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Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google

205 points by friendcode 12y ago

Navarr 12y ago
I really don't like things like this. A lot of these projects ended up as other projects or built into other projects. Google checkout turned into Google Wallet. Google latitude ended up as part of the Google+ Identity overhaul. There's also a lot of projects that are "labs" or "beta." Clearly they didn't gain the traction Google wanted from them. Google's like any other startup on a project-by-project basis. If the idea doesn't work they pivot and drop it.
- gk1 12y ago
  To add one more: Writely became Google Docs -- anything but a failure.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Hm yet its leaky, buggy and low-feature. Useful for casual use but nowhere near professional. When will they drop it, or break it? Like some gmail features got broken this week. Lesson: don't hang anything important on Google apps.
    - livingparadox 12y ago
      Google docs is fantastic. I use it exclusively (docs and sheets) and haven't seen anything buggy about it. I have never found myself a wanting a feature in google docs that wasn't also missing from Office. The only limitation I came across in sheets was the limited scope of conditional formatting. That's pretty much it.
      - nightpool 12y ago
        FWIW there are a few features I would love to have in docs: different headers/footers for title pages pops out to me. Sheets is a LOT less featured then excel but the scripting is pretty excellent so that actually makes it a better product for most of what I want to do. Plus who really uses the advanced features of excel?
      - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        Ive just been using it a week or so, but this is what I remember right off. Features missing from Word Docs: KeepTogether, orphan/widow management, page layout, reviewing(?) Bugs: typeface changes when going back to Normal after any heading (doesn't change but ribbon says it has). Ctrl-C copies but Ctrl-X doesn't delete text Font changes randomly DO or DONT apply to the line you're on, when not selected
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
- jmilloy 12y ago
  As you suggest, just because some idea was dropped doesn't mean that Google did the wrong thing. But, it also doesn't mean that they didn't abandon the idea, so it ends up here in a list. I don't see any general Google bashing yet. Similarly, I'd put a phonograph in a museum, even though it's features have been replaced by other things.
  - kedean 12y ago
    I'm not a google apologist, but the list definitely has a few undeserved products. The most obvious is Writely, which was simply rebranded to Google Docs, then further rebranded to Google Drive. The writely.com domain even redirects to Drive.
- alextingle 12y ago
  Google Code was awesome, and there's no real replacement for it. koders.com* doesn't even come close. * - now code.openhub.net
  - skj 12y ago
    github isn't a replacement?
    - laumars 12y ago
      Yes, if the code is on Github. However not everyone who publishes code uses Github (myself included)
      - sotiris-k 12y ago
        not everyone used Google Code either. What's your point?
        tedunangst 12y ago
        Code Search searched a lot more than just what was stored on Google. What's your point?
        aniket_ray 12y ago
        I think his point was that Code and Code Search are/were different products.
      - bduerst 12y ago
        Why not? (I'm genuinely interested here - not trying to snark)
        ilovesatan 12y ago
        Because not everyone here is the teenage girl version of a programmer who only goes after the newest fad without taking in account the actual features of a system and practical implications of promoting a monopoly.
- und3rw4t3rp00ps 12y ago
  To me, this is evidence of Google's rather awkward relationship with consumers (i.e. they toss tons of branded endeavors at us, see what sticks), and not a knock against fearlessly trying things or whatever. The best brands are coy and careful with their identity... google sorta slops it around. this is a list of failed consumer facing products more than it is a list of "bad ideas".
  - wahsd 12y ago
    You mean their whole mentality of "we built this half baked product, why the hell isn't anyone coming?"
  - eplanit 12y ago
    I don't really see how it is awkward or hurts relationships with consumers (especially when most all products and services are free) -- it's a form of market research and product testing. Who needs focus groups when you have the world?
    - vertex-four 12y ago
      Because consumers learn not to trust products with Google branding to stick around.
    - und3rw4t3rp00ps 12y ago
      I think focus groups are inherently embarrassing. Not commenting on their utility, but the act of showcasing something to "normal people" for their "feedback" is, at its essence, pathetic. While Google's 'everything in beta' mentality is endearing in a 'democracy'/'transparent fun-loving engineers' sort of way... it is also evidence to the fact that our information behemoth is rudderless. Google Buzz.
  - SixSigma 12y ago
    By comparison, food processing companies introduce 9 new food products every day [1]. 70% fail within a year. [2] [1] http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-markets-prices/processing-marketing/new-products.aspx http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-markets-prices/processin... [2] http://smallbusiness.chron.com/failure-rate-new-items-launched-grocery-industry-13112.html http://smallbusiness.chron.com/failure-rate-new-items-launch...
- wozniacki 12y ago
  Google Desktop Search - even from a cursory glance at the comments in this thread and the absence of its mention - is by far the most under-appreciated Google product ever. That sucker was good. Great even. It would find things across browsers, through documents and files and even collate results from web searches that most browsers - sometimes even Chrome to this day - missed or never registered in the history, in the first place. I would have gladly paid some $50-$75 a year to have it work across all of my devices. And I don't typically pay for most offerings. It was that good. I miss that one badly.
  - frik 12y ago
    Google desktop search was great. At the high of the desktop search engine race, it competed with OSX Spotlight and Windows desktop search (and various others like Yahoo X11, Copernic desktop search). Google worked on 3 major OS and run on a local web server. It looked like a local Google search and indexed various file formats incl. iFilter support. As basically all companies stopped further developing desktop search products, I needed a proper replacement. I developed an enterprise/desktop search engine last year that basically reimplements Google desktop search including advanced search syntax and support for various file formats.
    - smacktoward 12y ago
      I developed an enterprise/desktop search engine last year that basically reimplements Google desktop search including advanced search syntax and support for various file formats. If this were Reddit, this is the point where I would post the "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY" image.
  - smacktoward 12y ago
    Yeah, me too. It seems like desktop search as a product sector just kind of fell out of favor one day -- one moment there were a bunch of products scrapping it out, the next they were all gone. I have no idea why, I found it desktop search incredibly useful and would also happily have paid for a good product. But no really good ones exist anymore. The even more mind-boggling thing is that for Google especially, desktop search would seem to be a huge opportunity. Imagine how precisely you could target ads to users if they let you scan their entire hard drive! Jeez louise.
- logicallee 12y ago
  I agree. Consumers can't lambast companies for not being innovative or daring enough, if they turn around and rip them a new one if they release anything other than something they're fully behind for 20 years, and either keep everything other than that to themselves or kill it before it gets to that stage. You can't have it both ways, people.
  - dingaling 12y ago
    > You can't have it both ways, people. Of course we can. It's just that companies are now so geared to quarterly roadmaps that nothing has time to gain momentum unless it becomes a phenomenon. I see this with airlines as well; they launch a route in the middle of winter, or on a business route with schedules that are awkward for meetings, and then can it two months later because 'no-one uses it'. Which dissuades other airlines from trying a more sensible approach.
    - logicallee 12y ago
