First comment on that Reddit thread:

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Hey folks! Kevin, product manager on Flutter and Dart here.

The layoffs were decided AT LEAST a couple of layers above our team and affected a LOT of teams. (I think I can say that). Lots of good folks got bad news and lots of great projects lost people. Flutter and Dart were not affected any more or less that others. It was a tough day...tough week.

It was crazy to be seeing demos and new things working and discussions about new customers the same day we lost colleagues and friends.

We're sad, but still cranking hard on I/O and beyond.

We know ya'll care SO MUCH about the project and the team and the awesome ecosystem we've built together.

You're nervous. I get it. We get it.

You're betting on Flutter and Dart.

So am I. So is Google.

Reddit post from Project Manager is pretty pointless. If Google decides to get rid of Flutter, they are not going to tell Kevin before hand, they are likely not even going to tell Kevin boss before hand. Stadia employees were swearing up and down that Stadia was full steam ahead despite layoffs until it wasn't. When it happened, it was clear from all Twitter posting that no one except really high up Google Executives knew Stadia shutdown was coming and they didn't tell anyone.

True, but you could say the same thing about anything. That does not help anyone.

It does help. Words mean less than action. If random people are killed from a division due to decisions "many layers above" it means that division is really not valued. Google will kill off flutter in the future. One should not be building long term apps on it. React native and react luckily have been taken over by the open source community and will live long. Shame though, I really liked flutter. Fuck Google.

Not always, if Google Cloud CEO came out and said "We are invested in Flutter", I'd give it more weight since he has real power at Google.

I'm just saying Kevin statement is meaningless. If you look at Google actions before, they do not slowly remove support from things and announce it. They silently layoff, go quiet then BAM, X is gone without warning and little time to deal.

Doom and gloom comes from everyone who has followed Google history. Google does not do what I call "Enterprise orderly shutdown of services" which is decrease releases/features, announce depreciation, give shutdown date and shutdown. They just do layoffs, radio silence and BAM, SHUTDOWN!

Building anything on top of Google tech that isn't Android or GMail is a huge risk, and the fact that the higher-ups will just randomly decide to fire large parts of teams confirms that caution is the right approach.

That's so true. They have built a reputation for killing stuff.

The Stadia people were saying the same thing up until the day they were shut down.

> You're betting on Flutter and Dart.

> So am I. So is Google.

RIP Dart and Flutter.

That's definitely not true as of today.

There were some rumors that made people think of the worst, and as we speak about Google, a lot of people panicked that Google is dropping Flutter.

However, that was not the case.

They moved some roles to new locations, meaning (they claim) the team size change is net zero. https://x.com/MiSvTh/status/1785767966815985893

I get your frustration. Google just killed two of my favorite products this month (or more accurately, I found out about them this month), and then I heard about the Flutter downsizing rumors. I worked with Flutter for years now, and I decided that I can't let my professional fate in a company like that and started learning something new to switch to. Even if today it looks like they let Flutter live, it's better be prepared and pack up while I can leave on my own terms.

I stopped trusting Google's judgement of products when they killed both Reader and Wave.

Reader extension(s) for Chrome are fine replacements.

Those that do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

That's unfortunate. I actually liked Flutter.

Don't worry, it's a lie.

Until it isn’t. Too much faith on Google.

C'mon, just because they lied 295 times before doesn't mean they'll do it again. =)

I think they are just outsourced

Ok this is good to know. Man I thought for a moment flutter will be something Google doesn't kill but no. They are such shareholder automated processes driven that they are imploding from the inside. I'll switch to react native unfortunately. Flutter is definitely better tech but betting on any product from Google is a death knoll.

Downvoted you because the top comment in the link straight up goes against your comment. I hope you’re not spreading FUD on purpose.

Quit spreading lies about Flutter. It’s one of the most popular cross platform development environments, if not THE most popular, out there and that’s not going to change anytime soon.

So what if it’s popular? It’s a revenue driver and majority of development is still made by Googlers, as far as I know. If tomorrow Google drops all development, who’s going to pick it up? Or in your opinion GitHub stars would prevent them from dropping it?

maybe Ubuntu? the web development flow (so closely tied to firebase) might suffer a little bit, but I imagine a fork for non-web env's would be quick and welcome

People keep saying this about Go in every new Go version post and they keep getting disappointed. If you don't like Google languages, products or services then just quit using them and move on to something else.

> If you don't like Google languages, products or services then just quit using them and move on to something else.

Already did 5 years ago.