
Google Flops & Failures - The Failed Google Graveyard - billpg
http://www.wordstream.com/articles/google-failures-google-flops
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robertg
That's what happens when you encourage your employees to build things on their
own. You have more failures than successes as far as products go.

Personally, I like that Google has these pet projects that they try out for a
while and see if they work. Not everything you do is going to be successful.

I'll take my gmail/maps/apps/reader and be happy. And who knows, maybe in the
near future they will come out with something new that I can't live without.

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ben1040
Exactly -- without having swung and missed so many times, they wouldn't have
hit so many out of the park, too.

Gmail, Maps, Docs, and Reader all started out as these same sorts of embryonic
projects that got critical mass and justified their development into the
blockbuster services they are now. It seems ingrained in Google's corporate
culture to push things out there and see what has staying power. Some things
stick and some don't, that's life.

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theycallmemorty
You know what else is a failure? Presenting text in a JPG in 10 point font.

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chris_j
I was going to say the same thing. When I first visited the page, I quickly
scrolled down to the bottom of the page, thinking "I hope I get past this huge
ad and on to the text of the article." Luckily, I realised my mistake and
moved closer to the screen in order to read the tiny text.

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vark
They forgot:

1\. Lively 2\. Google Print

Also, Google Answers _preceded_ Yahoo Answers -- they got that wrong.

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dansingerman
Google Answers predated Yahoo Answers by quite some time (3 years).

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davidu
That's just not true. Maybe a Yahoo! Answers redesign and rebranding, but
certainly not the launch of Yahoo! Answers which was formerly known as Ask
Yahoo!

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joshu
That's not actually correct.

Answers came from the Taiwan version of Answers, which was itself a clone of
Naver in Korea.

Ask Yahoo was unrelated. And still appears to be there.

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superk
Remember Google Knol?

<http://knol.google.com>

Their answer to Wikipedia....

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moultano
It was never intended to be an "answer" to wikipedia.

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ThomPete
They also seemed to forget the photosharing service hello.com

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dchest
Wasn't it Picasa's project before Google acquired them?

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Monkfish
great graphics on this badboy.

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sjs382
Google Buzz listed but not Google Wave?

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yardie
Someone scrolled to the bottom too fast.