      No, we really can't have it both ways. Obviously (clearly) they will keep products that have sufficient momentum. With a little thought, however, it will be obvious to you that the consumer's definition of "sufficient" cannot possibly match a company's definition in 100% of cases: there will be a grey area where at least some people will like mouthwash-flavored bubble gum, but not enough people do that the company can afford to keep it. (And see if it does take off later, as you say would have happened in many cases.) Consumers have two alternatives: either allow companies to test products like this without backlash, and accept that some products will be discontinued due to lack of adoption, or to have stagnancy with only upstart companies trying new things and the existing brands sitting on the bylines looking for success built elsewhere that they can copy. I support innovation and encourage companies to go out on a limb, without any backlash if they discontinue these tests. (Even if I loved the product.)
      - Dylan16807 12y ago
        Why can't we have it both ways? You have this unstated assumption that they have to quickly abandon products that don't gain traction. But that's not true. It's short-term thinking over long-term. When a company spends 30 man years developing a product, they can set aside 1 or 2 extra for long term maintenance. By promising or consistently providing this, they can build customer trust and get more users. Keeping digital services up is cheap. It's shameful whenever DRM or video game servers go down after just a couple years because the company ran out of money or doesn't care anymore. These things could have been funded upfront with the tiniest fraction of the budget.
- rdtsc 12y ago
  > I really don't like things like this. Really? Can you explain more why. Is there an article accompanying it that shames Google or says anything bad about it. To me it just looks like a company that iterates and is trying new things. > A lot of these projects ended up as other projects or built into other projects. Well it would be bad if they completely threw away the code, and then hired a whole new group of people to work on a similar project. That would make them look worse.
  - res0nat0r 12y ago
    Nah, the whole reason it exists, and is linked here is to try and pile on that Google is terrible and shuts down products that everyone in the world loves. But the reality is the minor minor subset of the world that is HN loved some of these projects and were upset no one else used them, thus they were shut down. I haven't seen any accompanying MS articles like this, mainly because there haven't been angry posts here of MS shutting down products we think they should keep running forever that no one uses.
    - Aldo_MX 12y ago
      > I haven't seen any accompanying MS articles like this, mainly because there haven't been angry posts here of MS shutting down products Quite the contrary, people seem to be happy when MS shuts down a product. http://ie6countdown.com http://ie6countdown.com
    - pjc50 12y ago
      Have you not seen how much outrage appears whenever Microsoft change the Windows desktop? Microsoft also gets the reverse treatment: criticism for "excessive" backwards compatibility^ and leaving old products in use that people want to kill (IE6). ^ Except when they were sabotaging Lotus, Quarterdeck, OS/2, and Samba back in the 90s.
  - Navarr 12y ago
    I volunteer time for a project called The Shotbow Network - it's a Minecraft game network. We've got lots of projects, and there are features etc that we hype up and then either cancel or don't release. Inevitably, though, everything that went into building either those mini-games or that feature for another game ends up in all of our future projects. This sort of thing makes it look like those projects are completely dead, despite the fact that they live on either in full or in part under rebranded names or driving Google's next big feature.
- holdenc 12y ago
  Yes, Google Checkout became Google Wallet, which shut down their API for digital goods three days ago: https://developers.google.com/wallet/digital/ https://developers.google.com/wallet/digital/
  - 21echoes 12y ago
    their API for digital goods is now called Android Pay, and goes live within months ( http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/02/android-pay-is-real-and-will-give-developers-the-reins-as-an-api/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/02/android-pay-is-real-and-wil... & http://www.androidcentral.com/google-launching-their-own-payments-framework-android-pay http://www.androidcentral.com/google-launching-their-own-pay... )
    - tdkl 12y ago
      .. and what will it be called after that ? Google seems to hit their head through the wall that the issue in user adoption are the APIs. Nope, it's politics.
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  The location stuff in G+ is a pale shadow of what Latitude could do.
- stathisg 12y ago
  To add one more in the list, Google Talk eventually became Hangouts. The list states that it was abandoned in 2013, but it was actually still working properly at the end of 2014 when I last used it. I don't know if it works any more, since I eventually switched to hangouts (although I was reluctant to do so - https://twitter.com/StathisG/status/530740696719060992 https://twitter.com/StathisG/status/530740696719060992).
  - yasth 12y ago
    Talk was replaced by Hangouts, not became. There are important differences because talk was based on open models, and Hangouts... was not.
    - notatoad 12y ago
      no, talk literally became hangouts. For the android and chrome apps at least, the change was pushed as an update to the existing talk app. There's differences between what it is now and what it was before, but it was an update.
      - Dylan16807 12y ago
        Odd, I have a memory of my phone telling me that hangouts was a replacement for talk.. Not that it matters. Pushing a change "as an update" is a detail of how the app database works. It has no bearing on whether it's a replacement or not. Wikipedia sure seems to think they're different things, and they love to merge articles. Also if it's not a replacement they sure could have chosen better wording for: "Google Talk app for Windows will stop working on Feb 16 2015. It is replaced by the new Hangouts Chrome app."
  - theandrewbailey 12y ago
    It was working up until last week or so. I got an email saying that "it looks like you're trying to use talk. we've discontinued it."
- maratd 12y ago
  > If the idea doesn't work they pivot and drop it. Which is nice for Google, but screws over the users. If you're a user, you should be well aware that Google's products are unreliable and are there as an experiment.
- methehack 12y ago
  It is a little unfair, I agree. And I think it's all too easy to be snarky about other peoples hard work (haters gotta hate), especially when it doesn't work out. At the same time, Google seems to want it both ways. They have an idea and use their size to attract users and, perhaps even unintentionally, effectively block others from implementing the idea or scare others away (a size thing). Then, if they decide they don't like it, which can feel arbitrary, they pull out. Now the idea is tainted so others are less likely to implement it and users are left wondering what to do. They really seem like a bull in a china shop sometimes. I like the innovation and the experimentation, but it seems like they could be more graceful about it for both users and other entities trying the same things. Perhaps they should try these experiments in a more stealth way? Pretend not to be Google? Of course, people might super-hate on them for that, huh?
  - fineIllregister 12y ago
    For some projects, they could release the code as open source, like they did for Wave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave#Open_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave#Open_source
  - throwawaymsft 12y ago
    Totally agree on wanting it both ways. When you associate a product with a brand, you are attempting to overcome objections by saying "This brand supports this product and is putting its reputation behind it." If Google wants to experiment, create projects that don't have the Google brand (they just use G+ login like any other startup) and then reveal it was Google all along. Let the projects succeed on their own merits, with their own marketing. If you tie in the Google brand you are setting expectations that this will be a long-lasting effort.
    - Navarr 12y ago
      > If you tie in the Google brand you are setting expectations that this will be a long-lasting effort. I don't think anyone has that expectation anymore :p
deleted 12y ago
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s_dev 12y ago
