You see a lot of drive-by posts of this kind in any Stadia related topic. (A quick example but there are many.)
It's become a meme -- but one with little backing. It's intellectually lazy and it's uninteresting.
Why is anyone using Chrome? Shouldn't you use Firefox since Google could shut it down? Better not backup your photos on Google Photos. That's probably going to get shut down soon and you'll lose all your pictures! And how about Android? Why are you investing in the Android ecosystem? Google will certainly end support for Android any day now. Maps? Gmail? Google Play? Google Drive? Google Docs? Google Assistant? YouTube? ChromeOS? Why doesn't anyone worry about these going away? Why do hundreds of millions of people (billions in the case of some of these services) use them every day?
Yes Google does shut a lot of their services down. Google+, Inbox, Allo, Project Ara, Reader, more recently Daydream and Clips, just to name a few. The list goes on and on. Why does Google shut down so many of their services, and yet have so many that are so popular and have been around for so long?
Google doesn't invest in services with the intention of shutting them down, as most of these drive-by posts on Stadia imply. Google experiments frequently, looking for big hits. When it finds a big hit, it becomes a defining element of the consumer Internet. When it doesn't, they get shut down and go away.
You have to understand Google's strategy as a business, and how they make money. Google is an Internet-based, consumer software-as-a-service company. It's not like Apple, which is trying to sell people devices, or Microsoft which is trying to sell software to companies. It makes services for people and gives them away for free (Android and ChromeOS are free for device makers, who then pass that on to consumers in the form of lower-priced devices). Despite that, Google makes a lot of money, and the process is fairly straightforward:
(1) Release a free service that attracts users -> (2) take the data from those users to make the service better -> (3) as the service gets better, attract more users, collect more data -> (4) sell targeted ads using the data -> (5) take the ad money and invest in more developers to make the service even better. Repeat forever. Eventually, the service gets so good that there is almost no competition, especially not for free. Sometimes, services collect data for other services or facilitate their usage (e.g. Chrome is just a way to drive more traffic to Google Search).
Google releases a lot of different services. When a service is successful, it gets this cycle right. When it releases an unsuccessful service, it doesn't. The unsuccessful services usually fail in the first part of the cycle, never attracting enough initial users to give Google the momentum it needs to improve its products. Those services get shut down, and the resources are reshuffled to work on other services.
If Stadia gets shut down in a few years, it will be because it failed and no one -- or almost no one -- will have bothered to use it. The shutting down aspect will be an afterthought. People won't even remember it -- like "Oh Stadia? I haven't heard of that in years. No one bothered to use it." Not: "All these people were playing on Stadia but then Google got bored and pulled the plug!" That will not happen.
Google is investing a lot in Stadia. They hired big name industry veterans. They held dedicated press events. They've been working on the tech for at least several years. And once the free tier is launched, Stadia will check the boxes all of Google's other successful services have checked. Free? Check. Appealing for millions of people? Check. Can be made better over time with data? Check. Can sell targeted ads? Check.
There are other strategic reasons Google has for investing in Stadia, and why it will probably keep it around for years even if it doesn't become popular right away.
It's become a meme -- but one with little backing. It's intellectually lazy and it's uninteresting.
Why is anyone using Chrome? Shouldn't you use Firefox since Google could shut it down? Better not backup your photos on Google Photos. That's probably going to get shut down soon and you'll lose all your pictures! And how about Android? Why are you investing in the Android ecosystem? Google will certainly end support for Android any day now. Maps? Gmail? Google Play? Google Drive? Google Docs? Google Assistant? YouTube? ChromeOS? Why doesn't anyone worry about these going away? Why do hundreds of millions of people (billions in the case of some of these services) use them every day?
Yes Google does shut a lot of their services down. Google+, Inbox, Allo, Project Ara, Reader, more recently Daydream and Clips, just to name a few. The list goes on and on. Why does Google shut down so many of their services, and yet have so many that are so popular and have been around for so long?
Google doesn't invest in services with the intention of shutting them down, as most of these drive-by posts on Stadia imply. Google experiments frequently, looking for big hits. When it finds a big hit, it becomes a defining element of the consumer Internet. When it doesn't, they get shut down and go away.
You have to understand Google's strategy as a business, and how they make money. Google is an Internet-based, consumer software-as-a-service company. It's not like Apple, which is trying to sell people devices, or Microsoft which is trying to sell software to companies. It makes services for people and gives them away for free (Android and ChromeOS are free for device makers, who then pass that on to consumers in the form of lower-priced devices). Despite that, Google makes a lot of money, and the process is fairly straightforward:
(1) Release a free service that attracts users -> (2) take the data from those users to make the service better -> (3) as the service gets better, attract more users, collect more data -> (4) sell targeted ads using the data -> (5) take the ad money and invest in more developers to make the service even better. Repeat forever. Eventually, the service gets so good that there is almost no competition, especially not for free. Sometimes, services collect data for other services or facilitate their usage (e.g. Chrome is just a way to drive more traffic to Google Search).
Google releases a lot of different services. When a service is successful, it gets this cycle right. When it releases an unsuccessful service, it doesn't. The unsuccessful services usually fail in the first part of the cycle, never attracting enough initial users to give Google the momentum it needs to improve its products. Those services get shut down, and the resources are reshuffled to work on other services.
If Stadia gets shut down in a few years, it will be because it failed and no one -- or almost no one -- will have bothered to use it. The shutting down aspect will be an afterthought. People won't even remember it -- like "Oh Stadia? I haven't heard of that in years. No one bothered to use it." Not: "All these people were playing on Stadia but then Google got bored and pulled the plug!" That will not happen.
Google is investing a lot in Stadia. They hired big name industry veterans. They held dedicated press events. They've been working on the tech for at least several years. And once the free tier is launched, Stadia will check the boxes all of Google's other successful services have checked. Free? Check. Appealing for millions of people? Check. Can be made better over time with data? Check. Can sell targeted ads? Check.
There are other strategic reasons Google has for investing in Stadia, and why it will probably keep it around for years even if it doesn't become popular right away.
- Stadia is a YouTube extension. YouTube is a big part of Google, and like Google's other services, has a near monopoly within its niche. The only legitimate competition YouTube faces is from Twitch. That competition could intensify as Twitch expands into other verticals. Stadia could draw people away from Twitch and prevent that from happening.
- Stadia will give Google a ton of data it can use to train its AI models, which will then be deployed to improve Google's other services (Assistant, Search) and also improve the AI tools it gives developers that work on Google Cloud. That could make Google Cloud a more compelling choice vs Azure, etc in the cloud computing space.
