
EverythingMe is Closing Down - dvirsky
http://blog.everything.me/index.php/2015/11/22/everythingme-is-closing-down/
======
ignoramous
EverythingMe was a great product. Having been a long time Android user and a
AOSP developer, the platform holds a tremendous promise, in my eyes.

EverythingMe tried solving the right problem. Launcher has so much potential
to be smarter, yet it wasn't (then). Also, the amount of data one can get
hands on must be monteziable somehow...think how valuable it is to be at the
homepage of a browser... A launcher is similar, only that it absolutely dwarfs
browser hompages in usage time.

I'm sure EverythingMe tried everything, but like Aviator (acquired by Yahoo!),
they found out that there's no competing with Google products.

If Google has a competing app on Android, what choices have you got of beating
them? They control all the keys parts on the platform (rightly or wrongly),
they rule the web, they have got endless source of resources... It's a tough
world out there being an Android developer. Even Facebook, with all its might,
couldn't make much of its Launcher, 'Home.'

Google Now is great and all. And with custom APIs for contextual cards, in-app
searching and so on, Google is making it more difficult for the competition.
It's web-search type dominance all over again, but on a much much bigger
scale.

------
joshmn
Looking at the picture they put on the post... Can someone please explain why
a launcher needs so many employees?

~~~
juskrey
Here is the answer -> They have received $35 millions in funding and... the
story now looks "familiar".
[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/everythingme#/entity](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/everythingme#/entity)

~~~
treelovinhippie
Wow. How does something like this even get $35m in funding and just burn
through that over 5 years, then shutdown because they couldn't monetise?

Were the investors hoping for a Google acquisition?

In Australia I'm struggling to raise $50k for a global product with a clear
monetisation and cashflow strategy.

~~~
juskrey
Please do not get caught on that hook. Try to earn that 50k yourself.

~~~
treelovinhippie
Yeah I've given up on seed/accelerator/incubator over here. There's a reason
why only the boring cashflow +ve enterprise startups come out of Australia.
Just means I need to be juggling various different projects to bootstrap.
Currently monetising a separate startup in order to fund the one I actually
want to work on.

------
TeMPOraL
From reading the post I understand that they're taking down the launcher, or
that it otherwise won't work anymore. And I have to ask - why? Why just not
leave it there? Is there something in it that requires Internet connection to
access their servers? It's a launcher, even predictive smart whatever features
should _not_ require Internet access.

~~~
cbhl
The prediction is likely entirely centralized machine learning; similar to how
Netflix predictions work. Tell the server <x apps installed, y location, z
time of day>, get a response showing <show apps a, b, q>.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _< x apps installed, y location, z time of day>_

This is exactly the kind of data that should not fly over the wire unless it's
absolutely necessary, which in this case I believe it isn't.

I can't imagine what kind of machine learning they'd have to be using to make
it not work on a phone. It doesn't take much computing power to do a decent
predictor. I'm going to assume process laziness here - being used to the idea
that if everything is running on your server, you can tweak stuff there and
have it immediately working on everyone's (Internet-connected) endpoints. It
makes sense for websites, but IMO it's a wrong approach for devices.

~~~
beagle3
Big data learning. They're (probably) inferring how you do stuff based also on
how other people do. In fact, there's no way to recommend apps not already
installed on your phone without consulting a server.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think I misunderstood their app's description. I thought it was about
recommending things to launch _out of the things you have installed_.

EDIT: And I'd pay for a launcher that learns from my interactions with it
_off-line_ , and recommends me apps based on context such as location, time of
day, previously launched apps, etc. Such a thing does _not_ need "big data
learning". It's an undergrad-level machine learning exercise.

~~~
cbhl
You should just build it yourself as a passion project. You can probably use
the launcher in the AOSP as a base.

It might be faster to just hard-code manually arranged home screens based on
time of day rather than do machine learning.

------
shrikant
I hope this doesn't mean that re:dash will stop getting love from the
developer. It's one of the best browser-based query front-ends I've used!

[http://redash.io/](http://redash.io/)

Edit: Looks like the Github repo has changed from the EverythingMe owned one
to a Redash-specific one, huzzah!

[https://github.com/getredash/redash](https://github.com/getredash/redash)

------
swagv
Discovery for anything is always overrated

