Me, personally, I was thinking about maybe
switching to Google Fi.
There's a bunch of other carriers out there.
I was gonna maybe try it.
The integration with the Pixel seems cool,
but I cannot be sure that it'll still exist
in a year or two, so I'm not gonna do it.
So, my point is, launching ambitious new things,
which is what Google does, is easy.
Supporting those ambitious new things
for a long time is hard.
And this new announcement of seven years of software
updates for the Pixel is the most ambitious software
support plan we've ever seen in the smartphone world.
And that's what makes it so awesome
and so hard to believe at the same time.
Like if I was at Google and honestly watching this,
I would really want to make this promise come true.
I think it's a great promise.
Clearly, I hope more companies see Google's announcement
and try to follow and do the same thing
because making people's devices more useful
and more secure for a longer time is a win for everyone,
for the users, for security, for the environment
if people use their phones longer.
So, like if this pans out, the phones people
are buying today will be up to date till 2030,
which is an eternity in the tech world, that is so sick.
So, I wanna give them credit
for an awesome promise, but it's a promise.
And Google breaks promises all the time.
That's where we're at right now.
I want it to be real, but, but we'll see.
Will the Pixel even be around in seven years?
We don't know.
The Nexus program only lasted five years
before they killed that and then started Pixel stuff.
And we are on year eight of the Pixel now.
Will it last seven more years?
I don't even know.
But then actually, this also ties into another bit
of a mini trend we've observed lately
that I wanted to talk about, which is new announcements
from tech companies that have features that are coming soon.
And this isn't just Google,
this has happened across the board,
but this has happened where a device will come out,
but then the new features aren't available at launch.
So, reviewers aren't even able to test the new features
until well after the thing is in the wild.
You know, Google just did this with the Pixel.
The Video Boost feature they talked about on stage,
that they said is coming later.
Video Night Sight is also not available at launch.
That's coming later.
But like I said, not just Google.
Apple's done this, actually many times
with iPhone camera features,
and they've done it again this year with a bunch of stuff.
The Journal app on the iPhone is still not there,
coming later this year.
The airdrop transfer via the internet feature
is also not in the phones yet.
That's still coming later this year.
And the double tap feature for the Apple Watch,
which is one of the biggest new features
of the entire watch, was announced on stage,
but it's still in beta a month later, and coming soon.
I've just noticed a bunch of these
over the past couple months.
It kind of feels like I tweeted about this.
It kind of feels like the gaming industry precedent
where a lot of gaming studios will release
like a half finished game kind of to just get it out there
and maybe test the waters,
and if it hooks, then maybe they'll throw a bunch
of patches at it and updates at it.
But releasing half finished games is just not great.
So, I definitely don't love this trend
for tech and for smartphones and hardware,
but for slightly different reasons.
One, just because it makes them much harder to review
if the new feature's not out and we can't test it
and then we review what's out,
but then the big new feature comes later, tough.
But I guess I'll just stick with the thing that I've said
from the beginning, which is never buy a new piece of tech
based on the promise of future software updates.
Just don't do it.
Just buy it for what it is today.
And if there's stuff coming later and it actually
gets delivered on the promise, some are better
at delivering that than others, then it's a bonus.
It just, it's an extra value add
for the thing that you are already happy with,
but never buy it just based on the promise
of future updates.
So, that's it, I just had some thoughts
I wanted to get out into the world.
Hopefully, Google and Apple and others are listening.
Hopefully, they're able to deliver on these promises,
but also, hopefully, they're able to deliver
on things that they promise at launch when they can.
And we'll keep an eye on Pixel.
I'm testing the phones, I'll be reviewing 'em.
Subscribe to see the review when it comes out.
That's it for now.
Thanks for watching.
Catch you in the next one, peace.
(upbeat music)