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Obvious decision or not, Google Labs has been one of my favorite parts of Google for years. For me at least, this deprecation pushes Google one notch closer to
by codingthebeach 15y ago
Obvious decision or not, Google Labs has been one of my favorite parts of Google for years. For me at least, this deprecation pushes Google one notch closer to "boring megacorp" and one notch further away from the sort of cool "research garden" that Google is famous for being. I'm not saying Labs was the forefront of Google research, just that it was a fun, lighthearted place where nifty (and often quite strange) ideas could be trotted out.
- _delirium 15y agoFor me it's not even so much the research angle, as the power-user-features angle. Via Google Labs you could enable features and interface customizations that for various reasons didn't make sense to put into the default product, especially in Gmail and Google Maps. Some were not at all researchy, just simple interface enhancements, like the "drop lat/lon marker" feature in Google Maps. I'll miss that flexibility if they don't replace it with some kind of advanced-options config.
- kissickas 15y agoProduct-specific labs, like Google Maps Labs or Gmail Labs, are still staying. This announcement is only about Google Labs.
- tonfa 15y agoGoogle Labs is different from the gmail/maps labs. See the linked blog post and http://www.googlelabs.com/ http://www.googlelabs.com/.
- _delirium 15y agoAh cool; it looks like that clarification was added in an update. I had assumed that those were part of the overall "Google Labs" project, but maybe that was just a (now-obsolete) branding strategy to tie together all the "labs" stuff.
- patrickaljord 15y ago> Google Labs has been one of my favorite parts of Google for years I prefer their open source page: http://code.google.com/more/#google-resources http://code.google.com/more/#google-resources With projects such as closure, gwt, chromium, android,golang etc