Stadia was so poorly marketed that almost all of my friends and I thought it was a cloud gaming CONSOLE not a subscription service. Truly a lesson in poor marketing and how it can easily kill a good idea.
It was also marketed to people who already owned a console or pc. Obviously I’m not gonna forget about my $400 machine that I know I can trust to buy a subscription that may or may not survive and still have to buy the games anyway. Should’ve waited a year to release alongside the 9th gen. It still would’ve lost, but at least the people who didn’t own a console would’ve had an attractive product compared to the $500 machines.
No they wanted you to think it was a console because what it actually was was worse: a shitty controller. The controller was the console so if the controller was lost, broken, or heck got fucking drift you lost access to the entire library because you cant use any other controller. It was a shitty idea that was DOA
In 2012 or so one of my friends dads got into the beta for google glass. It was pretty cool at the time for us 12-13 year olds, but very quickly we figured out that the voice recognition wasn't advanced enough to tell the person wearing the headset apart from someone who was standing next to them. So whenever one of my friends was wearing it any one of us could shout "OK GLASS LOOK UP NAKED MARIO!" and it would just display what google images found for naked Mario. I had a lot of fun memories with it but it was definitely a little too big of an idea for the time.
So it could easily have been subtitle glasses that were being mentioned for cinemas around that time. Well poo, we lost some accessibility and I've been convinced I dreamt these up.
Say what you will about Google+, but it was way ahead of the curve when it came to naming conventions. They paved the way for Disney+, Discovery+, Paramount+, Apple TV+, ESPN+, BET+, AMC+ and surely more in the future. To think we ever lived in a time when a service ever just had a name without indicating that it provided more than just what the name implied. Thanks, Google.
I worked at the Apple Store when Google Glasses came out and I remember a guy who bought them literally came into the store to hang out and stood around waiting for people to ask him about them.
@@ItsActuallyKate There's better applications for that. What outlook gives is a somewhat easy way to get business email management, the user experience is trash by modern standards but it's easy and seems "trustworthy" so it's popular.
@@LordDaveTheKindagreed lmao. I work with Fortune 500 companies that have outlook as their main email service. It’s very common. In fact, not having outlook would be an odd look in my industry.
The concept of Google answers is insane. At that time, doing online payments was a massive undertaking. I remember ordering things online and then adding the order the number to the description on the bank transfer to be able to pay for the item, and then it took 2 days for the payment to be processed.
I'll never forgive Google for giving up on Google Glass. I still dream of the day that I'll be able to scroll through sick memes while pretending to have meaningful conversations with my stupid idiot friends and loved ones.
This, Google Glass was indeed ahead of it's time. I think we'll see a re-release of something, I like how discrete it was all things considered compared to the AR headsets these days. Also, I feel a lot of people find the camera thing a lot less weird nowadays as well, as we've all had phones for the longest times, and people have gotten used to it much more. Using a google glass for live translations, or to be able to search things/read instructions for things without having a full fledged ar headset seems so cool. I feel Google wouldn't release it under the Glass moniker though, as the 2014 glass was a financial and social failure.
A couple years ago, I bought a Stadia controller and Chromecast ultra for 5 dollars from a Google store promotion. I played with it for about a month, and forgot about it because my apartment's wifi was trash Years later I realize that I never cancelled my subscription and had been paying Google for like 3 years for stadia despite not playing it. I'm pretty sure I was the core audience at that point
I had stadia and used it frequently enough while the servers were up and the GPU shortage was going crazy. It's how I played elder scrolls online for a while, and it worked reasonably well. It's also fittingly how I experienced spiritfarer, and when it was being shut down I played spiritfarer to see it off. Less like an emotional goodbye, more like going to the funeral of a childhood friend who you haven't seen on decades
@amandak.4246 I once forgot I was paying yearly amazon prime subscriptions. Easy to forget, unless you check your bank statements regularly. Which I don't. Fortunately I'm a bit tech savy and set up everything so I get notifications depending on payment types, but your average user might not even have their bank app installed. If you haven't used the services you subscribed for, you can generally ask for a refund. I did for amazon and they payed back straight away.
i know there are a ton of other services and products that you didn't get to mention but the one that really irked me was the terrible way google music was killed off and replaced with youtube music, just so they could transition to a streaming service instead of being able to own your own music library
Yeah! I bought a whole bunch of songs on Google Play Music, and there was nothing wrong with the service. I just had my songs whenever I wanted them with no ads. Then, out of nowhere, Google notified me it was shutting down, but that I could transfer and keep my songs when I switched to RU-vid Music. Of course, that was a lie. All of my songs were gone immediately. Still pissed about that.
