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Google To Discontinue Google Labs
kai_hiwatari writes "Today, Google has announced that they are closing down Google Labs. They say this will help them prioritize their product effort. Google says closing Google Labs means ending many of their experiments. However, not every experiment will be gone. Google will be incorporating the Labs experiments they have decided to continue in other product areas. Android apps such as Google Goggles, Google Listen etc. will continue to be available in the Android Market."
I think this is the single most disappointing announcement Google has ever done.
Boo. :(
I can almost hear Don McLean in the background - very, very faintly...
...I actually used Sets on a fairly regular basis. Check out it out before it's gone!
--
Isn't the whole point of the "20% time" over at Google that people can just work on whatever they want, useful or not? Labs seemed like a great place for this sort of work to live, whether it became a "real" product eventually or not. I'm not really sure I understand the logic behind closing it down to "focus" on their main products. If that's their goal, they should eliminate the 20% time completely.
On another note, does this mean all the labs in Gmail, etc are going away as well?
How about free lunch?
I use google sets from time to time when I can't remember something, like the name of a product or company, by generating a list from items I know are similar.
How are they going to get feedback from their users? Monitor Twitter?
I've always *loved* Google Labs! It's where I first bumped into "suggest," and a whole bunch of other really cool features that have eventually been rolled into the final product.
I'm very, very sad. Used to be a Red Hat Labs that suffered the same fate; I guess that sort of paradigm just doesn't have enough energy for the long run.
*sigh*
Google Beta!
or will it be Google Alpha?
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
We’ll continue to push speed and innovation—the driving forces behind Google Labs—across all our products, as the early launch of the Google+ field trial last month showed.
It's a lot faster just to read the orig.
Does this mean the end of Google's self-driving cars?
Oh please don't let them take this offline!
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
I thought a lot of labs were from the 80/20 projects. So does this mean that 80/20 is going away?
I doubt this is the end of Google generating cool ideas/apps. As long as they keep on hiring new guys with brilliant imagination, they are safe. But this announcement sounds like they are moving towards more big corporate style work flow, where all cool ideas are channeled towards an existing product. I see some similarities with Microsoft here, where most research is geared towards an existing product.
Potential downfall is, some ideas/apps/products are better off alone. For an example, whole Xbox Kinect was exceptional as a hardware device. But as it was bundled with the gaming console, we missed out all the other cool stuff it can do (hacks we saw on youtube). Quite lucky they released a SDK. Sometimes, I wish they released Kinect as an separate ubiquitous hardware.
I hope this is not the case, but it sounds like they are killing off their central idea birthing grounds? When Google first started developing an OS for cell phones it would have seemed like a crazy stretch for a search engine company, but Android is successful today. How many new "crazy" ideas will never see the light of day that could create future critical technologies for the company by this decision to "prioritize their product effort"? It is important for a tech company to have focus, but it needs at least a small group of innovative people to have the opportunity to let their ideas run wild in order to create the next big thing or they will eventually just stall and hand over technological innovation to a smaller, hungrier company. To me this seems almost as stupid as when Xerox decided that the core ideas at Xerox PARC in the 70's weren't worth productizing and basically gave them away to Apple.
Is funny or depressing...
An email came through and a coworker died last night. Everybody read it and then went about their day.
This announcement came on Slashdot and I just heard three people exclaim "Noooo!!!"
I am still undecided whether that is a sad state of affairs or funny....
That fact that I logged in instead of just posting anonymously should be a clue.
Google Labs brings me lots of fun things to play with. This sucks. I use Mytracks and Fusion Tables all the time. Not to mention the addons for Maps, Gmail, Calendar and all those extras.
Thats what made Google products great was that the Google staff could work on their weird projects.
Selex
On the surface this is just plain dumb. But lab extensions like Tasks should just be a default part of gmail anyway and hopefully will be. My guess is this is about superseding the labs concept with apps which can come from anywhere and are easy to monetize.
No time for innovation. All resources must be used to better clone Facebook.
Is this the beginning of the end? The bean counters take over and start cutting projects when there is no bottom line in site? I worked for Ma Bell during the golden age and when Bell Labs was one of the premier research labs in the world. Where is it today? Funding cut, only projects with a clear bottom line 'researched'.... I hope that Google isn't headed in that direction anytime soon....(they will get there someday though).
