

A fall spring-cleaning - Google products getting shut down - abraham
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/fall-spring-clean.html

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joebadmo
This "more wood behind fewer arrows" approach sounds great to me as long as
they keep trying new things.

The only thing that concerns me about the approach is along the lines of what
Doug Bowman said when he quit[0]: relying on data too much can blind you to
what cannot be represented in data. Or, maybe, as Steve Jobs said: "A lot of
times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."[1]

I'm optimistic that Larry Page is finding a way that comes from conviction in
combination with data.

[0]: <http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html>

[1]:
[http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may1998/nf80512d...](http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may1998/nf80512d.htm)

~~~
abraham
The new design getting previewed in most Google products seems like a
departure from relying on data. It is a radically different design from
Google's typical fare and while they must have done focus group and internal
testing it hasn't had years of AB testing evolution like the previous standard
design.

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andrewtbham
I like the new design. How do you know they didn't AB test it?

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abraham
I never said it wasn't tested. I said it hasn't had the years of AB test the
previous standard design had.

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MikeCapone
To have 'years of testing', first you have to start somewhere (days, then
weeks, then months), no?

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hrabago
I'm surprised Google Desktop is shutting down. A lot of my coworkers use this
and rely on this quite heavily. I used it a lot myself.

There certainly is a need to index and search the vast amount of data that's
now in our ever growing HDs. Is the search feature in the latest Windows
versions capable of tackling this?

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superuser2
Yes. Having used Windows 7 at work and Leopard at home, Windows 7's start menu
search functionality is just as good as Spotlight. It has, like Spotlight, let
me treat my hard drive like a shapeless pile and still find everything I need
quickly. It's also fast enough to use as an application launcher.

~~~
sliverstorm
It's actually been that good for years. Google Desktop's value is mostly
rooted in Windows XP.

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fuzzythinker
Wow, $50M for Aardvark & shut down in a year. Sometimes I really don't get
things like this.

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alnayyir
Acquisitions are about talent and not products more often than not with
Google.

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arkitaip
I can't speak for the aardvark team but I would feel devastated having in so
many years of hard work only to see my baby being terminated, not because it's
a bad product but simply because it doesn't fit the broader vision of the
company that acquired you. Not sure I could stay at a place like that.

~~~
dhimes
Agreed. Why the hell buy it in the first place? Maybe they wanted some of the
IP to use somewhere else or something? It doesn't smell good to me. Are we
still saying 'Do no evil?'

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ma2rten
Dude ... read the other comments. It was a talent acquisition / google changed
it's strategy since. If the founders did not want to have it shutdown they
should have negotiated a clause in the contract.

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dhimes
But don't you find it odd? It's too much to pay for just a talent acquisition.
IP + talent, perhaps, if it's really important IP.

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Major_Grooves
I use Desktop frequently. It's often the only way I can find things on my
computer.

"Desktop: In the last few years, there’s been a huge shift from local to
cloud-based storage and computing"

OK, but I'm pretty sure most files are still stored locally on most computers.
I've barely ever used Windows own search feature. I hope it's up to scratch.

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sliverstorm
Window's search feature, at least if you're on 7 and you let it index what you
want to search, is perfectly fine.

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arethuza
YMMV - I loathe the search in Windows 7 - which (apart from the "improvements"
to Explorer) is a rather decent operating system.

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RossM
It works for me, I don't like the 3-5 seconds of warm-up time before each
search though. I mainly use it for quick-launching applications though and
Launchy does a much better job of it.

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bane
I like how they didn't mention that their translation dictionary is now deader
than a doornail. My wife used it virtually every day. I'm tempted to just make
one, the hosting costs and complexity for such a thing (a web server with a
lookup table) must be ridiculously tiny.

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charlieok
Is that a task the google translate page isn't up to?

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bane
No, it's not just a translation, but a translation + simultaneous lookup in a
dictionary of both languages. So you'd get all of the various meanings for the
word in both languages instead of just several possible words.

An absolutely wonderful vocabulary building tool I haven't really seen
anyplace else.

~~~
ma2rten
You also get several meanings as well now in Google Translate.

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bane
You don't get meanings, you get possible translations of the word. But If I
don't know what any of those words mean, that's not useful. So now I have to
find a language appropriate dictionary and look each and every word up one at
a time.

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LeafStorm
I think that Ninite[1] is more than up to the task of replacing Google Pack.
It even lets you select what software you want.

[1]: <http://ninite.com/>

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X-Istence
Each time I re-install a Windows machine I search for this product for a good
20 - 30 minutes before I give up and start installing stuff by hand.

The thing that kills them is their name. There is just no good way to easily
remember it.

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pragmatic
Anyone use any of these products being shut down?

Is there an opportunity to replace any of these for a startup?

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thalecress
I use Google Desktop dozens of times daily. I suspect lots of enterprise users
are in the same XP boat without a fast search paddle.

~~~
cooperadymas
You might be interested in:

<http://www.voidtools.com/>

<http://www.launchy.net/>

Not affiliated, just a fan of both tools.

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chime
They also recently shut down their free and quite wonderful dictionary.

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bane
I for one cannot fathom the twisted thought process that went into that
decision. It's a lookup table with a web front end!

Hosting that had to have been a barely perceptible blip in a rounding error
audit.

Considering Google's desire to move people to web apps (part of the
justification for shutting down desktop), killing off reference material was
just _bizarre_.

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ma2rten
Maybe it's because they want people to use google translate, which has the
same functionality?

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damncabbage
It'd be nice if they were less cutesy about the entire thing. ("Spring-
Cleaning"?)

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dennisgorelik
Shutting down unsuccessful [enough] products is a great way to demote non-
performing managers and move developers to more successful teams.

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wisty
That's how the public service works, but only because they can't just demote
non-performing managers and replace someone possibly more competent.

Workers shouldn't be afraid that their project will get nixed, just because
the project is run by a guy upper management wants to demote.

~~~
dennisgorelik
By the time when poor performance of manager is apparent it's hard to salvage
anything on the project.

Workers should be afraid of working for bad manager and delivering useless
product.

If workers avoid bad projects and bad managers that helps to protect resources
from bad projects.

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mathattack
It will be interesting to see where Google lands on the spectrum of "don't
discontinue anything" and "all eggs in a few baskets". IBM did well in the
former, Apple the latter.

Google almost seems to be taking the role of VC. Make many bets. Some pay off.
For those that don't, Google can at least keep some of the engineers.

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montibbalt
"Due to the rapidly decreasing demand for downloadable software in favor of
web apps [...]" I just hope they get rid of the memory leaks in their web
apps...

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swlkr
Thank goodness photovine isn't in that list

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mjohnst
They should make the code open source!

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stoph
I wonder how hard it is to open source a Google product. I imagine that
Google's products are heavily tied in to its proprietary solutions like
BigTable.

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suivix
It's interesting how they're shutting down the Flash API for Google Maps.
Really shows you what the trend is with Flash.

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montibbalt
Which is kind of sad in a way. I really prefer Actionscript over Javascript :(

