I get it, and we can all have a bit of a laugh/cry here.
But somewhere on Twin Earth, slate.com is publishing an article complaining about the confusing glut of Google services and how they need to trim their product line to more relevant pieces.
Not commenting on the loss of Reader itself, but I can't fault a company for discontinuing (or absorbing/streamlining) products that began as flights of fancy. If anything, I'm impressed by how many runaway successes Google has had.
But some of these didn't begin as flights of fancy, but as startups acquired by Google, and I think that really highlights the problem here, which is reputation.
When you use a product created by a startup, you realize that there's some risk that they're not going to make it. An advantage that a company like Google has is that nobody expects them to go anywhere. So if they create a service like Google Reader, you might expect that it's going to stick around.
And obviously Google doesn't owe that to anyone. But I'll bet that they've benefited from people making that assumption, and I'll bet that they'll see some hurt if people realize that it's not a valid one.
After all, a company that does nothing but reader, has 10% its user base, and makes money off of those users might actually be profitable. But Google's model is to give away a thousand loss leaders, and when you play that game, you have to look at percentages. At this point, I'd be far more likely to take a chance on a small independent service than any new gadget Google puts out.
If you aren't paying anything for the product and there doesn't seem to be a business model for it, why would you assume it won't go away at some point?
Again, it's about reputation. Most users don't want to have to try to examine the motives of the people behind every product they use to decide if it's likely to stick around. Most users have neither the savvy nor the desire to analyze business models and see if they seem sustainable. They want to say "Google - that's a solid company, so it should be safe to depend on this."
And if Google keeps invalidating that assumption, people will stop making it. Instead, they'll say "Google is famous for discontinuing their products, so I'll hold off on using this until I know it's really, really popular."
And that could make launching new services very difficult for Google in the future.
It may have begun as a 'flight of fancy', but I think a lot of the public outcry comes down to the the fact that a lot of users, as individuals, became quite invested in the product.
The Google Wave grave reminds me of what a weird non-product that was. Has anyone done a good post-mortem/retrospective on that? Always seemed ahead of its time on a lot of levels, especially technically (one of the few times I've ever seen a single tab crash all of Chrome).
I hate posting something like this without a link, but I read an article quite some time ago (supposedly) written by one of the core developers of Wave. To massively oversimplify the article, he blamed it on having way, way too many developers working on it at once... lots of inefficiencies crept in as portions were duplicated, it ended up much more bloated than it should have been, etc.
IIRC, he also acknowledged many other contributing factors, like the slow release of the features presented in the original videos (some of which never were released), people simply not knowing what to do with it, etc.
Something else I remember was that he suggested the code should/could have been a tiny fraction of the size and dramatically more efficient for what it did.
I'm not saying I agree with the article at all, it's just what I read. For all I know it could have been a hoax.
Personally, I loved Wave and was hoping to run my own server when they released what code they did release. Unfortunately, what has come of it is still lacking key features I'd want before doing so. (I'm not a Java developer, so would not be able to contribute)
I was a Wave enthusiast. I felt like not even Google really saw how the platform could have been useful. They presented it as a communications thing - e-mail and chat mashed together. But you can edit other people's messages, which makes communication really confusing.
Wave had the potential to be like Google Docs, but using an open protocol for live collaboration, instead of locking you into Google's services. So you could host it yourself, and seamlessly share it with anyone using a compatible system. In my more cynical moments, I wonder if Google realised this and killed it before it could compete with Google Docs.
I actually wrote one collaborative academic paper using Wave before it disappeared. Was interesting. Better than Google Docs in some ways, easier to break things into pieces that could be commented on and moved around.
As I recall, Wave suffered from a poor reference implementation and such complexity that amateurs were unwilling to create their own. It also received a lot of bad publicity from branding and people who were unsure about what to make of it, but what killed it was that it never left beta (much more concretely than other Google products).
Wave is one of those things that some future product will play off of and be massively successful, and we'll all point back at Wave as the forgotten root.
I really do think wave's only problem was it was just ahead of its time. The idea behind it was good and it worked well, yes it heavily used js resources but faster JS engines these days would cope with that.
