Google's digital whiteboard for schools and businesses lasted 8 years.
  • kae@lemmy.caEnglish
    50·
    1 year ago

    The idea of the product is really great. The cost is prohibitive for all but major corporate customers.

    Add in Google’s track record of killing products… just like this… and why would you invest?

    Jamboard needs to be a tablet companion app first, and the hardware can follow. If they’re going to keep coming up with these halo products, then they need to support them for the long term. They also need to be willing to bite the bullet and give these away to lock people into Workspace because it’s unique and no one else does it.

    Now it’s another reason to not buy in.

          • tsonfeir@lemm.eeEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            I don’t think so.

            I’m not evil. Hey, can I see your contacts? It’s to find your friends… I’m not mapping who knows who and selling that data. I sweeeaaarrrr

  • AbstractifyBot@beehaw.orgB
    7·
    1 year ago

    My abstract for the linked article

    Google is discontinuing Jamboard, its $5,000 digital whiteboard product, in late 2024. Jamboard was a large touchscreen that integrated with Google Workspace apps, allowing collaborative work. However, Google found that Jamboard users were a small portion of its Workspace customers. It will shut down the Jamboard apps and hardware, leaving existing customers with useless devices. Google recommends migrating Jamboard data to competitors’ whiteboard apps like Figma and Miro. While Jamboard was expensive initially, its annual fees and integration with Workspace subscriptions resulted in total costs as high as $7,000 per year.

    The high recurring costs were not enough to sustain Jamboard long-term.

    This comment was generated by a bot. Send comments and complaints via private message.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

    Click here to see the summary

    The digital whiteboard could be drawn on using the included stylus or your fingers, and it even came with a big plastic “eraser” that would remove items.

    The SoC was an Nvidia Jetson TX1 (a quad-core Cortex-A57 CPU attached to a beefy Maxwell GPU), and it had a built-in camera, microphone, and speakers for video calls.

    People not in front of the touchscreen could launch the “Jamboard app” instead, letting them get in on the whiteboard action remotely, complete with live handwriting.

    While Jamboard users make up a small portion of our Workspace customer base, we understand that this change will impact some of you, and we’re committed to helping you transition…" Yes, that’s right, “transition” is usually not something you have to consider when a company kills a hardware product, but the whole cloud system is going down, too, so all of your existing $5,000 whiteboards will soon be useless and you won’t be able to open the cloud data on other devices.

    Google seems to feel particularly bad for the schools that bought into this, saying, “We will also work directly with educational institutions to compensate them for their Jamboard devices.”

    People often ask about a recurring revenue stream when predicting what products will live and die, but even a $600-per-year fee attached to every sale wasn’t enough to keep Jamboard running.

    Saved 64% of original text.