Google Wave was simply too ahead of it's time. It's funny to see how Slack and HipChat are so similar to it. I recall it's performance being poor and people being a little confused by how much it could do. Google Answers was destroyed by Yahoo Answers - you could see the approach they were going for though - a properly answered question can be shown again and again. SO seemed to strike a balance between the two.
- onion2k 12y ago
  Google Wave was a collaborative editor. It was nothing like Slack or HipChat (unless I've managed to really misunderstand Slack despite building a few things on top of it). It's problem was that it didn't have a purpose - no one really knew what to do with it because a "Wave" was presented an amorphous blob of "knowledge" that people could contribute to at the same time. It was an online notepad, sketchbook, and spreadsheet all at the same time, yet it was also none of those things because you couldn't easily get the document out of Wave. Wave was a textbook example of how you can fail if people don't understand why they should use your product. They gave up on it (by handing it to the Apache Foundation where it continues to be developed), rolled the clever collaboration technology into Google Docs, and told everyone they'd made it so you could edit a doc at the same time as someone else. Everyone continues to love it to this day.
  - adamkochanowicz 12y ago
    Wave was a replacement to email, not exactly an online "notepad." It wasn't about documents at all, no more so than email today is. So you're right that it's not like Slack or Hipchat, but I think you may also misunderstand its purpose.
    - onion2k 12y ago
      Google pitched it as a replacement for email (another reason for people being confused about it's purpose) but the reality was that it was absolutely nothing like email. A wave was a document that you could edit with other people. The 'about' page: https://web.archive.org/web/20100427183005/http://wave.google.com/about.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100427183005/http://wave.googl... Actually, looking at the screenshot on that page, I can see why s_dev sees it as something like Slack. It has a much more 'chat'-based interface than I remember. Sorry s_dev.
Yhippa 12y ago
RIP Google Notebook. I still haven't found a good replacement for you.
TheCams 12y ago
I liked Google Squared a lot and it could have been a great comparison tool. For those who never tried it, you could search for "Ultrabook" for example, and have a table with different models, the screen size, autonomy, price etc ...
xroche 12y ago
RIP Google Code Search, aka the best code search ever. No credible competitor has yet emerged, and this is a real loss for all programmers: no more easy searching for sample code in obscure WIN32 Api, easy searching for arch-specific POSIX implementation details used by various open source projects, global error message grepping, and countless other little things which are not incredibly painful and difficult. I am still puzzled that we suffered such a tremendous regression.
- raldi 12y ago
  You don't think github is all that and more?
  - tedunangst 12y ago
    Can you search github with a regex?
  - xroche 12y ago
    Github search is fine, do not get me wrong. But this is like telling someone lamenting on the hypothetical end of Google search: "Just use the search function in Facebook, you don't need more"
  - userbinator 12y ago
    GitHub's search doesn't support regular expressions. (I'm aware you can clone the repo and search it locally, but that somewhat defeats the point - especially for large projects.)
    - Kluny 12y ago
      I'm pretty sure Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood, and probably a lot of other github employees, lurk around here... if you harp on it enough they'll probably make it happen.
      - maaku 12y ago
        What do Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood have to do with Github?
at-fates-hands 12y ago
How many of these were companies acquired by Google, and then dismantled after the project didn't gain traction? Not bashing Google, but there's always posts on Medium about how some startup got bought by Google, promised they wouldn't change anything and within a few months, simply dropped the project and laid off the employees.
- gwern 12y ago
  Some, but while being an acquisition is a small risk factor, Google is pretty ruthless about killing its own stuff as well. In my dataset from 2013 ( http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns ) there were 63 acquisitions vs 287 internal products, and being an acquisition increased the odds of death by an OR of 1.13 (small and not statistically-significant).
adamkochanowicz 12y ago
Um, Google Videos is on the list? https://www.google.com/videohp?gws_rd=ssl https://www.google.com/videohp?gws_rd=ssl
- p8952 12y ago
  Google Videos pre YouTube was a video hosting service, rather than a search engine.
  - Mahn 12y ago
    I remember this, it was very short lived but it indeed existed; I think it wasn't pre-YouTube though, I remember it as a direct YouTube competitor prior to the take over by Google.
- laumars 12y ago
  Google videos was originally a YouTube competitor, obviously before Google bought YouTube. It later became a search engine. So for all intents and purposes, the original project is dead.
gdulli 12y ago
I've had this persistent nagging feeling that I shouldn't use Google Keep for anything important because it could be gone tomorrow.
- raldi 12y ago
  The chances of it being "gone" tomorrow are basically zero. The worst thing that could happen tomorrow would be an announcement that in 60 days, no new Keep items could be added, and you'll have a year to download all your old ones as text, HTML, or JSON.
  - gdulli 12y ago
    You're right, I meant "gone" in the sense of deprecated more than vanished. The data is safe but the disruption to my workflow would be annoying enough that I'd rather not get too used to it.
    - jojoo 12y ago
      exactly. sure i exported my rss feeds as opml to feedly and ttrss. but none of them worked like i expected it, so i stopped reading rss feeds.
  - throwawaymsft 12y ago
    The hassle of having to switch is a giant burden though. Imagine grep was replaced every 3-4 years on your machine with some new, slightly different regex tool.
- soylentcola 12y ago
  I never really use it for anything important anyway but I can't imagine it going anywhere other than getting rolled into some aspect of Drive. It's already sort of a simplified note-centric version of Google Docs and mostly works the same way. I just use it since it's easy to keep on my phone's home screen for quick notes and snapshots I want to be able to access elsewhere if needed. I know something like Evernote is more fully featured but since Keep came out, I don't really use Evernote anymore. I think my needs in that space are just simple.
justinmaurer 12y ago
I feel like Sarah Mclachlan should be playing in the background
deleted 12y ago
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jawns 12y ago
I was one of the (apparently few) people who used Google Sets a lot. Even though its results were often hit-or-miss, there were enough hits for it to be a valuable resource. And unfortunately, I don't know of any comparable alternative. (But please tell me if you do!) Here is the problem it solved: It let you discover members of a set by entering a few members that you already know. For instance, if you enter "terrier," "bulldog," "German shepherd," it might return, "beagle," "poodle," "chihuahua." Obviously, in this example, it would probably be just as easy to Google "list dog breeds." But what if you know a few members of a set ... but don't actually know what the set is, or the proper way to describe the set to a search engine? Or what if the search engine results take you to pages that list some related terms, but you've got to sift through a lot of other content to get to them? That's when Google Sets really came in handy. Edit: I admit, Google has gotten a lot better in recent years at returning this sort of information in search results. And Wolfram does a good job, too. So my need for Sets has decreased, but I still miss it.
- raldi 12y ago
  What were some real-world situations where you used Google Sets? It always seemed to me like a cool toy without much practical use, and certainly not the most worthy sink of a good engineer's limited time.
  - eli 12y ago
    Naming servers. Doesn't matter if you use colors, or star trek characters, or nautical terms: plug the existing servers into a set and get a couple new name suggestions.
    - raldi 12y ago
      That doesn't work if you plug them into regular web search?
      - tedunangst 12y ago
        Have you tried googling for "kirk spock"? You don't get a list of other star trek characters.
minikites 12y ago
Remember this before you rely too much on a Google product. Google isn't Microsoft and that's okay, but one of Microsoft's strong points is that they keep things around forever. Google still has the start-up culture where you can throw things away that aren't working. The difference is, in most start-ups, you don't have millions of people using the product you just threw away.
