
Average product lifespan of Google products before it kills them - walterbell
https://gcemetery.co/google-product-lifespan/
======
jedberg
I noticed in the "recent deaths" section, YouTube for 3DS. This made me laugh,
because at Netflix, supporting the 3DS was always a big pain. Regardless,
Netflix still supports it to this day.

In fact, as far as I know, Netflix has only ever killed support for one
platform -- The PS2. And that was only because there were only about 10 people
left using it.

So we sent them all Rokus and told them we're discontinuing PS2 support.

~~~
sct202
Netflix is the last app that works on my Sony Google TV from 2011. The YouTube
app shut off after like 2015, but 8 years later Netflix is still trucking.

~~~
dmurray
Why don't these devices run Android? Pretty sure you can run YouTube on a 2011
Android release. That's not important to Sony, of course, but even for new
hardware it seems easier to make it run Android and shovel your bloatware on
it than to develop your own half-assed OS for each TV model.

~~~
sorenjan
Youtube's required Android version is listed as varying depending on device on
Google Play, but on apkmirror.com it says that the minimum version is Android
4.4+. That was released in 2013.

[https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-
inc/youtube/youtube-14-...](https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-
inc/youtube/youtube-14-43-55-release/)

~~~
londons_explore
That's for the latest version of YouTube, but I believe an old version of
YouTube will still work fine with today's servers, at least for basic video
watching (commenting etc. broke in the big Google plus debacle)

------
codyogden
Okay, so the page/statement is inaccurate, and not just because it's been
spammed to HN three times before today (seven months ago).

Since I run Killed by Google, I feel it's important to clarify that the
average Google product lifespan is much longer than four years thanks to
flagship products like Gmail, Maps, Docs, etc. I can't actually get a solid
number despite a lovely spreadsheet of products that I actively track because
I haven't even compiled them all yet. Anyway, I made a choice not to draw
stats in killedbygoogle.com for a reason, and it's because they're misleading
to most people. When I'm asked about it, I say, "The products listed lasted an
average of about four years." KBG is cynical view of Google's product strategy
by any measure, but at least it's not drawing empty and misleading
conclusions.

------
ThatPlayer
Like always, I have issues with these lists. Project Ara is there despite
never actually launching a product. Or Google Glass is on there despite a new
Google Glass hardware that was released this year.

They also list Google Sky Map ( [https://gcemetery.co/google-sky-
map/](https://gcemetery.co/google-sky-map/) ) which they call discontinued
because Google released it as open source and handed over reigns to another
group of developers, but looking at the github it still gets updates too, so I
can see this one being either way. [https://github.com/sky-map-
team/stardroid](https://github.com/sky-map-team/stardroid)

~~~
joshuamorton
About a quarter of the projects in the graveyard had replacements, and often
automated transfers to the new tools (writely, a bunch of analytics tools,
songza, etc.)

Another quarter were explicitly experimental (labs, glass, ara, etc.).

And another handful are products that no longer make sense in the modern world
(google desktop, various toolbars, browser sync, the gmail notifier, etc.)

Hell, one of them is apparently the webconferencing software google employees
used internally in like 2012, it wasn't a product.

~~~
anoncake
> Another quarter were explicitly experimental (labs, glass, ara, etc.).

How many years was Gmail in "beta"?

------
cookie_monsta
Not a Google fanboy by any means, but couldn't this be read with the opposite
conclusion as well - that the average time that Google keeps marginal products
alive is 4 years?

Of course it's possible that everyone has some personal favourites amongst
those 164, but if an idea really has legs what's to stop people from exhuming
it from the Google graveyard?

~~~
underwater
It's probably more like a year with actual support and updates, two years
where it's left to whither and slowly die, and then a year of notice before
sunsetting it.

~~~
Pxtl
Yeah. By that logic MS has eternal support for everything, because MS has a
legendary hardcore approach to backwards compatibility that they will release
a product, push it hard, and then abandon development on it... but still have
it "officially supported" for a decade while it bitrots into a nightmare...
but never tell their users "stop using this, it's deprecated".

