Google Kills More Services, Open Sources Sky Map

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Google Kills More Services, Open Sources Sky Map

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday January 21, 2012 @05:43AM from the endings-and-beginnings dept.

alphadogg writes "Google is continuing to weed out its services and on Friday announced it will shut down Picnik, Google Message Continuity and Needlebase and make changes to some other services. Google acquired Seattle-based Picnik in 2010, saying it would integrate the photo editing service with its own Picasa. 'We're retiring the service on April 19, 2012, so the Picnik team can continue creating photo-editing magic across Google products,' Dave Girouard, vice president of product management for Google, wrote in a blog post Friday." A positive change to come out of this is that Google is open-sourcing Sky Map, and will be collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University to continue development.

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Cloud Services vs. Desktop Apps by FreeCoder · 2012-01-21 05:43 · Score: 5, Insightful

This is why it's ridiculous to rely on cloud services. That is what ultimately all of Google's services are. On top of that most of them are closed source too, so you're just out of luck when Google decides to kill them off. And judging by the amount of services they're quickly killed it probably isn't going to change. This is why desktop software is still much more reliable than online services, and I'm not going to change something like Microsoft Office to Google Docs.
1. Re:Cloud Services vs. Desktop Apps by NeutronCowboy · 2012-01-21 05:52 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Cloud services aren't the problem. Free cloud services where you are hoping that someone else picks up the tab for paying for development, maintenance and infrastructure are the problem. Granted, desktop apps are a better long-term investment than cloud services if you're wondering about the viability of the company that you are investing in. But if there's an actual business model in place (i.e., one that involves payment and not just "eyeballs"), cloud services offer quite a few advantages over desktop apps. It's up to you to decide whether you'll trade not having to maintain the software and being able to access it from anywhere with the knowledge that the software will stick around for as long as you have the installation file (DRM throwing another wrinkle in here as well).
  
  --
  Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
2. Re:Cloud Services vs. Desktop Apps by kwerle · 2012-01-21 05:52 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Yeah, it's a shame that you're 100% locked in to their free service, there is no warning, and you can't get your data out, or use any alternatives.
  Oh, wait...
3. Re:Cloud Services vs. Desktop Apps by LostCluster · 2012-01-21 05:53 · Score: 2
  
  Microsoft is constantly trying to move Office into the cloud, so what's the difference?
4. Re:Cloud Services vs. Desktop Apps by FreeCoder · 2012-01-21 05:57 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Usually there really isn't any good warning ahead in time. For example Microsoft gives exact end of support dates for almost all of their products and it's usually years. With Google it's just a few months. Not all of Google's services are free either, and since they most often don't release the source code, you are basically locked to their services.
5. Re:Cloud Services vs. Desktop Apps by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-21 05:58 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Most times you can continue using existing software, even without support, for an indefinite period until something breaks. There is software written over a decade ago that still works fine without any updates since. If a cloud service goes offline, though, you have no real choice most of the time.
6. Re:Cloud Services vs. Desktop Apps by FreeCoder · 2012-01-21 06:01 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  That is moot point, especially if you try to rely on them for business purposes. Yes, it's good that you can take out your data, but what do you do when they discontinue their service? At least desktop apps continue working. It's kind of funny that Slashdotters in general dislike DRM, and online services are basically the worst kind of DRM.
7. Re:Cloud Services vs. Desktop Apps by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-21 06:02 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Because you still have the software as oppossed to a 404 page....
  Many bussiness operate well on old software, not because they cannnot afford to change, because the 15 year old ERP system does what they need it to do and there is no reason to. Google expects bussiness to become their beta testers and everyone is a market test case.
8. Re:Cloud Services vs. Desktop Apps by GerryGilmore · 2012-01-21 06:23 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Let me expand that to say that anytime you are building something that ultimately relies on a 3rd party for integral, non-easily-replicatable components, you're asking for trouble. As an example, I worked at Dialogic where they acquired a product called Visual Voice, used by many companies to develop their core voice-processing apps. One day, senior PHBs decide they donl;t want to be in the app-development business and kill Visual Voice. Bam! Dead! Oh - you developed apps based on VV and now your company is tanking because you can't get bug fixes, new features or support for newer hardware? TFB, mofo! Welcome to dependency-land.
9. Re:Cloud Services vs. Desktop Apps by madmark1 · 2012-01-21 06:23 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Or, as seems far more likely the case, these services are being removed *precisely because no one relied on them*. They are services that are not getting widespread use, so they are being shut down. Are you still whining over the loss of Microsoft Bob, consigned to the dustbin of history because no one used it?
  Yes, cloud services can be shut down. Google generally goes out of their way to make sure you can get your data out, and gives fairly generous time frames in which to do so. They seem to be better about it than most other companies, including those that produce only desktop apps.
  Despite grouching to the contrary, there isn't much difference any more between a cloud app going away, and a desktop app being retired. If Microsoft suddenly decided to kill Windows tomorrow, how long could you continue to use it? I'm going to guess "Until the next time you swap out a video card, forcing you to reactivate your copy". What happens when the activation servers aren't there? You have to rely on the company to act properly, and give you a time frame to move to something else during which the activation servers will still be live, or they provide some permanent activation.
  Yes, I think DRM sucks, I think activation schemes suck, but they already exist, and until they are gone (which seems fairly unlikely to me) there isn't a major difference between desktop software and cloud services, once the plug is pulled. It is no more 'ridiculous' to rely on cloud services than it is to rely on desktop apps, or the x86 architecture, or the public power grid. Any of those could be changed at any time, though some are far less likely than others to change. Is it more likely gmail goes away, or Outlook/Exchange? Both companies make a crazy amount of money from their offering. One is 'cloud based', one not. Which is more 'ridiculous' to rely on?
10. Re:Cloud Services vs. Desktop Apps by NeutronCowboy · 2012-01-21 07:22 · Score: 2
  