- dannyr 12y ago
  I'm using Gmail. Should I be worried?
  - minikites 12y ago
    I doubt Google would kill Gmail outright but they might go the Twitter route and remove generic IMAP access. I would be surprised if IMAP was still an option after the next 2-3 years.
    - pjc50 12y ago
      You've reminded me to back up my email.
    - josefresco 12y ago
      I could see them pulling the ability to pull in your own POP/IMAP accounts into Gmail - to force more folks to use Apps.
pjmlp 12y ago
I will save the link for every time someone points out only Microsoft changes its mind.
- josefresco 12y ago
  Not sure who you're talking to (probably 20-somethings) but Microsoft is the champion of backward compatibility. They may have floundered recently but traditionally their adherence to old models has actually been a hindrance.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    Yes, you got that right. My first computer was a Timex 2068. Like many I eventually went through a love/hate relationship with Microsoft products, to eventually realise, that when compared with many enterprise companies, Microsoft is quite good.
davidgerard 12y ago
http://newstechnica.com/2013/03/14/spring-clean-google-search-now-part-of-google-plus/ http://newstechnica.com/2013/03/14/spring-clean-google-searc...
nadams 12y ago
They forgot Google Code[1]. It's still "up" but it's obvious it's been abandoned by the amount of spam issues that have been building up. I know people like github more than google code - but I personally liked Google Code for it's simplicity. [1] - https://code.google.com/p/support/issues/list?can=2&q=&sort=-id&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Priority%20Stars%20Owner%20Summary https://code.google.com/p/support/issues/list?can=2&q=&sort=...
- cbr 12y ago
  Should Google just kill it and suggest people move to GitHub?
  - maaku 12y ago
    Most google code projects don't use git.
  - nadams 12y ago
    Well - Google should offer a way to export your data that way people can easily move to another source code hosting service. Preferably - it should be a one button click of "copy to github repo". Which would include conversion of SVN and Mercurial history to git.
    - cbr 12y ago
      That makes sense. That's what I'd want for my projects on Google Code if it got shut down.
bane 12y ago
This flakiness is really hurting Google's B2B business. Google tends to do things in a particularly proprietary Googly way that locks companies in, but the history of killing off products makes nobody want to commit to that. Thus the B2B offerings underperform, making it more likely they'll get killed off. I follow google reasonably closely and I haven't even heard of a good 40% of these.
- swalsh 12y ago
  One of the worst designed products I've ever used was the Google Search Appliance. I'd never recommend it to another developer, the user interface is just terrible. We'd pay a bunch of money and what we got was a hard to set up box that was kind of buggy.
kgarten 12y ago
I preferred the Slate Google Graveyard with flowers: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/map_of_the_week/2013/03/google_reader_joins_graveyard_of_dead_google_products.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/map_of_the_week/201...
acadien 12y ago
Is it really so terrible that they try out new projects and abandon those that don't either don't work or aren't profitable?
arihant 12y ago
I always wondered why Google didn't spin off some of this as open source projects. It seems to me that the bottleneck wasn't the hosting, but the man hours being wasted on them. Google could have reduced their involvement to providing an API and the development could have been managed by community. It's easier said than done, obviously. Maybe the bottleneck was psychological and focus related, and they wanted to wipe the slate clean?
- Navarr 12y ago
  Some of their projects were, see "Google Wave" (now "Apache Wave") [1] [1]: http://incubator.apache.org/wave/ http://incubator.apache.org/wave/
- rogerbinns 12y ago
  I suspect that most used large amounts of internal Google libraries and was structured to work on Google's storage backends. Consequently it would be a phenomenal effort to strip that out, or make it sufficiently abstract so it has a hope of running elsewhere. It is notable that Google doesn't internally use services. If for example they wrote everything to work on appengine/cloud in exactly the same way and APIs as outsiders do, then spinning out would be a lot easier. http://steverant.pen.io/ http://steverant.pen.io/
shgnio 12y ago
Is this website written in Dart? (sarcasm)
weslly 12y ago
It's sad to see Sparrow there. It has been almost 3 years and I still didn't find any good alternative.
- jastanton 12y ago
  I came here to say the same, I use sparrow every day and all day. Best email app I have ever used.
SuperKlaus 12y ago
Can't believe nobody mentioned Google Reader yet - that was such a great product and they killed it, still haven't found anything that comes close (and I'm paying for a theoldreader.com subscription, they're good but no Google Reader).
- toddsiegel 12y ago
  Agreed. I lament the death of Reader on an at least weekly basis.
- mrec 12y ago
  I tried half a dozen replacements after the Readerpocalyse and finally settled on https://kouio.com/ https://kouio.com/ - been very happy with it ever since. The only real gripe I have is the lack of sane sidebar feed list ordering by default. I wish they'd start charging for it.
- acdha 12y ago
  I find Newsblur.com has passed Reader in almost every way – feed management, social, etc. – and it has a viable business model, not to mention being open-source (https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur). The one advantage Reader arguably still had was what came from their search infrastructure (caching nearly everything forever & near-realtime updates) but that's not something I notice very often.
ericfontaine 12y ago
Google Ride finder • 2007 - 2009 Wow...killed the same year Uber was founded. Missed out on a nice market opportunity...probably just needed to be refined, remarketed and keep it going. (I never even heard about it.)
edem 12y ago
Please add a hand icon when I hover over a box. It will make me think that each box is clickable (they are) and the UX is improved that way.
- theandrewbailey 12y ago
  Also, don't use white on yellow. Ever.
- duderific 12y ago
  Interestingly, the HTML spec indicates that only hyperlinks should change the cursor to a hand when hovering. Nowadays though, everyone expects that hand == clickable.
ignostic 12y ago
Wow, I've forgotten how many Google products I used that were abandoned at some point. I counted 15 that I've used. To be fair, some of these didn't die - they were renamed, graduated, or folded into another project. Google Talk actually still works on Google Chat if you have the old client. Google Listen became Google Music, Checkout was mostly folded into Wallet, etc. Sidenote: if you are the developer, that yellow-on-white is almost completely unreadable. I know flat pastels are in, but I have to either strain or open the box to highlight.
- dublinben 12y ago
  Google Listen didn't become Google (Play) Music, it was completely abandoned. There is no support for podcasts within the GPM app or website. Google has actually moved away from supporting podcasts without 3rd party software, whereas Apple introduced a dedicated app with iOS 6.
bhayden 12y ago
I am still super unhappy about Google removing the "Discussions" filter as a search option over a year later. It was insanely useful. I think you can still do it by adding something to the URL, but the quality of the search filter has dropped drastically (which is maybe why they removed it). I don't know of any other search engines that have a Discussions filter.
cheshire137 12y ago
Sparrow was a sad one.
pyabo 12y ago
Coming soon: Google+
- thrillgore 12y ago
  One can hope.
carsonreinke 12y ago
While these are free, there is something to be said about standing by your product.
adad95 12y ago
The Google Graveyard http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/map_of_the_week/2013/03/google_reader_joins_graveyard_of_dead_google_products.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/map_of_the_week/201...
frik 12y ago
Picnik was a Flash based photo filter editor. Can one recommend a Flash/HTML5/WebGL based alternative service? Picnik was best of its kind and IMHO better than Photoshop default filters. Google bought the service, there were plans to add it to Google+ Photos, never saw the great Picnik filters again.
ketralnis 12y ago
if they're going to include Sparrow in there, surely there have been loads of other acquihires that closed their products after purchase

