
Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google - friendcode
http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/visuel/2015/03/06/google-memorial-le-petit-musee-des-projets-google-abandonnes_4588392_4408996.html
======
Navarr
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.

~~~
und3rw4t3rp00ps
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".

~~~
eplanit
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?

~~~
und3rw4t3rp00ps
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.

------
xroche
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
You don't think github is all that and more?

~~~
userbinator
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
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
What do Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood have to do with Github?

------
jawns
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
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
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
That doesn't work if you plug them into regular web search?

~~~
tedunangst
Have you tried googling for "kirk spock"? You don't get a list of other star
trek characters.

~~~
dublinben
Searching for "list of star trek characters" will give you a comprehensive
result on Wikipedia though. As would many similar searches.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Trek_characters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Trek_characters)

~~~
tedunangst
I didn't say it's not possible to find a list of characters. Wikipedia has a
list page for everything. But the specific claim was that one could plug set
elements into a regular search to find more set elements.

------
minikites
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
I'm using Gmail. Should I be worried?

~~~
minikites
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.

~~~
josefresco
I could see them pulling the ability to pull in your own POP/IMAP accounts
into Gmail - to force more folks to use Apps.

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s_dev
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
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.

~~~
Slackwise
Google Wave was an XMPP-based protocol¹. It allowed communication and
collaboration with revisioning. It could have been embedded into applications
such as office suites, giving you collaboration and communication right inside
the app.

Wave.google.com was an example product using said protocol. Since the protocol
was barely spoken of, even by developers, everyone assumed the website _was_
the (only) product. Since the website did a lot of things, and none of it
well, often being compared to email, it flopped and the entire project
folded..

Now the project lives on in obscurity under Apache:
[http://incubator.apache.org/wave/about.html](http://incubator.apache.org/wave/about.html)

¹ Technically, the "Wave Federation Protocol", but anyone that really looked
into Wave would know that the protocol was the most important element of the
project.

~~~
maaku
> It could have been embedded into applications such as office suites, giving
> you collaboration and communication right inside the app.

You mean like google docs?

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

~~~
raldi
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
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
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.

------
nadams
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=...](https://code.google.com/p/support/issues/list?can=2&q=&sort=-id&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Priority%20Stars%20Owner%20Summary)

~~~
cbr
Should Google just kill it and suggest people move to GitHub?

~~~
nadams
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
That makes sense. That's what I'd want for my projects on Google Code if it
got shut down.

------
ericfontaine
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.)

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

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

------
kgarten
I preferred the Slate Google Graveyard with flowers:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/map_of_the_week/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/map_of_the_week/2013/03/google_reader_joins_graveyard_of_dead_google_products.html)

------
SuperKlaus
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).

~~~
mrec
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.

------
ignostic
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
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.

------
arihant
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?

~~~
rogerbinns
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/)

------
at-fates-hands
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
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).

------
adad95
The Google Graveyard
[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/map_of_the_week/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/map_of_the_week/2013/03/google_reader_joins_graveyard_of_dead_google_products.html)

------
TheCams
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
...

------
adamkochanowicz
Um, Google Videos is on the list?
[https://www.google.com/videohp?gws_rd=ssl](https://www.google.com/videohp?gws_rd=ssl)

~~~
p8952
Google Videos pre YouTube was a video hosting service, rather than a search
engine.

~~~
Mahn
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.

------
bhayden
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.

------
edem
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.

~~~
duderific
Interestingly, the HTML spec indicates that only hyperlinks should change the
cursor to a hand when hovering. Nowadays though, everyone expects that hand ==
clickable.

------
bane
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
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.

------
frik
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.

------
davidgerard
[http://newstechnica.com/2013/03/14/spring-clean-google-
searc...](http://newstechnica.com/2013/03/14/spring-clean-google-search-now-
part-of-google-plus/)

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

------
justinmaurer
I feel like Sarah Mclachlan should be playing in the background

------
acadien
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?

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

~~~
josefresco
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
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.

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

------
shgnio
Is this website written in Dart? (sarcasm)

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

------
cheshire137
Sparrow was a sad one.

------
pyabo
Coming soon: Google+

~~~
thrillgore
One can hope.

