I think this is a case of Google's security team saying "we should automatically warn apps that are two months out of date that they need to update," incorrectly assuming that their own apps would always update at least once every 60 days.
Can you imagine being an iOS developer working on Gmail right now, having shipped literally nothing this year? I'd be requesting an internal transfer (and/or polishing my resume).
I think there are two concerns here. The article starts off about the "outdated" warning, then goes on a tangent about Google not releasing iOS apps anymore because of privacy labels. tehlike is talking about why they think updates stopped; with Apple's improved privacy requirements, Google has to do some work to get their apps up to that standard.
For the thing that the article is about; i.e. the out of date warning, isn't that what Google is doing to all apps that embed a Google login now?
> Can you imagine being an iOS developer working on Gmail right now, having shipped literally nothing this year?
I'm sure they're shipping internal releases to 100,000 of their coworkers, so are probably getting feedback on new features while waiting for releases to the public to become unblocked. In the meantime, they're probably collecting more than $300,000 a year in total comp, so probably not super incentivized to quit. Google is kind of like other big companies now, I imagine -- don't rock the boat too much, do what your manager says -- with the upside that if you play your cards right you can accumulate a large chunk of savings that earns meaningful recurring income and a million dollar house you own outright before you're 40. Not for everyone, but I imagine the iOS Gmail team is not super incentivized to start burning down the corporate headquarters because they're restless about the release cycle.
Thing is, these labels were known publically for at least a month before they were enforced. Google also managed to get out four updates of gmail 2-3 months ago, according to the history listing on the app store. This feature didn't make the cut for any of those releases?
After seeing that, one can not help but to assume that 1.) the lack of updates are related to the privacy label deadline and 2.) that most of its apps are in need of bug fixes and aren’t receiving those updates.
Whilst interesting, that graph does need each app split out a bit more clearly-while it’s clear that none of them have updated since the cutoff, it would be best to be able to see each apps release cadence beforehand.
I agree. It is clear that Google has paused app releases due to this but this graphic obscures how abnormal this is for any individual app. There are 13 apps in that graph and it appears that there are usually a handful a week. So on average they are only updating monthly anyways.
So a 2 month break is just skipping a release (or two) for most apps which isn't a huge break in bugfixes.
Previous to this the Google apps got frequent updates. It’s documented out there. Nothing since Dec 8 is probably as notable for devs working on features (but not this effort) as it is to us wondering when the apps are going to be updated.
"Frequent updates" would still only be 1-2 releases by now for each app. The graph of updates stopping above overlays all the different apps which have offset releases
> Can you imagine being an iOS developer working on Gmail right now, having shipped literally nothing this year?
This is a bit funny because from the user's perspective it's fantastic! To put it mildly, we are not great fans of Gmail upgrades, especially big ones.
> Can you imagine being an iOS developer working on Gmail right now, having shipped literally nothing this year?
Having worked at Google, it's very common that your work takes more than 6 weeks to reach users even when you're on the full release cadence (which is maybe a release monthly for most apps, and sometimes a cherrypick bugfix release in addition). Projects taking more than 6 months from engineering complete to being live wasn't even that exceptional.
Can you imagine being an iOS developer working on Gmail right now, having shipped literally nothing this year? I'd be requesting an internal transfer (and/or polishing my resume).