205 points by friendcode 12y ago

I really don't like things like this. A lot of these projects ended up as other projects or built into other projects. Google checkout turned into Google Wallet. Google latitude ended up as part of the Google+ Identity overhaul. There's also a lot of projects that are "labs" or "beta." Clearly they didn't gain the traction Google wanted from them. Google's like any other startup on a project-by-project basis. If the idea doesn't work they pivot and drop it.

gk1 12y ago
To add one more: Writely became Google Docs -- anything but a failure.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Hm yet its leaky, buggy and low-feature. Useful for casual use but nowhere near professional. When will they drop it, or break it? Like some gmail features got broken this week. Lesson: don't hang anything important on Google apps.
  - livingparadox 12y ago
    Google docs is fantastic. I use it exclusively (docs and sheets) and haven't seen anything buggy about it. I have never found myself a wanting a feature in google docs that wasn't also missing from Office. The only limitation I came across in sheets was the limited scope of conditional formatting. That's pretty much it.
    - nightpool 12y ago
      FWIW there are a few features I would love to have in docs: different headers/footers for title pages pops out to me. Sheets is a LOT less featured then excel but the scripting is pretty excellent so that actually makes it a better product for most of what I want to do. Plus who really uses the advanced features of excel?
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Ive just been using it a week or so, but this is what I remember right off. Features missing from Word Docs: KeepTogether, orphan/widow management, page layout, reviewing(?) Bugs: typeface changes when going back to Normal after any heading (doesn't change but ribbon says it has). Ctrl-C copies but Ctrl-X doesn't delete text Font changes randomly DO or DONT apply to the line you're on, when not selected
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
jmilloy 12y ago
As you suggest, just because some idea was dropped doesn't mean that Google did the wrong thing. But, it also doesn't mean that they didn't abandon the idea, so it ends up here in a list. I don't see any general Google bashing yet. Similarly, I'd put a phonograph in a museum, even though it's features have been replaced by other things.
- kedean 12y ago
  I'm not a google apologist, but the list definitely has a few undeserved products. The most obvious is Writely, which was simply rebranded to Google Docs, then further rebranded to Google Drive. The writely.com domain even redirects to Drive.
alextingle 12y ago
Google Code was awesome, and there's no real replacement for it. koders.com* doesn't even come close. * - now code.openhub.net
- skj 12y ago
  github isn't a replacement?
  - laumars 12y ago
    Yes, if the code is on Github. However not everyone who publishes code uses Github (myself included)
    - sotiris-k 12y ago
      not everyone used Google Code either. What's your point?
      - tedunangst 12y ago
        Code Search searched a lot more than just what was stored on Google. What's your point?
        aniket_ray 12y ago
        I think his point was that Code and Code Search are/were different products.
    - bduerst 12y ago
      Why not? (I'm genuinely interested here - not trying to snark)
      - ilovesatan 12y ago
        Because not everyone here is the teenage girl version of a programmer who only goes after the newest fad without taking in account the actual features of a system and practical implications of promoting a monopoly.
und3rw4t3rp00ps 12y ago
To me, this is evidence of Google's rather awkward relationship with consumers (i.e. they toss tons of branded endeavors at us, see what sticks), and not a knock against fearlessly trying things or whatever. The best brands are coy and careful with their identity... google sorta slops it around. this is a list of failed consumer facing products more than it is a list of "bad ideas".
- wahsd 12y ago
  You mean their whole mentality of "we built this half baked product, why the hell isn't anyone coming?"
- eplanit 12y ago
  I don't really see how it is awkward or hurts relationships with consumers (especially when most all products and services are free) -- it's a form of market research and product testing. Who needs focus groups when you have the world?
  - vertex-four 12y ago
    Because consumers learn not to trust products with Google branding to stick around.
  - und3rw4t3rp00ps 12y ago
    I think focus groups are inherently embarrassing. Not commenting on their utility, but the act of showcasing something to "normal people" for their "feedback" is, at its essence, pathetic. While Google's 'everything in beta' mentality is endearing in a 'democracy'/'transparent fun-loving engineers' sort of way... it is also evidence to the fact that our information behemoth is rudderless. Google Buzz.
- SixSigma 12y ago
  By comparison, food processing companies introduce 9 new food products every day [1]. 70% fail within a year. [2] [1] http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-markets-prices/processing-marketing/new-products.aspx http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-markets-prices/processin... [2] http://smallbusiness.chron.com/failure-rate-new-items-launched-grocery-industry-13112.html http://smallbusiness.chron.com/failure-rate-new-items-launch...
wozniacki 12y ago
Google Desktop Search - even from a cursory glance at the comments in this thread and the absence of its mention - is by far the most under-appreciated Google product ever. That sucker was good. Great even. It would find things across browsers, through documents and files and even collate results from web searches that most browsers - sometimes even Chrome to this day - missed or never registered in the history, in the first place. I would have gladly paid some $50-$75 a year to have it work across all of my devices. And I don't typically pay for most offerings. It was that good. I miss that one badly.
- frik 12y ago
  Google desktop search was great. At the high of the desktop search engine race, it competed with OSX Spotlight and Windows desktop search (and various others like Yahoo X11, Copernic desktop search). Google worked on 3 major OS and run on a local web server. It looked like a local Google search and indexed various file formats incl. iFilter support. As basically all companies stopped further developing desktop search products, I needed a proper replacement. I developed an enterprise/desktop search engine last year that basically reimplements Google desktop search including advanced search syntax and support for various file formats.
  - smacktoward 12y ago
    I developed an enterprise/desktop search engine last year that basically reimplements Google desktop search including advanced search syntax and support for various file formats. If this were Reddit, this is the point where I would post the "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY" image.
- smacktoward 12y ago
  Yeah, me too. It seems like desktop search as a product sector just kind of fell out of favor one day -- one moment there were a bunch of products scrapping it out, the next they were all gone. I have no idea why, I found it desktop search incredibly useful and would also happily have paid for a good product. But no really good ones exist anymore. The even more mind-boggling thing is that for Google especially, desktop search would seem to be a huge opportunity. Imagine how precisely you could target ads to users if they let you scan their entire hard drive! Jeez louise.
logicallee 12y ago
I agree. Consumers can't lambast companies for not being innovative or daring enough, if they turn around and rip them a new one if they release anything other than something they're fully behind for 20 years, and either keep everything other than that to themselves or kill it before it gets to that stage. You can't have it both ways, people.
- dingaling 12y ago
  > You can't have it both ways, people. Of course we can. It's just that companies are now so geared to quarterly roadmaps that nothing has time to gain momentum unless it becomes a phenomenon. I see this with airlines as well; they launch a route in the middle of winter, or on a business route with schedules that are awkward for meetings, and then can it two months later because 'no-one uses it'. Which dissuades other airlines from trying a more sensible approach.
  - logicallee 12y ago