@@freshmozzarello It still exists, it’s just called Google Chat now. Looks and works a bit differently, but my contacts and everything are still there, both in the app and in Gmail itself.
I used to do comic book RU-vid videos like 12 years ago and some others like myself would all Collab on Skype. Then everyone switched to Google+ and Hangouts. I am somewhat technologically challenged and couldn't get into it so I quit it all. Thankfully I made real friends and blossomed in my personal life. Some of those I talked to did the same, or still make videos, or have either committed suicide or are so cringe and undiagnosed in several mental illnesses that nobody talks to them anymore
My friend and I used to have a back and forth while playing games where one of us would get upset and exclaime "This game is google plus!" To which it was customary to reply in deadpan "Your mom is google plus." This tradition literally outlived the platform.
@@Piperitumnot really, the problems were just different at the time. Runescape runs smooth but also it's at 1 game update every 0.6 seconds, hardly the same as 4k streaming
Man, it hurts every time I hear how much some people struggled with Stadia. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but I have about 300Mb internet and it worked great for me. It was easy to take between houses when visiting family (who had worse internet and it was still fine) and take between the couch and desktop. The marketing really let it down. You could play all of your games from a browser window anywhere (with a good internet connection). That's so freaking cool. A little ahead of its time, I think, and having to buy a copy of the game that you can only ever stream kind of sucks, but Google actually made two huge pro-consumer moves when shutting down by refunding ALL Stadia hardware and store purchases AND making the controllers upgradable to be generic bluetooth controllers so they weren't garbage. I got three free bluetooth controllers and chromecasts out of that deal lol
Google+ was my home when I was a lonely kid growing up with no friends, since I was able to find people who had my same interests and have an escape from my shitty homelife. (Of course I used it to role play warrior cats as a 4th grader, but it was the best time of my life). I would sell my soul to have Google+ back
I really liked Google+ too, but I was a twenty something and not a 4th grade Warrior Cats RPer when it came out. Although, thinking back, it was the perfect platform for you crazy kids and your crazy role play games. ☺️
Made so many good friends on g+. Some I still talk to because we keep finding ourselves again having same interests even if things drift. I miss it. I genuinely miss the customization features with collections I had so much fun finding matching pictures that looked good with my icon and header. Even with all of the shitty rps.
I had a friend who, upon graduating high school in 2010, worked as an early developer for Google Glass. His project was so cool. He described it as an aid for people with hearing disability that would detect loud noises (fire alarms, glass breaking, dog barking, etc) and send a notification to the glasses. They also worked on a live transcription feature so that a person with a hearing disability could see what someone was saying more clearly and easily.
Yessss! Honestly it had such accessibility promise! I still think about how cool it would be to have glasses that could give me love subtitles for conversations
13:20 I feel lucky to have lived through that brief moment in time when games were made to be fun, not manipulative. I just wish I had taken my piracy more seriously. Some of those games I'll probably never play again.
The most tragic Google product death was Google Play Music. It had the best UI I've seen, it let me play my download playlist without being spammed with offers and shit, it was super useful and easy to use. And they decided to "replace" it with RU-vid Music. What a piss poor replacement. Maybe it's better now, but there's no way I'm ever going to let RU-vid spam my music app with shit I played on their video app and then try to hide my downloads or limit how many downloaded songs I have. I hate it.
EXACTLY. Like, sometimes I like a music video because it's catchy, and then sometimes I like it because it's absolutely atrocious and I'm going to torture my friends with it. I don't wanna be listening to my liked playlist and suddenly have 'Good Lookin' by Dixon Dallas pop up.
100% AGREED!! i was one of those kids who would download music from youtube url to mp3 websites because there were some songs that weren’t on streaming services (plus i didn’t know that streaming music was a thing in general) so it proved extremely useful to appease my want for nerdy music. when i saw that it was shut down i was so sad that all my memories and precious hours of downloading were gone :[
@@weepwoop11 I cried when they finally deleted 860+ songs I worked so hard to obtain over my entire high school career. I passed them over to a USB, because my laptop ran out of memory (I use a potato), but that USB drive got lost somehow and I never found it again.
Google Reader was the best possible QRT engine in the late blog/RSS feed era. You could friend people and communities could start comment threads in OPs share and there was absolutely no algorithm influencing how we shared blog posts or commented. It was glorious. I miss the shit out of the decentralized web/blog/RSS era.
everybody on it actually using it like a social media was under 16 so you can imagine that it was THE most toxic place on the web. tumblr doesn't even come close, a blue check twitter would be crying in 3 seconds flat.
