this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023

110 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

38500 readers

1 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

110

$5,000 Google Jamboard dies in 2024—cloud-based apps will stop working, too (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

all 21 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 years ago

The idea of the product is really great. The cost is prohibitive for all but major corporate customers.

Add in Google's track record of killing products... just like this... and why would you invest?

Jamboard needs to be a tablet companion app first, and the hardware can follow. If they're going to keep coming up with these halo products, then they need to support them for the long term. They also need to be willing to bite the bullet and give these away to lock people into Workspace because it's unique and no one else does it.

Now it's another reason to not buy in.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Now imagine if you bought one of these.

Is there any Google project outside of early search and Gmail they did right?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Maps and Photos are ok IMO. Slowly getting shittier though.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Maps were bought by Google from different company. Photos is AFAIK actually made by them.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Photos as an online photo gallery is their implementation yes but they bought up Picasa the desktop gallery early on. That software included tagging and I believe face recognition by the end.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Picasa, now that's a name I haven't heard in a llooonnngggggg time

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Wasn't Google Photos super racist a few years back?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

lol. Google is still around?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

unfortunately, i don't see them going anywhere anytime soon.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

At the rate they cancel things, they’ll be a whole new company

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

if only. can they be a company that doesn't be evil?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I don’t think so.

I’m not evil. Hey, can I see your contacts? It’s to find your friends… I’m not mapping who knows who and selling that data. I sweeeaaarrrr

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

My abstract for the linked article

Google is discontinuing Jamboard, its $5,000 digital whiteboard product, in late 2024. Jamboard was a large touchscreen that integrated with Google Workspace apps, allowing collaborative work. However, Google found that Jamboard users were a small portion of its Workspace customers. It will shut down the Jamboard apps and hardware, leaving existing customers with useless devices. Google recommends migrating Jamboard data to competitors' whiteboard apps like Figma and Miro. While Jamboard was expensive initially, its annual fees and integration with Workspace subscriptions resulted in total costs as high as $7,000 per year.

The high recurring costs were not enough to sustain Jamboard long-term.

This comment was generated by a bot. Send comments and complaints via private message.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

This is getting out of hand... now there are two of them!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

But this one is more abstract? /s

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

Please PM me your disapproval. Enough of those and I will cease to perform these summaries. My goal is to be helpful not annoyance.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

Click here to see the summary

The digital whiteboard could be drawn on using the included stylus or your fingers, and it even came with a big plastic "eraser" that would remove items.

The SoC was an Nvidia Jetson TX1 (a quad-core Cortex-A57 CPU attached to a beefy Maxwell GPU), and it had a built-in camera, microphone, and speakers for video calls.

People not in front of the touchscreen could launch the "Jamboard app" instead, letting them get in on the whiteboard action remotely, complete with live handwriting.

While Jamboard users make up a small portion of our Workspace customer base, we understand that this change will impact some of you, and we’re committed to helping you transition..." Yes, that's right, "transition" is usually not something you have to consider when a company kills a hardware product, but the whole cloud system is going down, too, so all of your existing $5,000 whiteboards will soon be useless and you won't be able to open the cloud data on other devices.

Google seems to feel particularly bad for the schools that bought into this, saying, "We will also work directly with educational institutions to compensate them for their Jamboard devices."

People often ask about a recurring revenue stream when predicting what products will live and die, but even a $600-per-year fee attached to every sale wasn't enough to keep Jamboard running.

Saved 64% of original text.