    No, we really can't have it both ways. Obviously (clearly) they will keep products that have sufficient momentum. With a little thought, however, it will be obvious to you that the consumer's definition of "sufficient" cannot possibly match a company's definition in 100% of cases: there will be a grey area where at least some people will like mouthwash-flavored bubble gum, but not enough people do that the company can afford to keep it. (And see if it does take off later, as you say would have happened in many cases.) Consumers have two alternatives: either allow companies to test products like this without backlash, and accept that some products will be discontinued due to lack of adoption, or to have stagnancy with only upstart companies trying new things and the existing brands sitting on the bylines looking for success built elsewhere that they can copy. I support innovation and encourage companies to go out on a limb, without any backlash if they discontinue these tests. (Even if I loved the product.)
    - Dylan16807 12y ago
      Why can't we have it both ways? You have this unstated assumption that they have to quickly abandon products that don't gain traction. But that's not true. It's short-term thinking over long-term. When a company spends 30 man years developing a product, they can set aside 1 or 2 extra for long term maintenance. By promising or consistently providing this, they can build customer trust and get more users. Keeping digital services up is cheap. It's shameful whenever DRM or video game servers go down after just a couple years because the company ran out of money or doesn't care anymore. These things could have been funded upfront with the tiniest fraction of the budget.
rdtsc 12y ago
> I really don't like things like this. Really? Can you explain more why. Is there an article accompanying it that shames Google or says anything bad about it. To me it just looks like a company that iterates and is trying new things. > A lot of these projects ended up as other projects or built into other projects. Well it would be bad if they completely threw away the code, and then hired a whole new group of people to work on a similar project. That would make them look worse.
- res0nat0r 12y ago
  Nah, the whole reason it exists, and is linked here is to try and pile on that Google is terrible and shuts down products that everyone in the world loves. But the reality is the minor minor subset of the world that is HN loved some of these projects and were upset no one else used them, thus they were shut down. I haven't seen any accompanying MS articles like this, mainly because there haven't been angry posts here of MS shutting down products we think they should keep running forever that no one uses.
  - Aldo_MX 12y ago
    > I haven't seen any accompanying MS articles like this, mainly because there haven't been angry posts here of MS shutting down products Quite the contrary, people seem to be happy when MS shuts down a product. http://ie6countdown.com http://ie6countdown.com
  - pjc50 12y ago
    Have you not seen how much outrage appears whenever Microsoft change the Windows desktop? Microsoft also gets the reverse treatment: criticism for "excessive" backwards compatibility^ and leaving old products in use that people want to kill (IE6). ^ Except when they were sabotaging Lotus, Quarterdeck, OS/2, and Samba back in the 90s.
- Navarr 12y ago
  I volunteer time for a project called The Shotbow Network - it's a Minecraft game network. We've got lots of projects, and there are features etc that we hype up and then either cancel or don't release. Inevitably, though, everything that went into building either those mini-games or that feature for another game ends up in all of our future projects. This sort of thing makes it look like those projects are completely dead, despite the fact that they live on either in full or in part under rebranded names or driving Google's next big feature.
holdenc 12y ago
Yes, Google Checkout became Google Wallet, which shut down their API for digital goods three days ago: https://developers.google.com/wallet/digital/ https://developers.google.com/wallet/digital/
- 21echoes 12y ago
  their API for digital goods is now called Android Pay, and goes live within months ( http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/02/android-pay-is-real-and-will-give-developers-the-reins-as-an-api/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/02/android-pay-is-real-and-wil... & http://www.androidcentral.com/google-launching-their-own-payments-framework-android-pay http://www.androidcentral.com/google-launching-their-own-pay... )
  - tdkl 12y ago
    .. and what will it be called after that ? Google seems to hit their head through the wall that the issue in user adoption are the APIs. Nope, it's politics.
thrownaway2424 12y ago
The location stuff in G+ is a pale shadow of what Latitude could do.
stathisg 12y ago
To add one more in the list, Google Talk eventually became Hangouts. The list states that it was abandoned in 2013, but it was actually still working properly at the end of 2014 when I last used it. I don't know if it works any more, since I eventually switched to hangouts (although I was reluctant to do so - https://twitter.com/StathisG/status/530740696719060992 https://twitter.com/StathisG/status/530740696719060992).
- yasth 12y ago
  Talk was replaced by Hangouts, not became. There are important differences because talk was based on open models, and Hangouts... was not.
  - notatoad 12y ago
    no, talk literally became hangouts. For the android and chrome apps at least, the change was pushed as an update to the existing talk app. There's differences between what it is now and what it was before, but it was an update.
    - Dylan16807 12y ago
      Odd, I have a memory of my phone telling me that hangouts was a replacement for talk.. Not that it matters. Pushing a change "as an update" is a detail of how the app database works. It has no bearing on whether it's a replacement or not. Wikipedia sure seems to think they're different things, and they love to merge articles. Also if it's not a replacement they sure could have chosen better wording for: "Google Talk app for Windows will stop working on Feb 16 2015. It is replaced by the new Hangouts Chrome app."
- theandrewbailey 12y ago
  It was working up until last week or so. I got an email saying that "it looks like you're trying to use talk. we've discontinued it."
maratd 12y ago
> If the idea doesn't work they pivot and drop it. Which is nice for Google, but screws over the users. If you're a user, you should be well aware that Google's products are unreliable and are there as an experiment.
methehack 12y ago
It is a little unfair, I agree. And I think it's all too easy to be snarky about other peoples hard work (haters gotta hate), especially when it doesn't work out. At the same time, Google seems to want it both ways. They have an idea and use their size to attract users and, perhaps even unintentionally, effectively block others from implementing the idea or scare others away (a size thing). Then, if they decide they don't like it, which can feel arbitrary, they pull out. Now the idea is tainted so others are less likely to implement it and users are left wondering what to do. They really seem like a bull in a china shop sometimes. I like the innovation and the experimentation, but it seems like they could be more graceful about it for both users and other entities trying the same things. Perhaps they should try these experiments in a more stealth way? Pretend not to be Google? Of course, people might super-hate on them for that, huh?
- fineIllregister 12y ago
  For some projects, they could release the code as open source, like they did for Wave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave#Open_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave#Open_source
- throwawaymsft 12y ago
  Totally agree on wanting it both ways. When you associate a product with a brand, you are attempting to overcome objections by saying "This brand supports this product and is putting its reputation behind it." If Google wants to experiment, create projects that don't have the Google brand (they just use G+ login like any other startup) and then reveal it was Google all along. Let the projects succeed on their own merits, with their own marketing. If you tie in the Google brand you are setting expectations that this will be a long-lasting effort.
  - Navarr 12y ago
    > If you tie in the Google brand you are setting expectations that this will be a long-lasting effort. I don't think anyone has that expectation anymore :p