  Oh hi, DCTech. Still doing your sockpuppetry, I see.
  
  --
  Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
11. Re:Cloud Services vs. Desktop Apps by afabbro · 2012-01-21 07:51 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Let me expand that to say that anytime you are building something that ultimately relies on a 3rd party for integral, non-easily-replicatable components, you're asking for trouble
  I think you're stretching that a bit. The vast majority of the world's IT does exactly this. IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Hitachi, EMC, Cisco, etc. all provide "integral, non-easily-reproducable" components.
  The difference is that if you buy physical hardware and own the software (often with a source code escrow agreement), you can control the pace of getting off something, whereas in the cloud, you cannot.
  
  --
  Advice: on VPS providers
12. Re:Cloud Services vs. Desktop Apps by hairyfeet · 2012-01-21 18:34 · Score: 2
  
  Funny thing is you would THINK that VMs solved that problem but they haven't. For example I built and maintain a "NOS" early Pentium 4 for a customer who has one piece of "must have" software, Macromedia Xres. That thing is a fricking nightmare pal, good luck getting it to run on ANY modern hardware, even in a VM. I tried dual boots, VMs, shims, you name it, that bitch will NOT run on anything newer than a 2.2Ghz with 1gb of RAM and an IDE HDD. Now some of the other royal PITA software like QuickBooks (Man i'd like to meet the guy that wrote that thing and kick him in the nuts. WTH was he thinking tying the software to a SPECIFIC version of Flash? WTF?) can be run in XP Mode or other VM with some tweaking but I found out the hard way there IS software out there that HAS to be run bare metal.
  As for TFA frankly anyone that uses ANY Google service that isn't already extremely popular deserves what they get sadly. Google has shown their entire business model is "throw it against the wall and see what sticks" and anything that doesn't grab a huge share is shitcanned, see TFA and Google Wave and a dozen others like Buzz for examples. If anyone is stupid enough to buy a Google TV, I don't care if its Intel, ARM, or MIPS, they are pissing their money away as i bet that'll be gone soon enough too. Google has shown their whole plan revolves around capitalizing on eyeballs and search while spending as little as possible and while Sony, Apple and MSFT have all cut checks Google has made it clear they ain't paying shit to the content owners so any Google TV will simply be banhammered from their services.
  But I hope this has taught many a valuable lesson, don't bother relying on a Google service until it hits 30 million plus users bare minimum, probably 60 to 70 million just to be safe. They have made it clear with these service killings that 8-12 million is just too small potatoes for them to care about and they only want hits, misses will be culled.
  
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13. Re:Cloud Services vs. Desktop Apps by hairyfeet · 2012-01-21 18:52 · Score: 2
  
  I think the difference is long term support contracts as all those corps you named make damned good money and would take a serious hit to their businesses if they abandoned or failed to live up to their long term support contracts. lets take the one whose software I've had the most experience with, Microsoft.
  While everyone makes fun of their "glacial" OS development frankly its damned easy to plan around a MSFT Business OS because you know to the day how long you are gonna have support for which is a standard 10 years for business OS. Since there will be at least 2 if not 3 releases in your support window that gives you plenty of time to test and get your core software switched over and simply go from one to the other. I've finally got the last of my business customers switched over to 7 and now that all the software is certified working and they are all happy all I have to do is bring Win 7 machines online as they need them because Win 7 is supported until 2020. this let them skip Vista completely and they'll probably skip 8 and 9 as well and be ready to start certifying their 'must have' software for Windows 10 around 2018.
  So I'd say the key is to base your plans around software that has LTS and think long term rather than risk betting too much on software that may not be here tomorrow. A good example below is Red hat. if your software runs on RHEL they have plenty of LTS options and you know they aren't going anywhere so planning your business around RHEL wouldn't be a problem, but as we saw not too long ago planning your business around CentOS would be bad as they could disappear tomorrow. it all comes down to LTS and how much you can trust the company to provide it, all the companies you named along with Red hat and a few others have the LTS options one can plan a business around without any real fear of getting burned.
  