That’s what I love about podcasts, they’re one of the few things that are still mostly decentralized and non-algorithm based. It’s also why I absolutely refuse to use Spotify or some other app/service for podcasts or listening to exclusive podcasts on said services/app.
I never really used Google+, but I remember when there was this weird guy at my online highschool who would ask girls for their email addresses to chat with them because he was trying to be a "player"/"ladies man". He was able to chat with my friend (who HADN'T given him her email) only because he was able to find her profile on Google+ and was really creeped out by it
I really liked Google Wave when it first came out. It essentially helped develop the tech that is now Google Docs where multiple people could edit a doc at the same time.
Google+ was truly my social media app of choice. I got it in like 2015 when finally got my own phone and email address. I was hooked. I remember being in the Steven Universe, Hamilton, Undertale, My Little Pony and other general groups abd overall just having a blast lmao. It was my Tumblr and it even introduced me to stuck like Tumblr and Ao3. I remember having google hangout friends and everything. It wasnt my introduction to fandoms (that was youtubes job) but it definitely introduced me to actually interacting with fandoms Truly a gateway.
Google Glasses are actually really popular with visually impaired people. There's this startup that developed software for it, allowing people to video call some trusted contact if they got lost. The contact would see what the glasses recorded and navigate them back to familiar surroundings. I think they also added a feature for text-to-speech as seen by the glasses
I use all of these nostalgic sound effects on my devices (they're actually from my ancient time), so your videos keep making me check my phone/email/Discord and getting really confused
My previous doctor used google glass. He would dictate his notes to someone in a third world country who would transcribe them, and he would see their transcription on his google glass to make sure that they were accurate.
when I was in middle school my mom was invited to try test out the beta builds of the glasses and I remember my sister and I coming up with a sharing calendar; we both really wanted to play with it and she forgot about it. Biggest disappointment of my life
We say privacy but don’t realize privacy no longer doesn’t exist. We complain about cameras but don’t realize there’s cameras on every single building we’re being recorded 24/7!
Circles were basically just a way to sort your connections and filter who can see what. At the time, other social medias like facebook all friends would see the same stuff, so they wanted to capitalize on making categories within friends. but then everyone did that and it didn't matter.
Facebook did have friend lists at the time, they were just not as user friendly as Google+ Circles were. When posting on Google+, the circles were part of the posting screen while Facebook requires you to select Custom and type in the friend list to limit a post to a friend list One of the Facebook developers said on Tweeter at the time that circles was just friend lists and even made a web app that let you organize your Facebook friends in Friend Lists the same the Google+ circle management by dragging people's names into circles. I think that Facebook developer didn't realize that, it wasn't the ability to sort friends into groups that was the great thing about circles, it was how well integrated into the service the concept of circles were. Since then, Facebook's UI has changed many times and has made using Friend Lists even less of a priority now then it was then.
@@jdunn0I found circles so user friendly, and the ability to share circles meant you could build a community really easily. It made Google plus my favorite social network. I also think it made it so much easier to actually see your friends posts instead of having so much other stuff algorithmically pushed at you. The indie ttrpg community was thriving on Google plus and it hasn't been the same since it died. Weird to me that gabi found circles confusing.
at 9:00 "homunculus glasses" = "Popularized in sixteenth-century alchemy and nineteenth-century fiction, it has historically referred to the creation of a miniature, fully formed human. The concept has roots in preformationism as well as earlier folklore and alchemic traditions."
God I miss G+ It was my first social media account, I got all my irl friends onto it. I did lots of roleplay and joined lots of fandom communities through it. It was my place away from facebook/my family from the online space and I love it despite all the red flags G+ had :3
When you voiced your gripes about Diablo I felt VINDICATED. Holy smokes I thought I was the only one who had the same thoughts and everyone else just thought it was normal. Why is Blizzard acting like we are still in the Ot’s.
If Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2 have taught me anything, it’s that modern Blizzard only cares about what the shareholders want, and hope that that aligns with what the fans want as well. That’s how we get amazing things like “OW2 requiring a phone number to play” and “Diablo 4 always online after Diablo 3’s disastrous launch from the same issue”
@@MajinBoowomp 100% agree. Especially with the Overwatch 2 situation. What an absolute dumpster fire. Ugh. So much potential just to sell out and not give a shit about your consumers. Capitalism strikes again.