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

s_dev 12y ago

Google Wave was simply too ahead of it's time. It's funny to see how Slack and HipChat are so similar to it. I recall it's performance being poor and people being a little confused by how much it could do. Google Answers was destroyed by Yahoo Answers - you could see the approach they were going for though - a properly answered question can be shown again and again. SO seemed to strike a balance between the two.

onion2k 12y ago
Google Wave was a collaborative editor. It was nothing like Slack or HipChat (unless I've managed to really misunderstand Slack despite building a few things on top of it). It's problem was that it didn't have a purpose - no one really knew what to do with it because a "Wave" was presented an amorphous blob of "knowledge" that people could contribute to at the same time. It was an online notepad, sketchbook, and spreadsheet all at the same time, yet it was also none of those things because you couldn't easily get the document out of Wave. Wave was a textbook example of how you can fail if people don't understand why they should use your product. They gave up on it (by handing it to the Apache Foundation where it continues to be developed), rolled the clever collaboration technology into Google Docs, and told everyone they'd made it so you could edit a doc at the same time as someone else. Everyone continues to love it to this day.
- adamkochanowicz 12y ago
  Wave was a replacement to email, not exactly an online "notepad." It wasn't about documents at all, no more so than email today is. So you're right that it's not like Slack or Hipchat, but I think you may also misunderstand its purpose.
  - onion2k 12y ago
    Google pitched it as a replacement for email (another reason for people being confused about it's purpose) but the reality was that it was absolutely nothing like email. A wave was a document that you could edit with other people. The 'about' page: https://web.archive.org/web/20100427183005/http://wave.google.com/about.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100427183005/http://wave.googl... Actually, looking at the screenshot on that page, I can see why s_dev sees it as something like Slack. It has a much more 'chat'-based interface than I remember. Sorry s_dev.

Yhippa 12y ago

RIP Google Notebook. I still haven't found a good replacement for you.

TheCams 12y ago

I liked Google Squared a lot and it could have been a great comparison tool. For those who never tried it, you could search for "Ultrabook" for example, and have a table with different models, the screen size, autonomy, price etc ...

xroche 12y ago

RIP Google Code Search, aka the best code search ever. No credible competitor has yet emerged, and this is a real loss for all programmers: no more easy searching for sample code in obscure WIN32 Api, easy searching for arch-specific POSIX implementation details used by various open source projects, global error message grepping, and countless other little things which are not incredibly painful and difficult. I am still puzzled that we suffered such a tremendous regression.

raldi 12y ago
You don't think github is all that and more?
- tedunangst 12y ago
  Can you search github with a regex?
- xroche 12y ago
  Github search is fine, do not get me wrong. But this is like telling someone lamenting on the hypothetical end of Google search: "Just use the search function in Facebook, you don't need more"
- userbinator 12y ago
  GitHub's search doesn't support regular expressions. (I'm aware you can clone the repo and search it locally, but that somewhat defeats the point - especially for large projects.)
  - Kluny 12y ago
    I'm pretty sure Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood, and probably a lot of other github employees, lurk around here... if you harp on it enough they'll probably make it happen.
    - maaku 12y ago
      What do Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood have to do with Github?

at-fates-hands 12y ago

How many of these were companies acquired by Google, and then dismantled after the project didn't gain traction? Not bashing Google, but there's always posts on Medium about how some startup got bought by Google, promised they wouldn't change anything and within a few months, simply dropped the project and laid off the employees.

gwern 12y ago
Some, but while being an acquisition is a small risk factor, Google is pretty ruthless about killing its own stuff as well. In my dataset from 2013 ( http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns ) there were 63 acquisitions vs 287 internal products, and being an acquisition increased the odds of death by an OR of 1.13 (small and not statistically-significant).

adamkochanowicz 12y ago

Um, Google Videos is on the list? https://www.google.com/videohp?gws_rd=ssl https://www.google.com/videohp?gws_rd=ssl

p8952 12y ago
Google Videos pre YouTube was a video hosting service, rather than a search engine.
- Mahn 12y ago
  I remember this, it was very short lived but it indeed existed; I think it wasn't pre-YouTube though, I remember it as a direct YouTube competitor prior to the take over by Google.
laumars 12y ago
Google videos was originally a YouTube competitor, obviously before Google bought YouTube. It later became a search engine. So for all intents and purposes, the original project is dead.

gdulli 12y ago

I've had this persistent nagging feeling that I shouldn't use Google Keep for anything important because it could be gone tomorrow.

raldi 12y ago
The chances of it being "gone" tomorrow are basically zero. The worst thing that could happen tomorrow would be an announcement that in 60 days, no new Keep items could be added, and you'll have a year to download all your old ones as text, HTML, or JSON.
- gdulli 12y ago
  You're right, I meant "gone" in the sense of deprecated more than vanished. The data is safe but the disruption to my workflow would be annoying enough that I'd rather not get too used to it.
  - jojoo 12y ago
    exactly. sure i exported my rss feeds as opml to feedly and ttrss. but none of them worked like i expected it, so i stopped reading rss feeds.
- throwawaymsft 12y ago
  The hassle of having to switch is a giant burden though. Imagine grep was replaced every 3-4 years on your machine with some new, slightly different regex tool.
soylentcola 12y ago
I never really use it for anything important anyway but I can't imagine it going anywhere other than getting rolled into some aspect of Drive. It's already sort of a simplified note-centric version of Google Docs and mostly works the same way. I just use it since it's easy to keep on my phone's home screen for quick notes and snapshots I want to be able to access elsewhere if needed. I know something like Evernote is more fully featured but since Keep came out, I don't really use Evernote anymore. I think my needs in that space are just simple.

justinmaurer 12y ago

I feel like Sarah Mclachlan should be playing in the background

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jawns 12y ago

I was one of the (apparently few) people who used Google Sets a lot. Even though its results were often hit-or-miss, there were enough hits for it to be a valuable resource. And unfortunately, I don't know of any comparable alternative. (But please tell me if you do!) Here is the problem it solved: It let you discover members of a set by entering a few members that you already know. For instance, if you enter "terrier," "bulldog," "German shepherd," it might return, "beagle," "poodle," "chihuahua." Obviously, in this example, it would probably be just as easy to Google "list dog breeds." But what if you know a few members of a set ... but don't actually know what the set is, or the proper way to describe the set to a search engine? Or what if the search engine results take you to pages that list some related terms, but you've got to sift through a lot of other content to get to them? That's when Google Sets really came in handy. Edit: I admit, Google has gotten a lot better in recent years at returning this sort of information in search results. And Wolfram does a good job, too. So my need for Sets has decreased, but I still miss it.

raldi 12y ago
What were some real-world situations where you used Google Sets? It always seemed to me like a cool toy without much practical use, and certainly not the most worthy sink of a good engineer's limited time.
- eli 12y ago
  Naming servers. Doesn't matter if you use colors, or star trek characters, or nautical terms: plug the existing servers into a set and get a couple new name suggestions.
  - raldi 12y ago
    That doesn't work if you plug them into regular web search?
    - tedunangst 12y ago
      Have you tried googling for "kirk spock"? You don't get a list of other star trek characters.

minikites 12y ago

Remember this before you rely too much on a Google product. Google isn't Microsoft and that's okay, but one of Microsoft's strong points is that they keep things around forever. Google still has the start-up culture where you can throw things away that aren't working. The difference is, in most start-ups, you don't have millions of people using the product you just threw away.

dannyr 12y ago
I'm using Gmail. Should I be worried?
- minikites 12y ago
  I doubt Google would kill Gmail outright but they might go the Twitter route and remove generic IMAP access. I would be surprised if IMAP was still an option after the next 2-3 years.
  - pjc50 12y ago
    You've reminded me to back up my email.
  - josefresco 12y ago
    I could see them pulling the ability to pull in your own POP/IMAP accounts into Gmail - to force more folks to use Apps.

