Slashdot Mirror
Google To Shutter Knol, Wave, Gears
An anonymous reader writes "Google announced today on its official blog the impending closure of a number of its less successful services. In addition to retiring minor features like Bookmarks List and Friend Connect, Google has outlined a plan to close down Wave. The experimental communication medium will go read-only on January 31, and on April 30 they will shut it down completely. Also on April 30, Google will be changing Knol so that individual knols are not viewable, though users will still be able to download and export them until October 1, at which point they'll disappear entirely. Google Gears is also getting the axe, as is Search Timeline and the Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative."
...oddly enough, Google absolutely FAIL at marketing.
I'm not even kidding.
How the hell they became the biggest damn advertiser on the web I will never know, they are hopeless at doing anything right.
You want to know who they remind me of? Remember Malcolm In The Middle? Google is Malcolm!
Awkward, obtuse, but somehow stupidly intelligent. Stupidly intelligent is probably the best way to describe Google.
Seriously, why cancel Gears? Gears was USEFUL. It never needed that much attention as it was, and it was supposed to fill in for things that weren't quite ready in the HTML5 spec.
They say they ditched it because "it is no longer needed" or some nonsense. Funny, I can't remember when the ability to be able to drag and drop files in to web apps was added, last I checked, the File API is still in planning even now.
Gotta love that brilliant Offline Gmail we don't have anymore. Whats that, you released an extension for it? BRILLIANT IDEA, SOMETHING ELSE THAT ISN'T STANDARD AND WILL LIKELY HAVE TO BE KEPT UP TO DATE TOO, JUST LIKE GEARS.
Absolute lunacy.
I cannot take them seriously anymore. Anyone to use them for business would be insane.
Because all companies should support all products forever, even if no one uses them? What company does that?
I mean, look at Itanium, at this point the only way to keep Itanium alive would be to *pay* Intel to keep making them. Oh wait....
This is Google's big problem right now - throw a bunch of things at the wall and see what sticks. The problem is people are now hesitant to invest in new Google projects because, hey, they'll be shut down in a year... If they can't commit to a new project, why should their customers?...
Well, we if we compare to Microsoft, at least MS has specific end of support dates that you know. Google will just come out of the shadows and announce that support will be ended in one month. And not just support - the whole product will be gone. With desktop products they still at least work. With Google, software-as-service, and cloud they're just gone. No sane business would build their future on such ground.
What you hear in this announcement is the sound of a "cloud" evaporating.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Wave was amazing.
And no one uses them because in early beta they are closed down.
I tried Wave and it didn't make any damn sense so I didn't use it any more.
That, in a nutshell, is why I have no particular interest in web applications I do not myself host. Aside from the vast privacy implications, you are totally at the mercy of the provider. A standalone, self-sufficient client with the option of web storage and/or sharing, fine. All of my work on a box run by someone who doesn't even have any contractual or regulatory obligations? No thanks.
I will credit Google with letting people retrieve their data, but its usefulness is greatly reduced without the applications it was designed for.
They call it the cloud because people have gotten wise to being offered low prices on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.