As much as I hate Google sunsetting products, I hate even more the companies
that keep their zombies shuffling along in a state of undeath forever.

~~~
wvenable
That makes no sense. Nobody is forcing you to use an abandoned product. So
you're obviously better off with the Microsoft model than the Google one.

A good example is VB6, the runtime is still supported in Windows 10 -- and
necessary for one our largest vendor products to run -- yet the VB6 IDE only
runs in XP. Our business would have been really screwed if they just dropped
support for it. We are, of course, working to move to a different product and
have the luxury of time to do that.

------
heavymark
I imagine Google views this as a positive thing, trying a million ideas, so
that hopefully it increases the chances of having at least one good and
popular idea. The downside is, a lot of products they killed were good ideas,
but its sink or swim and they don't get the products the needed love and
attention so they don't take off and thus they kill them. And now even when
releasing a good idea or good piece of hardware people will always be worried
if it will be gone tomorrow, which leads to less adoption and more axing of
products.

~~~
jsight
Maybe, but some are exceptionally bad. Why did Allo exist at all for example?
And the merging, demerging involved with Messages, Hangouts, and Voice have
been a complete mess. There's more there than just trying some ideas, as some
of the ideas actively damaged older ideas.

~~~
sct202
I don't understand why they announced that Google Hangouts (classic) is
closing to move to Google Hangouts Chat, like it's a chat app am I going to
notice a difference, but now you just made me think that the whole service is
shutting down?

~~~
journalctl
This is what happens when companies are disorganized and don’t communicate
internally.

------
jedberg
I wonder what this is the _average_ of? It is the average of just things that
were killed, or the average of all products, including living ones like
Search? And is it really average or is it median?

> based on discontinued products listed on our website

This makes me think it is only dead products, which seems like it would skew
things a bit.

If anything this tells me it takes them a long time to make a decision to kill
something.

~~~
steren
Exactly. This website is either making a very basic mistake or is just plain
misleading.

~~~
codyogden
This is part of the reason why I decided not to include stats at
killedbygoogle.com . When you included flagship products things like Gmail,
Maps, Drive, Docs, etc the 'average lifespan of a Google product' rises
significantly.

------
jVinc
While some might be seeing 212 potential youtube scale success stories that
google killed "for no apparent reason", I'm seeing 212 potential wework scale
disasters that google avoided by killing off successful pitfalls and focusing
on their core. The truth is somewhere in between, but obviously with google
being what it is today, none of these cases chip-ed of anything from their
success.

------
privateSFacct
Meanwhile on AWS I was using SimpleDB until recently on a small project - I
make AWS _NO_ money - but they seem to still support SimpleDB even though it
is not actually marketed? It's 12 years old and can't be generating a lot of
new signups because it doesn't actually show up anywhere I don't think.

Does anyone know how AWS handles depreciating items on AWS. I've yet to be
bitten despite beng a long time user (S3 still going / Simple DB was going
last time I needed it etc).

~~~
kedean
As I've understood it, AWS keeps things alive as long as someone is using it.
Once they want to get rid of it, they take it off the catalog of items you can
provision, and start encouraging users to move to it's successor, and once
it's abandoned fully they get rid of it. That's how they've always done old
ec2 instance types, for example.

------
Waterluvian
It surprises people that Google kills products because people them as
traditional products. But they're exploratory vessels for selling ads. Of
course Google's ads are the product.

It's unsurprising, to me at least, that they explore lots and lots of ways to
sell ads. That's exactly what you do with whatever widget your company
peddles.

------
asdfasgasdgasdg
Average lifespan of products that have been killed, when they are killed. The
actual average lifespan is probably much longer.

------
ortusdux
As I understand it, a successful product launch is a strong addition to a
"promo packet". What we are seeing is the inevitable result of a system that
prioritizes new products above all else. If google wanted to combat the stigma
that they kill 3 out of every 4 products they launch, they could just start
rewarding promo packets that demonstrate maintenance and growth. I still have
Reader bookmarked as a reminder to not get to invested. Show people that they
are committed to the longevity of their products and you might just get more
early adopters for you next big launch.

------
com2kid
I'm upset about Google Trips.

Trips was one of the few examples of how letting Google know everything about
you lead to a great experience. It'll automatically figure out my time tables,
hotel reservations, and flight times. The ability to download city info and
store it offline was wonderful, and its recommended itineraries, while often
silly in their listed time tables, were a great jumping off point.

Nothing else _can_ exist that does the same job, because only Google has
access to literally everything about you.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
I never heard of it, and I'm one of those people who would definitely use it.

------
steren
Nobody is pointing the massive flaw in the headline ? This count does not
consider products that have not been killed (e.g. Gmail)

It's only the average lifespan of killed products.