pjmlp 12y ago

I will save the link for every time someone points out only Microsoft changes its mind.

josefresco 12y ago
Not sure who you're talking to (probably 20-somethings) but Microsoft is the champion of backward compatibility. They may have floundered recently but traditionally their adherence to old models has actually been a hindrance.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  Yes, you got that right. My first computer was a Timex 2068. Like many I eventually went through a love/hate relationship with Microsoft products, to eventually realise, that when compared with many enterprise companies, Microsoft is quite good.

davidgerard 12y ago

http://newstechnica.com/2013/03/14/spring-clean-google-search-now-part-of-google-plus/ http://newstechnica.com/2013/03/14/spring-clean-google-searc...

nadams 12y ago

They forgot Google Code[1]. It's still "up" but it's obvious it's been abandoned by the amount of spam issues that have been building up. I know people like github more than google code - but I personally liked Google Code for it's simplicity. [1] - https://code.google.com/p/support/issues/list?can=2&q=&sort=-id&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Priority%20Stars%20Owner%20Summary https://code.google.com/p/support/issues/list?can=2&q=&sort=...

cbr 12y ago
Should Google just kill it and suggest people move to GitHub?
- maaku 12y ago
  Most google code projects don't use git.
- nadams 12y ago
  Well - Google should offer a way to export your data that way people can easily move to another source code hosting service. Preferably - it should be a one button click of "copy to github repo". Which would include conversion of SVN and Mercurial history to git.
  - cbr 12y ago
    That makes sense. That's what I'd want for my projects on Google Code if it got shut down.

bane 12y ago

This flakiness is really hurting Google's B2B business. Google tends to do things in a particularly proprietary Googly way that locks companies in, but the history of killing off products makes nobody want to commit to that. Thus the B2B offerings underperform, making it more likely they'll get killed off. I follow google reasonably closely and I haven't even heard of a good 40% of these.

swalsh 12y ago
One of the worst designed products I've ever used was the Google Search Appliance. I'd never recommend it to another developer, the user interface is just terrible. We'd pay a bunch of money and what we got was a hard to set up box that was kind of buggy.

kgarten 12y ago

I preferred the Slate Google Graveyard with flowers: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/map_of_the_week/2013/03/google_reader_joins_graveyard_of_dead_google_products.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/map_of_the_week/201...

acadien 12y ago

Is it really so terrible that they try out new projects and abandon those that don't either don't work or aren't profitable?

arihant 12y ago

I always wondered why Google didn't spin off some of this as open source projects. It seems to me that the bottleneck wasn't the hosting, but the man hours being wasted on them. Google could have reduced their involvement to providing an API and the development could have been managed by community. It's easier said than done, obviously. Maybe the bottleneck was psychological and focus related, and they wanted to wipe the slate clean?

Navarr 12y ago
Some of their projects were, see "Google Wave" (now "Apache Wave") [1] [1]: http://incubator.apache.org/wave/ http://incubator.apache.org/wave/
rogerbinns 12y ago
I suspect that most used large amounts of internal Google libraries and was structured to work on Google's storage backends. Consequently it would be a phenomenal effort to strip that out, or make it sufficiently abstract so it has a hope of running elsewhere. It is notable that Google doesn't internally use services. If for example they wrote everything to work on appengine/cloud in exactly the same way and APIs as outsiders do, then spinning out would be a lot easier. http://steverant.pen.io/ http://steverant.pen.io/

shgnio 12y ago

Is this website written in Dart? (sarcasm)

weslly 12y ago

It's sad to see Sparrow there. It has been almost 3 years and I still didn't find any good alternative.

jastanton 12y ago
I came here to say the same, I use sparrow every day and all day. Best email app I have ever used.

SuperKlaus 12y ago

Can't believe nobody mentioned Google Reader yet - that was such a great product and they killed it, still haven't found anything that comes close (and I'm paying for a theoldreader.com subscription, they're good but no Google Reader).

toddsiegel 12y ago
Agreed. I lament the death of Reader on an at least weekly basis.
mrec 12y ago
I tried half a dozen replacements after the Readerpocalyse and finally settled on https://kouio.com/ https://kouio.com/ - been very happy with it ever since. The only real gripe I have is the lack of sane sidebar feed list ordering by default. I wish they'd start charging for it.
acdha 12y ago
I find Newsblur.com has passed Reader in almost every way – feed management, social, etc. – and it has a viable business model, not to mention being open-source (https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur). The one advantage Reader arguably still had was what came from their search infrastructure (caching nearly everything forever & near-realtime updates) but that's not something I notice very often.

ericfontaine 12y ago

Google Ride finder • 2007 - 2009 Wow...killed the same year Uber was founded. Missed out on a nice market opportunity...probably just needed to be refined, remarketed and keep it going. (I never even heard about it.)

edem 12y ago

Please add a hand icon when I hover over a box. It will make me think that each box is clickable (they are) and the UX is improved that way.

theandrewbailey 12y ago
Also, don't use white on yellow. Ever.
duderific 12y ago
Interestingly, the HTML spec indicates that only hyperlinks should change the cursor to a hand when hovering. Nowadays though, everyone expects that hand == clickable.

ignostic 12y ago

Wow, I've forgotten how many Google products I used that were abandoned at some point. I counted 15 that I've used. To be fair, some of these didn't die - they were renamed, graduated, or folded into another project. Google Talk actually still works on Google Chat if you have the old client. Google Listen became Google Music, Checkout was mostly folded into Wallet, etc. Sidenote: if you are the developer, that yellow-on-white is almost completely unreadable. I know flat pastels are in, but I have to either strain or open the box to highlight.

dublinben 12y ago
Google Listen didn't become Google (Play) Music, it was completely abandoned. There is no support for podcasts within the GPM app or website. Google has actually moved away from supporting podcasts without 3rd party software, whereas Apple introduced a dedicated app with iOS 6.

bhayden 12y ago

I am still super unhappy about Google removing the "Discussions" filter as a search option over a year later. It was insanely useful. I think you can still do it by adding something to the URL, but the quality of the search filter has dropped drastically (which is maybe why they removed it). I don't know of any other search engines that have a Discussions filter.

cheshire137 12y ago

Sparrow was a sad one.

pyabo 12y ago

Coming soon: Google+

thrillgore 12y ago
One can hope.

carsonreinke 12y ago

While these are free, there is something to be said about standing by your product.

adad95 12y ago

The Google Graveyard http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/map_of_the_week/2013/03/google_reader_joins_graveyard_of_dead_google_products.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/map_of_the_week/201...

frik 12y ago

Picnik was a Flash based photo filter editor. Can one recommend a Flash/HTML5/WebGL based alternative service? Picnik was best of its kind and IMHO better than Photoshop default filters. Google bought the service, there were plans to add it to Google+ Photos, never saw the great Picnik filters again.

ketralnis 12y ago

if they're going to include Sparrow in there, surely there have been loads of other acquihires that closed their products after purchase