
List of dead Google products, services, and devices - deathtrader666
https://killedbygoogle.com/
======
beefsack
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18513030](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18513030)

Related discussion (lots of comments):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18509735](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18509735)

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B-Con
"killed" implies it ceased to exist, so I think it's misleading to include
rebrandings or relaunches where functionality gets folded into another
product.

At a glance...

* Nexus wasn't killed, it was re branded into Pixel. Nexus had been trending toward premium and the Pixel switch cemented that.

* Googles was more-or-less replaced by Lens. Not a pure rebrand, but two products with the same idea.

* Google Now has essentially been folded into the expanding behemoth that is Assistant. I don't care for that kind of feature, but AFAICT they're fairly similar.

* Quickoffice was an acquisition that was promptly folded into Docs/Sheets/etc.

~~~
josteink
Nexus was never “premium”. Quite the opposite it was developed-oriented and
amazingly affordable. Unsubsidized it cost around 50% of what other flagship
phones cost. Pixel changed that by effectively doubling the price.

Given the quality issues google had with Nexus phones (which was real), I
could absolutely not justify spending twice the money on fake premium phones
which seemingly still suffered those issue, based on reports after the Pixel 1
launch.

~~~
garmaine
My Nexus 6s cost me $649. Nearly the same price of the latest iPhone at the
time. How does that square with "amazingly affordable"?

~~~
josteink
That was the last and also most expensive Nexus of them all. Definitely not
representable.

In comparison my Nexus 5X (launched at the same time) cost me around $350. I
could _literally_ have bought two of these instead of one iPhone (or Samsung
Galaxy).

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paulannesley
Building products/features and then killing them when they don't work is
generally fine. And renaming/merging/consolidating them isn't really killing
them. But…

> Sparrow was an email client for OS X and iOS. They acquired and then killed
> it. It was over 1 year old.

Buying then killing is sad. Acquihire I guess?

> Google Reader was a RSS/Atom feed aggregator. It was over 7 years old.

These are the ones that feel like they hurt the internet. That was seven
critical years for RSS/Atom. Investing time/money in building feed
aggregators/readers meant competing against the might of Google and a $0 price
point.

~~~
jypepin
Lots of acquihire indeed. And in the case of sparrow and a lot of others, it
was a secret. So one could wonder who is to blame; Google for acquihiring
companies to fulfil hiring needs, or those companies that accept to get
acquihired depiste having a (sometime) successful product that people are
paying for.

~~~
jypepin
I can't edit. I meant "it was NOT a secret".

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alokm
The list is very long. I really wish a rebranding or renaming or merging of
services was somehow listed or displayed separately. This would give a better
idea of the services actually killed.

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vaulstein
Most of these haven't been killed but just rebranded

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mlacks
Why does this keep resurfacing? Yes, Google tries some things out, they make
value assessments and move forward with what they believe will benefit them.
It seems the general consensus is that Google 'hates' or 'doesn't care' about
its users when it cancels a project/product.

Sometimes even with almost unlimited resources (Windows phone) the plan just
doesn't work out. I don't get why the tech community in general likes to harp
on them for it.

~~~
sametmax
Because they call the entire community to invest themself hard in their new
baby, but don't want to do the same commitment themself.

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polote
By the way killing products and thus accepting failure is usually necessary
for innovation.

~~~
narrator
I just finished Peter Druker's classic "The Effective Executive" and he really
strongly emphasizes the need to throw out the old:

"The first rule for the concentration of executive efforts is to slough off
the past that has ceased to be productive. Effective executives periodically
review their work programs—and those of their associates—and ask: 'If we did
not already do this, would we go into it now?' And unless the answer is an
unconditional 'Yes,' they drop the activity or curtail it sharply."

Drucker, Peter F.. The Effective Executive (Harperbusiness Essentials) (p.
115).

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skunkworker
I'm still bitter about the Google Inbox death. It's been my favorite iOS Gmail
client by far.

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austincheney
> Google Allo is an instant messaging mobile app by Google. It will be
> rebranded as Google Chat.

Does not sound like it was killed if it will continue to live with a new name.

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termau
I dony see what the issue is they are doing technical debt right.

The ones that worry me are aws, their technical debt would be hugggee with all
those services and they keep piling it on, now maintaining their own elastic
search repo!

Eventually some of the older service have to give and with there lock-in not
lock-in it will hurt some -just a thought

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juice13
I think when they killed Google Reader is when I realised that I don't want to
count on Google any more.

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zaarn
Google+ and goo.gl are currently being archived by the ArchiveTeam, goo.gl as
part of the URLTeam and G+ in a dedicated project. My warrior already uploaded
over 100GB of content and in total the project has saved 149TB of data from
google's endless thirst for killing things.

------
O1111OOO
In a somewhat disingenuous site, the webmaster left out the granddaddy of them
all: Google Search[0]

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19387010](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19387010)

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stonewhite
This reads more like a dedication to R&D than a list of shame.

I understand why / how people are pissed, I got pissed at some of those too,
yet I do also accept my overall quality of digital life is improved by these
bold moves in the long run.

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franky47
Google Wave was a lot of fun back on the day, they were just experimenting
with real-time editing that ended up in Docs, but it sure led to some crazy
conversations :)

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droptablemain
In cases where there's no merging with another product, what happens to the
codebase, assuming it's not open-sourced?

~~~
mxstbr
rm -rf <productname>

Jokes aside, I am also curious about this. I could imagine them splitting it
up and reusing the useful functionality in other products?

~~~
mikejb
Pretty sure most of it gets deleted. Every piece of existing code needs some
sort of occasional maintenance to remain functional or useful.

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srcmap
Still use Google Desktop today. It is much, much, much better than Windows
search in term of speed and functionalities.

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SeriousM
This was an really unexpected loooong list!

