> Google can fix their reputation but its going to take a lot of work.
To regain trust with enterprise customers (that's where the money is) it would take at least a decade of cleaning up their act very thoroughly.
I remember a poster proudly announcing that they will announce one year in advance when they plan to shut down a service on GCS.
Maybe they should look what happens when a company like HP announces end of support for OpenVMS 5 - 10 years in advance (as just an example pulled out of my ass with some Wikipedia backing the statement up) there's a lot of wailing and howling amongst their enterprise customers.
Those are the timescales big shops think in when it comes to their strategic IT decisions.
Frankly, I don't see Google ever satisfying such requirements backed by iron clad guarantees.
> To regain trust with enterprise customers (that's where the money is) it would take at least a decade of cleaning up their act very thoroughly.
I disagree. It is much easier to regain trust with enterprise customers than with end users.
Enterprise costumers have contracts and lawyers on retainer. Google can draft a contract which binds them to performing a service. They can write in penalties with bite which shows to their enterprise customers that they mean it.
That is assuming that they really want to.
On the other hand this trick doesn't work with end users. They don't have lawyers to evaluate such an offer, and they have lot less of a chance of successfully suing google even if they would have favourable contracts.
To regain trust with enterprise customers (that's where the money is) it would take at least a decade of cleaning up their act very thoroughly.
I remember a poster proudly announcing that they will announce one year in advance when they plan to shut down a service on GCS.
Maybe they should look what happens when a company like HP announces end of support for OpenVMS 5 - 10 years in advance (as just an example pulled out of my ass with some Wikipedia backing the statement up) there's a lot of wailing and howling amongst their enterprise customers.
Those are the timescales big shops think in when it comes to their strategic IT decisions.
Frankly, I don't see Google ever satisfying such requirements backed by iron clad guarantees.