> ... without making some really major changes that are highly disruptive. Now, you could just say that Google should bite the bullet and hit reboot on some of its bad UX decisions from years ago.
They don't seem to have much of a problem EOL-ing products. THAT is often far more disruptive to large swathes of people. Perhaps not billions, but I would hazard to say millions of people have been affected by various product shutdowns, and there's never any rebound from that. Making UI changes can be rolled out to groups of folks with adjustments made on feedback, then further rolled out, or ... scrapped.
Once you EOL a product, you no longer have to support it. Not the same case at all as making changes to a core product and then continuing to support it.
The point seemed to be that they don't want to make big changes because it's "disruptive". But... have no problem being disruptive to millions of end users.
Google doesn't want to be disruptive when it hurts Google. Disrupting users of a profitable product hurts Google. Disrupting users of an unprofitable product does not hurt Google. Google happy. Google kill unprofitable product.
They don't seem to have much of a problem EOL-ing products. THAT is often far more disruptive to large swathes of people. Perhaps not billions, but I would hazard to say millions of people have been affected by various product shutdowns, and there's never any rebound from that. Making UI changes can be rolled out to groups of folks with adjustments made on feedback, then further rolled out, or ... scrapped.