I've always been wary of "cloud computing", esp. when it's powered by a hybrid "thick-client" connected to a remote data repository... Applications anyone? At least with a client side service (eg: mail reader app) I can continue to use the features I like (such as gestures, goggles, nibbles, etc.) beyond the external "support" lifetime -- Without wondering if a feature will disappear tomorrow.
As an avid Google Labs user, I find their lack of support disturbing.
Furthermore, my plotter does not work with Windows7. The MFG no-longer supports it, so they won't recompile the driver, or give out the source so that I may do so. XP's EOL is 993.0488278587964 from now. This tells me that not only will I be using G'Linux / FLOS Software in the near future, and insist on hardware driver source-code, but that "The Cloud" I use must be built from my own servers, or not at all.
I think I'll call my globally accessible private personal network "The Closet"; I suspect many will identify with this terminology in terms of privacy for multiple reasons.
I'm reading the final book of the Baroque Cycle right now. Who let you out of the book? You sound just like a Tory scrivener.
Of course, if you're so easily lead by the nose into the "fear and greed" school of business, of course your backers will be quick to exploit this. You've lashed yourself to the bilge pump. Happy treading.
In every business, there's a right balance between short term necessity and vision for the long haul. Many small businesses have been scuttled by hard nosed investors who inhaled too much (or too little) coinage fume while the world was changing around them, to paraphrase 3000 pages.
Just ehhh... google "Age of Austerity". This is just another victim. Trade long-term profits for short term cost cuts.
They'll be drafting more untested stuff directly into the live site that then breaks randomly?
I guess they will work the labs section on googlemaps into the actual application on phones? Its not even like its been a while since the last new update added to it which was finally the ability to download and cache parts of the map so you can load them later quicker and without needing service which is such an amazing feature. There are also a few other older options on the menu as well that were useful as well. Hopefully they decide to keep those options and just reorganize the application and put them under settings or something because it would be a real shame to lose those options.
Well, that's a bummer.
I just started using Google Body a couple of months ago, and it's fantastic.
Especially if you're about to have shoulder surgery.
Don't want to see this site disappear...
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
When a company is concerned about its children (employees and customers), it grows. When it is concerned about its investors, it stifles itself.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
I liked labs, but I like great *finished* software even more. In my experience Google is great at rolling out early versions of cool software but often failing (or taking ridiculously long) to add critical features that would really make it complete.
If Larry Page is telling the troops that they now have to finish that final 10%, I'm all for it.
And for those complaining about innovation: G+ isn't innovative??
Google doesn't give a crap about user feedback - look at their forums, full of people begging for enhancements (like searching for partial words in gmail, being able to zoom fontsizes, not into pages in chrome etc etc etc) and they don't give a crap.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
From the (updated) blogpost http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-wood-behind-fewer-arrows.html
"Update 3:36pm: To clarify: we don't have any plans to change in-product experimentation channels like Gmail Labs or Maps Labs. We'll continue to experiment with new features in each of our products."
So only standalone labs are going for the chop, the ones that incorporate into products are safe.
App sales = money. Google labs != money. Why provide lab extensions for free when someone can sell an app for money?
Putting relevant ads on the pages of Google web applications == money. If by "app sales" you're referring to taking a 30% cut of Android Market application sales like Apple does on its own App Store, Google decided early that this revenue stream isn't all-important. Otherwise, it 1. wouldn't have added the "Unknown sources" checkbox that lets end users install third-party app stores from .apk packages, and 2. would have spearheaded a viable Android-powered competitor to iPod touch, some sort of "Nexus Player" that's cheaper because it doesn't come with 3G and GPS.
Google is far too willing to pull the plug on their ventures for me. I used to use the GOOG411 service, but they killed it. And I'm concerned that if I put a lot of time and energy into Google+, they'll kill it too.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I use "Measure" found on the android app Google Maps. It is very handy for measuring walking distances on the fly.... because I walk a lot.
I typed in nigger and it returned: rape, crime, arrested, and murders.
http://labs.google.com/sets?hl=en&q1=nigger&q2=&q3=&q4=&q5=&btn=Large+Set
It's been a good run, but like all corporate entities, the bean counters eventually take over. This is probably the best news Google's competitors have ever heard. I can imagine lots of cork-popping of champagne bottles tonight.