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  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
14. Re:Cloud Services vs. Desktop Apps by hairyfeet · 2012-01-21 19:13 · Score: 2
  
  Uhhh...you'd just go the the cracksite and get "WGAKiller" and call it a day? BTW for all the talk about "ZOMFG I'll have to reactivate!" the box I'm typing this on has had every. single. piece ripped out and replaced, and I DO mean every piece, the PSU, HDDs, GPU, Motherboard, CPU, RAM, burners, the only piece left that is original from Oct 09 when i installed Win 7 on it is the case and i had to reactivate a grand total of ONE time, and that was when I ripped out the ECS board with the quad for an Asrock with a 6 core. It took less than 5 seconds and it said 'thank you" and that was it.
  So with offline software there is ALWAYS a way around it, be it "legit" or no, but online only and you're screwed. After all I don't see anybody playing their Star Wars Galaxies characters they invested serious time and money in now, do you?
  
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  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Why would any company work with them now? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-21 05:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

If they can this easily kill off Google Message Continuity, something marketed only to Enterprise customers running Exchange, then why would any enterprise consider using any of their services? Their migration path is just to move everyone to Gmail. If that's what the company wanted in the first place, they would've just done that.
1. Re:Why would any company work with them now? by icebike · 2012-01-21 12:46 · Score: 2
  
  If they can this easily kill off Google Message Continuity, something marketed only to Enterprise customers running Exchange, then why would any enterprise consider using any of their services? Their migration path is just to move everyone to Gmail. If that's what the company wanted in the first place, they would've just done that.
  This was a money losing proposition from the get go, and one you can easily replicate by doing a proper server backup to any off-site location. "Hundreds of Businesses" use it.
  What they found is that user wanted to use Gmail, entirely walking away from exchange. The more success they had selling Google Apps (including paid Gmail customers) the less candidates for GMC. "Millions of Businesses" use Google Apps.
  If you missed the bit about Hundreds vs Millions you might be forgiven. It was buried fairly deep.
  Buried deeper is the fact that you can walk away from GMC tomorrow morning at 8am and have a competitive solution in place by noon, or operate with your own backup. You find it much tougher walking away from Google Apps or using Gmail for your entire in-house mail. You usually have no backup for that.
  Even odder was the announcement about Needlebase:
  
  Needlebase: We are retiring this data management platform, which we acquired from ITA Software, on June 1, 2012. The technology is being evaluated for integration into Google's other data-related initiatives.
  Whoa, shutting down a data management platform they haven't even acquired yet? No, wait, twisted sentence structure!
  
  --
  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
2. Re:Why would any company work with them now? by Vexo · 2012-01-21 12:50 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Note that, as per TFA, all Continuity customers "will be able to use GMC for the duration of their contract." Google is providing its enterprise customers exactly the amount of service permanence that it promised and that its customers agreed to when they signed those contracts.
That's progress by LostCluster · 2012-01-21 05:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

The Google announcement doesn't leave many people stranded, it's just taking acquired products and sending the users to more popular web-based products. Examples include Urchiin users told to move to Google Analyitics, and Exchange backup users to move to GMail for Google Apps. In total, nothing of value is being lost, and developer resources move from maintaining the old to innovating the new.
1. Re:That's progress by eulernet · 2012-01-21 06:28 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  No, you are wrong, here is an example: http://google.com/codesearch
  No more service, and no replacement (don't believe what they say, this service was indexing all source code on the Internet, not Google's only).
  Google is killing every service that doesn't return quick money. This means that Google just stopped all innovation (except a few star projects, like Google car, but what does an advertisement's company do in the automobile's domain anyway ? It's so ... out of place).
  Why would you want to take risks when you can make money with existing products ?
  Why would you put money in Research when you can concentrate on Development ?
  Oh, that's right: let's buy any startup that has an interesting idea, and kill the idea if it doesn't make money.
  Google is ranked as the 2nd most innovative company in 2010:
  http://www.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/innovative_companies_2010.html
  Let's see how it will do in the next rankings.
  The problem with Google is now greed.
2. Re:That's progress by madmark1 · 2012-01-21 06:49 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Can you explain to me how this is different than, say, every other company in the world? Apple's latest innovation? Siri? Bought from someone else, then magically it doesn't work on anything but their newest phone, despite the fact it was available as an app for the older phones? Microsoft? Even their browser was bought from someone else, not to mention FrontPage (I didn't say it was good...), Excel, the Explore pane in Bing... Adobe has DreamWeaver, Flash, Fireworks...
  The problem with Google now is greed. Sadly though, that's the problem with every other company on the planet. Microsoft announces that from now on, web programming should be done in HTML5 and Javascript, and screw all of you that learned ASP.NET. Adobe gives you mobile flash, Adobe taketh away.
  Google continues to push forward with new services (G+, Car) and continue to add to older services (New google search changes, gmail interface changes) even if those turn out not to be popular. The search thing seems to be earning them some grief in particular, yet they tried something new. They could easily have left gmail and search exactly as it was, or not started G+, or Reader, or Wave. They DID change things, and start new things though, so that kind of kills your argument that they aren't putting money into anything, or doing R&D.
3. Re:That's progress by eulernet · 2012-01-21 09:21 · Score: 2
  
