Most people are reluctant to try new things. Even in the exciting world of proto-smartphones, convincing someone to download, install, configure, and use a new app was difficult. Sure, we could run expensive advertising campaigns. Send hopeful text messages. Have a big celebrity endorsement. Or maybe get our customer service reps to push it.

In the end, we pre-installed it on every device we sold. Then we forcibly pushed it to every supported phone on our network. The backlash was incredible. As you might expect, people think of their phones as their own personal space. Having a new app shoved on there felt like an invasion. It took up memory space, true, but more importantly it took up psychological space. We had reminded customers that we thought of them as little more than cattle; a resource we controlled with an aim to extract value.

Google is in a similar boat today. They have absolutely no confidence that their Gemini AI Assistant is any good. They've run countless tests with customers and it is a dud. But they've invested a lot of money, so it needs to launch. Customers, in the main, decline to install it and they certainly refuse to pay for it. So what's Google's solution?

They have forcibly installed it, jacked up the prices, and made it impossible to remove.

These are not the actions of a company which believes in its own products.

To be fair to Google, it is a problem seen in many businesses. They crave instant success, they want to see massive overnight numbers, and they have a winner-takes-all mentality. But the real world isn't like that. Customers aren't morons but they lead busy and complex lives. You product is important to you, but it is utterly irrelevant to most customers. It is your job to convince people that your product has merits. You have to listen to them and get their consent.

People don't deserve to be tricked into installing something. Forcing people to use your product is disrespectful

In the 1990s, I was a teenager and my parents gave in to peer pressure and subscribed to cable TV. Like many kids my age, I raced home after school to watch MTV. It was pure music - and the occasional weird arty cartoon. Wall to wall music. Cool indie stuff, mainstream hits, late night punk, rave music, oldies. Brilliant!

This is what a typical Saturday schedule is on MTV in the year 2015.

WTF? Literally zero music. Are the people who make MTV stupid? Their audience wants music! Right?

This is the "MTV Problem" - as a Product Manager do you:

1. Grow and mature with your audience?
2. Change and innovate to keep the same demographic?

MTV could have grown with the teenagers for the 1990s and now be a music channel for people in their 40s. Or it can repeatedly change to capture the teenage audience. It's pretty obvious which it has chosen.

On 1 February 2011, MTV removed all music from the channel and moved it to newly launched channel MTV Music; the only music that remains is the occasional MTV Most Wanted strand ... The move resulted in an increase in the channel's audience share of nearly 150%.

Wikipedia - MTV (UK & Ireland)

Now, that's not to say that all change is necessarily good. In 2014, FourSquare (incorrectly) calculated that they could afford to alienate loyal users by attracting greater numbers of new users with a radically redesigned service.

With kind permission of the author.

By contrast, Twitter's recent change from "Favourites" to "Likes" has bitterly upset longtime users - but has seen a modest uptick in usage.

So, what happens to Facebook next? I remember when it was all sheep throwing and joining a group to express one's hatred of Mondays. Perhaps it's still there. As I've mentioned before my Facebook is not your Facebook - in part because I'm a regular blocker of crap, and because Facebook is rapidly expanding to keep its existing audience while simultaneously attracting a new audience.

Perhaps, one day, all of the regular features we know and love will be relegated to "Facebook Classic" while the main site is all InstaTinderSnapGram. But, for now, it seems that Facebook has worked out how to mature with an audience while constantly innovating for (or buying its way into) new audiences.

If you ever doubt that constant change is a necessity - take a look through 10 years worth of Facebook redesigns.