Another Google product is being put out to pasture. In particular, “Google Play Movies & TV”. Previously available content will be on Youtube on Smart TVs. The Android app has already been rebranded to Google TV (not to be confused with Google TV). This continues Google’s tradition of killing products.

Google Play Music was taken out a few months back, with Youtube Music being the replacement. This was such a difficult transition that I started paying for Spotify for my parents to use.

To understand why this is (I am not a Xoogler and I am sure SOMEONE here would have a clearer picture to this) it helps to understand promotions at Google! Promotions at higher levels have criteria around impact to the organization and business. A project that creates a big splash will get people promoted. This attracts people to those projects.

On the other hand, maintenance does not lead well to impact. This means that projects that aren’t shiny and new will bleed members from their teams. Maintenance work is a dead end because in most cases, if you do your job right then nobody knows you’ve done anything at all.

It’s totally understandable when you reframe it like this. But nobody has to like it.