~~~
gwern
If you'd like a formal survival analysis which takes into account that right-
censoring, I did one a while ago at [https://www.gwern.net/Google-
shutdowns](https://www.gwern.net/Google-shutdowns)

------
skunkworker
RIP Google Inbox. I still think it was the best mobile email client they've
made.

~~~
papito
Hear hear!

------
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18509735](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18509735)

------
jrochkind1
"The average lifespan of a discontinued Google product is 4 years and 1
month."

"The average lifespan of a _DISCONTINUED_ Google product..."

Note this does not mean the average lifespan of a Google product is 4 years.
There numbers do not include products which have NOT been killed.

------
at_a_remove
"... they might develop their own emotional responses. You know: hate, love,
fear, anger, envy. So they built in a fail-safe device."

"Which is what?"

"Four-year life span." \-- _Blade Runner_

Here, though, the emotional response is our attachment to a Google service.

------
wolco
Most of these could have been a success but google has no idea how to connect
with customers. An idea and a product is what we have. If customers accidently
start using the product and it becomes a success it stays but if it doesn't
meet some corporate goal it gets killed see g+(first they pushed it everywhere
making everyone hate it, the moment groups of people started using it google
saw it would never reach facebook and killed it. If they would have left it
could have pivoted).

I don't know what many of these products are either. Cloud VR cloud, but it
doesn't sound like something I would shutdown maybe sell.. maybe rethink.

------
mroche
Reminds me of the Autodesk Graveyard:

[https://www.cadnauseam.com/autodesk-
graveyard/](https://www.cadnauseam.com/autodesk-graveyard/)

------
notadoc
I'm still disappointed they killed off Google Reader, it was an excellent
product as it was, and it had so much potential to be more.

------
bduerst
A better metric would be rate of death, not total deaths. For example, how
many products does Google have now vs 2004 Google?

~~~
jobigoud
Not only a better metric, but the only way to actually compute life
expectancy. We need the mortality rate for each year, then we can know the
expected remaining time for any particular "age".

------
egfx
I interviewed at YouTube and I kid you not, the interviewer had no idea what
YouTube Leanback was. As wrong as it sounds, I had to school her, a team lead
at YouTube on their own product. YouTube Leanback is awesome and will be
missed. I integrated it in a chrome extension I made called YouTube Share
Enhancer.

------
JohnJamesRambo
Does no one at Google HQ ever have the guts to raise their hand and bring this
up? It's a meme by now.

~~~
ethbro
There have been some comments on here about how career advancement
optimization at Google involves hopping between projects, staying long enough
to launch, and then moving on.

Whereas doing good work on product maintenance or evolution is much less
rewarding.

True or not, it would explain a lot about how Google (as a whole) behaves
towards products.

~~~
dogprez
That's not a Google only problem. It's a cultural problem in Silicon Valley
(ex drive to disrupt) and America (ex not respecting stay-at-home parents).

See the artwork of Mierle Laderman Ukeles:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mierle_Laderman_Ukeles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mierle_Laderman_Ukeles)

------
ekianjo
I did not know that Chromecast audio was discontinued. That was pretty fast.

------
meesterdude
my theory:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H62sHBHq3pc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H62sHBHq3pc)

~~~
james_s_tayler
Nice. So this is effectively what is keeping skynet at bay.

------
burke_holland
Inbox still hurts