Its a shame really, but I supposed they morphed the 'liveness' of it into Google Docs
I saw it as a hybrid between document collaboration and a message board, but they hyped it into the stratosphere as a communications medium & social thing too. Then everyone had to wait months (*edit actually a year or more, IIRC) for invites that came out painfully slow which had the effect of building anticipation and expectations even more.
When it was finally widely available, most of the people I know were disappointed that it wasn't a social network, it was a weird document collaboration-message board hybrid that didn't use documents, posts, or any conventional metaphors and therefore didn't live up to its year of hype and anticipation building.
Loving that Google Glass empty grave at the bottom of the page. It seems to be a product many have already written off as DOA. I'm not sure if that's fair or not.
I don't see how Glass is even close to DOA. Modern smartphones and tablets are the descendants of product lines with long histories and experienced user bases. Outside of research projects and limited use systems, Glass has little to go on, and a very limited number of understanding potential users. Google is slowly drumming up interest and openly experimenting with its use in public. Google wants early adopters who are thrilled with an expensive, potentially life altering product.
It might suffer from version-1-ness, and it might be version 3 or 7 from Apple or whoever that takes off. It might simply be too early. I'm pretty sure a lot of the enthusiasm that's around now is going to lead to disappointment when what people are dreaming about isn't supported by available technology.
The other factor is that the primary concerns are precisely in google's tonedeaf spots- design and privacy. Google as a company isn't very well equipped to deal with either of those issues.
One of the graves missing in this article is for the Google Finance API which was deprecated last year. (much to the chagrin of many people, including myself)
I used it and it was amazing. My utility replaced it with something called SmartHub, which is almost as good. You just can't embed it anywhere. I always like using the iGoogle thing with my power widget on there. Could always tell when I didn't shut down the computer.
Google Code Search is the only service I have been missing. And it is not on this list.
Code search had a good regex search and nice options for searching based on metadata. GitHub's newly launched code search is not good enough (yet) and doesn't have a big enough haystack to search in.
The prime use case for code search was finding example code of badly documented APIs.
One notable ommission - Google Answers. It was like stack overflow but better. Answers were based on research, not popular opinion. And you could get answers for even obscure questions. I really miss that service.
With CalDAV being deprecated, the more pressing question for me is, "when are they going to kill the free IMAP protocol?" Individuals who use desktop applications like Thunderbird or even Outlook never see any Google ads. The most sophisticated targeting advertising techniques in the world can't help if a company can't get your eyeballs on the ad in the first place.
If the trend does continue, I can envision a future where everyone will have to use specific "Google connector"-style APIs [1, 2] to access the various Google services.
I think you underestimate the amount of information google learns from your email.
What you bought, where you bought it, how much you paid, which emails result in a sale conversion, who you talk to, services you subscribe to, political affiliation, job status, career field, charitable giving, hobbies, and vices.
By using a Gmail account you willingly tell others to send information about you to Google.
I don't agree, Gmail is also really useful to them. I'm pretty sure all their employees use it. What was the percentage of their employees using Knol or Google Reader for example? I bet it was a small percentage.
Interesting to see the products that Google has deceased over time. Would also be interesting to see what products are up-and-coming and what products are still alive (would be a cool road map of the company's pipeline and future).
Seems like Google still strives for the move fast, iterate approach with their products, throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing if it sticks. Though it may break a few hearts here and there (yes, I once was an avid user of Google Reader), Google has a plan for everything.
Instead if a Google Graveyard, I would a Google Rumors Buyer's Guide. A site where I can see how long it has been since a certain Google product has received an update, helping users to assess if they should start using it or better look for an alternative. The shutdown of Reader got me worried about FeedBurner, Google Groups, Picasa Web Albums, Google Code, etc., and I'd like to know if it is warranted.
Well for the moment that only MIA, supposedly it'll make an appearance some time this year, hopefully before Google I/O or else that would be quite embarrassing.
But somewhere on Twin Earth, slate.com is publishing an article complaining about the confusing glut of Google services and how they need to trim their product line to more relevant pieces.
Not commenting on the loss of Reader itself, but I can't fault a company for discontinuing (or absorbing/streamlining) products that began as flights of fancy. If anything, I'm impressed by how many runaway successes Google has had.