Regarding social influence - by your definition, everyone is a social influencer. You are trying to influence what I write, for example. I don’t think there’s much point continuing that thread of discussion.
The purpose of the “bad relationship” analogy - is that people are storytellers. A metaphor conveys more information than tech speak - even developers understand the value of metaphor. The pattern I saw in the discussions looked like a bad relationship and I am highlighting that.
Chasing away potential customers who get the wrong impression - first, you need to put an argument as to why that is a “wrong impression”. It is honestly the impression I got after going back to read those threads. I would argue it is an accurate impression of the pattern Google has shown. If that steers people away because that historical pattern conflicts with what they demand of a service provider, then my comment will be found valuable to those people. If that detracts value from Google, then my suggestion is that Google consider the entirety of what many people are saying here.
Whether serious enough to abandon the platform - is a decision for each user to make independently. My post simply highlights that in my opinion there are many red flags that warrant spending a moment to consider exactly that question. It’s an established pattern. Someone posted a link to killedbygoogle - which I had never seen before - and it’s eye-opening. I remember the real estate feature in Google maps that they simply axed. I guarantee you the user base was only increasing on that feature too.
What slow down in development? You read it and quoted it yourself - stalling/delaying/ceasing new feature development and only focusing on stability.
Whether benefits “GREATLY” outweigh issues - is a question for each customer to weigh up for themselves.
Why am I here if I don’t believe appsheet is providing value? I never said I don’t believe it’s providing value. It is providing value. But the pattern Google has shown with respect to handling outages is, in my opinion, a red flag that warrants noting publicly.
At this point, I don’t intend to continue the question-and-answer back and forth on these questions. I believe we’ve both made our alternative points of view plain and anyone reading can assess the merits, for themselves, of each point.
I will say I am encouraged by the recent publication of the RCA by Google and by the increased engagement within this forum by more than one Google staff member. Again, I appreciate the perspectives I’ve shared are harsh and I am very aware there are real people building and supporting the product who likely care very much about their work - and about the community. My intent isn’t to rant or flame or be counter-productive. The handling of outages and the handling of communications are real issues that not only I have flagged - but many people throughout all the threads I’ve linked (and more).
To answer your last question: why am I here? Because I am new to appsheet and want to learn. I trusted in the Google name, believing one of, if not the largest IT providers in the world ought to have a robust product. I have now implemented a production app and the thread on the 28 April outage caught my eye in an email summary of forum discussion. Of course a significant outage is something of concern for me, so I read the thread. Only then did I realise there has been a pattern of ongoing loss of confidence and trust in Google’s commitment to the platform - and of course it’s of concern to me to see a pattern dating back years that suggests a reduction in support for a tool I have just put into production. I simply summarised my understanding of reading through that history.
Again, this message is way too long and I don’t plan to clog up this thread with these questions any further, but thank you for challenging me to back up the opinions I voiced.
Best.
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