Google's Graveyard 🪦⚙️

👀 TLDR:

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the end of Google Domains. What is it with Google and shutting down products that people like? Domains has gone the way of Stadia, Nexus, Hangouts, and hundreds of others to the Google Graveyard. But has the company overstepped the mark this time? Ten million people used Google domains, and they are really not happy. Elsewhere this week, we look at Part 2 of the Reddit wars, as CEO Steve Huffman deals with hackers and angers users even more. We also look at an AI startup that has raised over $100 million, despite having no product. Our Stat of the Week hails Adobe and the mighty PDF. And What’s dAppening looks at Apple taking aim at a decentralized social media app, with Jack Dorsey taking the side of the latter.

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Takes 🎬️

🌎😵 Google Domains is Latest Product to be Shuttered

Google, which is notorious for killing its products, announced the demise of a big one on Friday – Google Domains – which will see its assets (i.e., the 10 million domain names managed by Google) being sold to Squarespace 😱 for $180 million. The reaction of the majority of those domain holders was one of outrage. While it’s fun to laugh at just how many products Google drops – seriously, check out the list here – it’s worth remembering that this will feel like a painful rug pull to those who have built their businesses around Domains and its integrations. The question, though, is why get rid? Some might say it is cultural, as Google’s corporate culture is data-driven. If something isn’t making a ton of money, why not bin it? This is in stark contrast to, say, Microsoft, which perseveres with almost-obsolete products (Internet Explorer 👋) for years for fear of letting users down. Being trigger-happy with products can strain the trust of users, and that includes us! We love Google Workspace and within our apps sometimes, Firebase, but how long should we live with the threat that this might be next… For now though, let’s help with damage control transfer: You have a few more months before your Google domains move to Squarespace! We recommend transferring and registering your domains at Cloudflare.com. In addition to domain registration, Cloudflare offers the best DNS and routing management features, by far! And by using Cloudflare early, you’ll be future-proofing your website’s performance and security… Alternatively, if you must, use the industry de facto - GoDaddy. It’s not pretty, but it will be there! #DeathByGoogle Read more here.

🥷↘️ Reddit – The Blackout Wars Continue with New Twists and Turns

Last week, we brought a brief report on the Reddit blackout. Lots of subreddits (communities with up to 30 million users) had gone dark, locking users out in protest of the platform’s proposed charges for API use. To be honest, we thought this was something of a throwaway story and good ol’ Reddit would be back to normal in no time. Not so. The row has escalated, partly thanks to a leaked internal memo from Reddit CEO Steve Huffman who claimed the row would blow over. The leaked memo was like pouring gasoline on a fire, escalating the protest from the striking Redditors. Huffman has reportedly told employees not to wear Reddit-branded apparel for fear of reprisals. Then things took another turn when the BlackCat ransomware gang got involved. The hacking group holds 80GB of private data (the hack took place in February), and is demanding $4.5 million AND the reversal of the API charging plans to return that data. There is a lot of pressure on Huffman here, who has maintained that Reddit needs to be modernized. But the people power of the users should not be underestimated. It was a group of Redditors, lest we forget, who took on Wall Street hedge funds and won over GameStop short selling. Right now, neither side seems to be backing down: and we cannot predict who will win, if anyone. #RedditWars2 Read more here.

🐣💰 AI – A Month-Old French Startup without a Product Raises Over $110 Million

Mistral AI. You’ve probably never heard of them. Neither had we until last week when we saw the French startup had raised €105 ($113 million) in a funding round at a valuation of €240 million. Nothing crazy here, except Mistral has yet to develop its first product, and the people working at the startup have only been there a handful of days. Ok, Mistral did bring in a couple of ringers, including AI experts from Google’s DeepMind and Meta, so that does account for investors putting down the big bucks. Nonetheless, this is all part of the frenzied deal-making around AI – similar to web3 products a couple of years back. You don’t need to have a finished product when you are riding the crest of a wave this big. Mistral plans to release its first generative AI models next year. #CashForAI Read more here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 3T PDFs

📃💪 Adobe – 30 Years Since the Creation of the Mighty Portable Document Format

On June 6th, 1993, Adobe solved one of the most important problems of the nascent world wide web – the sharing of text and images digitally while preserving the original format document. It was the birth of the PDF, alongside Adobe Acrobat, which became one of the cornerstones of information sharing on the internet. 30 years on, we take the humble PDF for granted. But there have been – by Adobe’s calculations – three trillion of them made in that time! PDFs have been open-sourced since 2008 then, and remain the standard in business workflows for important documents. All hail the PDF – and here’s to the next three trillion. #3TrillionPDFs Read more here.

🕸️ What’s dAppening?

👮‍♂️❌ Apple – Threat to Delist Damus App Highlights Web3 Incompatibility

Damus is something of a niche decentralized social media app built on the Nostr network. But it hit the headlines this week after its founders shared a letter from Apple, with the company threatening to delist it from the App Store. Why? It seems to be due to the ability of Damus users to give creators tips in Bitcoin, a feature called zapping. Apple seems to have regarded zapping as “selling digital content”, i.e., the stuff it takes a commission for. However, Damus had some powerful voices standing up for it in the row, including Jack Dorsey, who is one of the backers of the Nostr network. Dorsey let rip in a series of Twitter posts, demanding Apple back down and stressing that supporting decentralized payments would ultimately be beneficial for the Big Tech company. Tipping features already exist on platforms like Twitter (without Apple taking a cut), so some have opined that this is Apple lashing out at a web3 company, given that they are an existential threat to the old guard of the internet. Some sort of resolution seems to have occurred in the meantime, so Damus users can still zap BTC for now. But we think you’ll be seeing many more stories like this as the Web 2 gatekeepers try to get to grips with the web3 upstarts. #NoAppleTips Read more here.

Meanwhile at 3Advance…

Things are always ‘Appening here at 3Advance and this week is no exception. No Weigh, the behavioral analysis app for weight loss, launched to the App Store and Google Play last week!

Congrats to Kayne, Mark, Sean, Sandip, Jackson, Jingdi, and the entire 3A team on a successful launch. We threw our client, Valerie Evans, a virtual celebration with her family - where we got to see her kids download the app for the very first time. It was super special and definitely one for the books! We are so proud of this project and can’t wait for everyone to test it out. Be sure to download No Weigh for iPhone or Android today!

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