Google Confirms It's Pulling the Plug on Streams, Its UK Clinician Support App (techcrunch.com) 19
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google is infamous for spinning up products and killing them off, often in very short order. It's an annoying enough habit when it's stuff like messaging apps and games. But the tech giant's ambitions stretch into many domains that touch human lives these days. Including, most directly, healthcare. And -- it turns out -- so does Google's tendency to kill off products that its PR has previously touted as "life saving." To wit: Following a recent reconfiguration of Google's health efforts -- reported earlier by Business Insider -- the tech giant confirmed to TechCrunch that it is decommissioning its clinician support app, Streams. The app, which Google Health PR bills as a "mobile medical device," was developed back in 2015 by DeepMind, an AI division of Google -- and has been used by the U.K.'s National Health Service in the years since, with a number of NHS Trusts inking deals with DeepMind Health to roll out Streams to their clinicians.
At the time of writing, one NHS Trust -- London's Royal Free -- is still using the app in its hospitals. But, presumably, not for too much longer, since Google is in the process of taking Streams out back to be shot and tossed into its deadpool -- alongside the likes of its ill-fated social network, Google+, and Internet balloon company Loon, to name just two of a frankly endless list of now defunct Alphabet/Google products. Other NHS Trusts we contacted which had previously rolled out Streams told us they have already stopped using the app.
At the time of writing, one NHS Trust -- London's Royal Free -- is still using the app in its hospitals. But, presumably, not for too much longer, since Google is in the process of taking Streams out back to be shot and tossed into its deadpool -- alongside the likes of its ill-fated social network, Google+, and Internet balloon company Loon, to name just two of a frankly endless list of now defunct Alphabet/Google products. Other NHS Trusts we contacted which had previously rolled out Streams told us they have already stopped using the app.
You get what you pay for (Score:2, Interesting)
After a few iterations of this, you think people would learn.
Re: (Score:2)
And this is how you get bloated government agencies. The NHS could develop their own version, at tremendous expense. After having been burned by a vendor (Google), they can now argue that had it been done in-house, they wouldn't be in the pickle they are now.
The flip side of Not-Invented-Here is that sometimes there are real-world reasons for duplication of development efforts, especially when the vendors won't (or can't) support the product for the lifetime necessary to achieve a good ROI.
Re:You get what you pay for (Score:4, Insightful)
Part of the the reason why Healthcare is so Expensive, is that Vendor Contracts need to have long term support. So a Simple CRUD application coded in VB can cost the Healthcare institution millions of dollars, because it will need support and maintenance for decades, at a time. Needing to hire and keep VB6 Coders, DB guys, and people who are well aware of the unique environment the customer has.
Healthcare often see companies sometimes big like google or really small, get a big hit when they figured healthcare is a lucrative market. Until they realize that they often get into a highly regulated and strict market where being profitable isn't as easy as it seems on paper.
epic healthcare is still on mumps (Score:2)
epic healthcare is still on mumps
Re: (Score:3)
That is fine. The programming language a product was made in is not correlated to the quality or lack of quality of such product.
Mumps, Cobol, Fortran, are really not that much older than C or C++, and in terms of functionality there isn't that much of a real difference. The real issue with some of the older languages that have fallen out of favor is really the difficultly on hiring new programmers who are willing to code in these languages. And I really fault HR on this more than the technology. Beca
Re: (Score:3)
Whew! Good thing we're paying for Slashdot. ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
A psychic toll at the very least.
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The Streams app was simply a by-product of that data-grab. Shutting Streams down as soon as their data siphoning efforts had bee
"short order"? (Score:4)
Google had those other things mentioned out for years, then freeloaders whine when they eventually get pulled. You want guarantees, cough up the money and get a contract. Whining when free thing that was around for many years going away is silly.
The article talks about contracts with this five year old service that ended earlier this year as expected, no problem.
Will need to annex more land (Score:2)
There's very little room left in the graveyard of things started and killed by Google. (https://killedbygoogle.com/)
Re: (Score:1)
It's like Oracle and Google are in a contest to suck more more than Microsoft.
not only free (Score:5, Interesting)
My company invested time and money in Marratech (video conferencing tool), positioning us as a leading provider of distance learning, way ahead of the competition. One fine day Big G took over the producer and killed the product. A big blow for us... so it's not only the free stuff.
I've never actively invested efforts in Google products/services since, unless I also had a clear exit strategy or parallel investment in alternative solutions.
Re: (Score:2)
Like open-source which never discontinues anything. ;-)
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Google doesn't mind destroying customer trust (Score:2)
Well, color me surprised (Score:2)
Good! (Score:2)
Google is consistently and repeatedly telling people, groups, and communities why they shouldn't rely upon or trust Google. This is a good thing, and might be the best thing Google ever does. Now if only (many) more folks would start listening!