And that comes after the blowout quarterly earnings report last week. Penny Pinching is part of their DNA.
Twitter: @dainsanefh
I knew there was some truth in it. This is proof.
Google is becoming evil.
The Dark Side is taking over.
The Apocalypse is coming.
Next year, they will land in great spaceships.
Google Labs is going and, in other news tonight... Google Directory is already gone!
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/07/google-directory-no-longer-available.html
It really sad that Google feels it has to trim so many projects and services
As long as it isn't a water closet. Water can do bad things to servers.
I am not sure if this applies to all technologies that are not search engines or google+, but they have great datacenters, and cloud computing, they have the best picture album maker, they have a slew of great things to make life easier for everyone, i wonder what they will nix, and what they will keep....maybe making it available through the app store or google+ to get people interested???
This move is a really dumb mistake. Whoever pushed for it should be fired for the sake of the company.
Google does not understand that because of that opening they show ( even if it's fake ) they have the people on their side, and we nerds/geeks are the force that drive others towards tech stuff, easy as this, if 10 regular guys see the "local nerd" using a tech product, most likely some of them will use it, specially if the "local nerd" is a bit of a fanboi. Now we are the ones that made android big, by sales pitches, making freeware, adding to it etc, google provided, or "kinda" provided the OS, and a few utilities. Now we saw the same exponential growth with google plus, because WE pitched it. If WE start seeing google as just another evil company, we will stop our google love, move to better places, or just do our own stuff, now I'm kinda scared to do stuff even for android, who knows if google will stop seeing it profitable and just can it, the same thing I think now when I use google app engine, will it be there tomorrow ? will it suffer the same fate as: Lively, google wave , google health, google green, google translation api, now google labs ? So really like 1 year ago I thought to myself, kool I'm going to save all my documents on google docs, all my pictures to Picasa, all my videos to Youtube, and just keep all that in the cloud and forget about backups and I know google will be here much much longer than I'll ever be, and well I'll pay for the addional Space I'll need. Now really, how do I know, Docs will be here tomorrow ? Picassa ? Youtube ? I have to say that now I'm hesitant to start adding to G+, I have no idea if it wll be there tomorrow, at least with Facebook I know something, FACEBOOK is the only product they have and they are not going anywhere. Thank you Google.. :(
...they figured it's cheaper to outright buy successful start-ups than support projects doomed to fail 99% of the cases. Smart...
Some people think that R rated movies are "mature". Some think that X rated movies are even more "mature". I tend to see both as people letting there interests slip from understanding to stimulus, not because of what such movies generally contain, but because of what they generally don't (That's one of the problems with a single dimension to ratings systems, but that's wandering too far afield.)
I disagree with your definition of mature.
Slavers often talked to and about slaves who gave in and quit trying to escape as if those slaves had "grown up" in some sense.
I and my fellow teachers often treat the students who are trying their hardest to understand what's going on, and therefore testing all sorts of limits, as children, and treat the quiet students as more "grown up". And this after we have been imploring them to use their own minds.
Investors are not all-knowing, nor do they really have the best interests of a company's customers or employees, or even the company itself, in mind. This is especially so in these days where accountants have (deliberately) forgotten how to account for long-term value, and intangibles such as keeping the general market in good condition.
Sometimes investors need to be told to shut up and let the people they invested in do their job. What do the investors mean? Is investing in a company only investing in the profits the company make? I don't think that's investing in the company at all.
Shoot. As long as the investors were running Apple, they were running it into the ground. When enough of Apple's investors saw what was happening and brought Steve Jobs back, and gave him back the reigns, he turned the company back around. (You do understand why the first year or two he took only a token salary?)
Money is fertilizer. People treat it like it's gold. Well, gold is not that big a deal, either, but money is fertilizer. It tends to get wonky when too much of it sits in one place for too long. And then even worse things happen.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Maybe they will finally make Google Tasks usable! And add reoccurring tasks!
I recently visited Berlin. Just before gerting there I found the single best google labs function ever: the ability to download maps into the android maps app. It was a lifesaver when using mobile internet would cost €3 a MB.