I was pleased to see Google refund all stadia game purchases. They also have a way to convert the wonderful stadia controller to a Bluetooth controller
I actually enjoyed Google+ I followed a lot of interesting communities there, The reason it failed was because they tried to force people to join in order to leave RU-vid comments and everyone hated it 😂
So I think the biggest reason Google+ failed is because they rolled out accounts so slowly. They were hyping it up, getting people to post a bunch, but very few of my friends could even sign up (the waiting list took forever) so it was kinda dead in the water. It could have been a lot more successful if they opened it up to anyone at launch.
@@tylerwhite1322yup. This. Half of my friend group got invites to Google plus, while half were left out. It caused a lot of drama with people being left out.
I had google+ and many accounts for it. That app was my shit and I had an unhealthy obsession to it. It worked for me but had a lot of porn and weird people on it. It was a very toxic social media app at least the parts I was on where toxic.
i clicked on your video hoping that you would mention google lively! it lives fondly in my memory but feels like a fever dream. the comparison to the metaverse is spot on too… when i first saw it i was like wait, didn’t google do this already like 20 years go? lol
I find it baffling that companies (including Blizzard of all people) have issues with running online games when back in the 00's I could spend a whole day playing WoW with only a few hiccups along the way!
Google+ was actually my primary social media during it's uh... "heyday" for lack of a better term, and I made some online friends there that I still follow on other sites to this day. I can say that we were upset at the news they were shutting it down but seriously not surprised and personally I was already half off the site anyway by that point.
About Google+ I'm from 2005, but as a little internet goblin/internet historian. Mainly for the Netherlands, but also in the English-speaking world, I come across Google+ in the most random places. The thing is, most people who actually used it, used as a sort of forum, or as a sort of Whatsapp. I remember it kinda looking like an extension of Gmail when they kept shoving it up my throat in 2015. I remember it was mostly in Gmail like "hey, wanna continue this conversation in Google+" type of stuff. So if they meant it as a sort of Instagram they failed. The only people I found actually used it, used it as a forum.
all i have to say is that im a brazilian and i miss orkut. search and find out about the social media before google+ and before facebook's growth. the best social media that somehow only got popular in brazil??? rest in peace, goat.
2014 doesn’t stick out in my mind ever. But is most definitely the year I met the people I still talk to now. So you unlocked alot of my sophomore year of high school when you brought up that Malaysia plane.
As someone who has bing installed on their computer permanently and has tried to switch to chrome multiple times. I can confirm that Bing is the worst search engine on the internet.
My cousin helped work on Google Glass and I remember when he pitched the concept to the family and at least originally it was supposed to be operated based off of where you looked so like if you looked up and to the right it would capture a picture or something and it seemed like you would just get a shit ton of unwanted photos taking space. but cool how it worked with prescription lenses
One of the things that I think we all have in common is that we used to type "google" in the search bar while already being on Google's main page when we were young. My grandma is still doing it to this day.
I was legit thinking yesterday about how Google Glass falls under the contemporary huge cultural phenomenons that don’t get mentioned ever today, like Game of Thrones
I’ll add one product that not a whole lot of people know about but hurt me the most: Songza. Songza was bought by Google in 2014 and before that, it was a one of a kind, playlist heavy music radio that specialized in Concierge services. It was awesome not having to think too much and have a playlist made by actual people to fit the mood. Sadly, it turned into Google Play Music and we all know how that turned out…
This video was recommended, and you earned another subscriber, Its so rare this days to find fun youtuber who don't make stupid faces on thumbnail or have clickbait titles. Thank you :)
I remember seeing that one firefighter used google glass to essentially have a minimap of house layouts and stuff. I dont remember how well it worked or anything beyond that but it was an interesting idea
that’s interesting, i do wonder though how useful that would be in practice? how would you get your hands on a certain house’s blueprints in the time it takes to leave the fire department and drive there?
omg agreed on single player console games. i bought rainbox six siege for xbox series x and it was the same thing, i could only play the tutorials offline. so annoying. when i have a console i want to be able to quietly hunker down when internet is not working (earthquake/tsunami/wildfire/tornado/blizzard), charge my batteries with solar if electricity is down, and stay out of the way of first responders for a few days while the mess blows over. at least i have my space jam dvd
Stadia was amazing and refunded every single game purchase after they ended. They unlocked their controllers to be used as generic bluetooth controllers. At least they ended it smoothly.
Yeah, Google Lively was the one on this list that really made me sad. Second Life didn't run well on my PC at the time, so at the time Lively was actually pretty awesome. And the completely bonkers mismatch visually was genuinely charming tbh! It woulda been cool to see it continue & get refined over time, but oh well.
ah google+, tried to force name changes on us. I just waited them out, they insisted frequently but never forced it. Not being able to comment was nowhere near the restriction they seemed to think it was. from what I remember of google video it was just unremarkable, youtube just had more personality.
I'm very late and this is such a side note but i needed to tell y'all: I DESPISE that fckn "you cant do that" windows error noise WITH THE UTMOST PASSION. the war flashbacks i get from that singular angry dun noise- UNPARALLELED OK.
anyone remember iGoogle? it was like a customizable search bar page with a bunch of random lil widgets and such. I remember playing with that instead of doing whatever i was supposed to be doing in like 5th grade
Google Glass were goofy and barely functioned, but i still wish we could have a proper AR experience. Imagine all the extra interactivity you can have with the world around you, like maybe you can scan a QR code on a restaurant's table and it immediately sends the menu onto your glasses, or maybe looking at a painting at a museum and the glasses give you access to the information about it, and it could even be used for military purposes to show a soldier's heartrate, their stock of supplies and ammunition and even a satellite view of the area around them. IDK maybe it's just cause i like sci-fi and cyberpunk aesthetics but i am fascinated by alternate reality technology and i feel like it's due time we implement it more concretely.
Atrioc has mentioned that when he was at Twitch it felt more like people advanced by producing ideas than producing functional, successful items. The people that got “google lens” popular in the company probably got promotions, despite the cost.
I have a love hate relationship with Google. I think they do know how to do a lot of things well, they have some great products, and they seem to have at least a little more respect for their users than other big tech companies like apple and meta, but they've still got a lot of bad practices, and all the failed products do make them seem tone deaf at times. I still respect that they try to branch out so much though, and tbh some of these dead products still seem like cool ideas that could work in the future with more development.
I’m honestly surprised Google Fiber actually went into full production after it was introduced in one of Google’s April Fools’ Day jokes (serious, look up the video, it still exists and is a “fiber supplement” joke). It may not be as widespread or adopted as they might’ve initially hoped-mostly because of how much it costs to build out fiber connections, but they’d done a decent job of expanding their network in major cities in a way that they’ve become one of the medium-sized telecom providers. I think they really introduced people to the idea of [optic-]fiber internet and led to the market to overall start accepting as an alternative to traditional cable or satellite internet, and that was a benefit for society, even if they didn’t totally capture the market like they’d hoped.
@@kaitmarie6505 i'm not refering to this video. another youtuber (DarkViperAU) made a long ass video where he detailed all the misinformation gaby spewed about him and how she obviously lied. (the video was about the whole reaction channel thing). i've also seen other criticism of her videos that she often seems to do very little research.
I think a major issue with google glass is you really need to be able to turn off and on a camera, otherwise you’d end up wearing those glasses into a bathroom where it is illegal to film, or other spaces with assumed privacy protection laws. I’d love to be able to capture all the cute moments I get to see but never have my phone on me or are split second, once off occurrences or something, but it’s a double edged sword with these companies being so untrustworthy about separating themselves from our personal lives too. It was literally part of the antagonists character in the drama “Holo”, he marketed these hologram glasses hard and then just menacingly sat and watched all the cameras from the glasses. 10/10 highly recommend
I will never understand the hate about Stadia. I had it pretty much since launch and it was incredibly reliable for me. I even played on my phone on data occasionally without issues. I'm either the luckiest person to own Stadia or the issues are straight up lies or overblown minor nitpicks. I had more issues with an actual console than I ever did with Stadia.
It was a great era for me and gaming. They sent me a controller for free because of RU-vid premium and I had so much fun. I made friends in the stadia community. It really took the wind out of my sails when they announced they were turning off the servers and issuing refunds. I would 💯 still be playing it today.
11:40 One _Gigabit_ down you mean. NO home or business consumer has anything remotely that fast. As of 2020, internet backbone infrastructure operated by AT&T, Lumen, Verizon, and Sprint, have trunk speeds reaching 100Gbps (Gb = gigabit) which equals 12.5GBps (GB = gigabyte). Fun fact: in 1998, backbone trunk speeds reached 45Mbps which is a T3 line.
Google is out of touch with Stadia because they of all people should know that the majority of Americans are still on DSL speed internet (not actual DSL but what is considered DSL speeds) and paying like 100-150$ for it. Cant squeeze people from both ends like that and expect a huge profit.