  About ASP.NET, you made a mistake. I'm an ASP.Net developer too. What disappears is Silverlight, not ASP.Net.
  
  Sadly though, that's the problem with every other company on the planet.
  Sadly, I agree with you.
  When times are tough, all companies tend to reduce their expenses, and the first cuts are with employees and research.
  In my opinion, this is very wrong, the economy slows down because every company has the same behaviour.
  Having such a pessimistic point of view means that Google is not confident anymore in their products.
  What irritates me is that the companies doing the most effort on reducing expenses are the richest ones, and the resulting profits will not be redistributed, except for the shareholders.
  Typically, management asks their employees to do more with less (improve productivity), and at the end, they fire people to improve their margins further.
  And no, Google invest where they know that they'll have money in return (search, gmail, etc..), and mostly because of competition.
  THIS IS NOT INNOVATION !!!
  Innovation is about taking risks, investing everywhere. See Microsoft and IBM, they do a lot of Research, because they know that you cannot predict what will be a success in the future.
  Remember the 20% at Google (20% of your time is spent on new projects), it's not officially dead, but I'll tell you: IT'S DEAD !
  If you just concentrate on improving a product, this is not innovation, this is just improving your quality, process and productivity.
  When you have an innovative company (using a disruptive innovation), like Google was, and you start to copy your followers, this means that you are not able to innovate anymore, you have no new ideas and no vision for the future.
  The only thing you can do is to buy smaller companies to add value to yours.
  Google is the new Microsoft, let's see what company will take Google's place.
4. Re:That's progress by bhassel · 2012-01-21 15:53 · Score: 2
  
  Google code search is still up, just at a different URL here:
  http://code.google.com/codesearch
  
  And it's not limited to just Google's own code. From this blog post: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2012/01/google-code-search-still-available.html
How long until they kill google search :p by youn · 2012-01-21 05:49 · Score: 4, Funny

at this rate... this may be quicker than I thought possible

--
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that :p
1. Re:How long until they kill google search :p by Njovich · 2012-01-21 06:14 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Amen, I love Google, but for any search that is slightly complicated I turn to Yahoo these days. Google doesn't seem to take you serious when you enter search terms, often ignoring terms to give a more popular result. Having to add quotes is also a hell of a lot more annoying than the + sign was. That is four keypresses for quoting a single expression. Quote a couple of expressions on a mobile phone and it just gets annoying. Also it forces localization on you, which gets a pain when you speak English and another language roughly equally well and just want the best result. I wish there was just a version that treated all languages equally. The problem is that the 'local' languages gets precedence, regardless of quality of result. Yes there are settings for them, they work like crap, try them for a while.
2. Re:How long until they kill google search :p by icebraining · 2012-01-21 06:50 · Score: 2
  
  Yahoo is just a layer above Bing, might as well use it directly.
  
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3. Re:How long until they kill google search :p by SmilingBoy · 2012-01-21 07:54 · Score: 2
  
  Use the "Verbatim" option.
UrchinTracker didn't give the info to Google by Animats · 2012-01-21 06:02 · Score: 3, Interesting

UrchinTracker let advertisers track what users were doing, but didn't let Google track them. So it had to go. Big Brother doesn't like competition.
CONSUME! by Osgeld · 2012-01-21 06:02 · Score: 2

watch out! here comes the google monster! It will gobble up your website and shit it out once its bored!
I actually kind of liked picnik, but whatever let the internet strip-mining continue ... thanks google
Sky Map by Naurgrim · 2012-01-21 06:17 · Score: 2

I see I am not in before the cloud is good/cloud is bad discussion, but I do want to say I am glad Sky Map has a chance to continue. It is the first thing I use to show older relatives what smart phones can do.

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.......You Are, ...What You Do, When It Counts.
I fear for Google SketchUp by afabbro · 2012-01-21 07:58 · Score: 3, Interesting

Google SketchUp is a hugely useful, free 3D modeling program. It has become the de facto standard in lots of hobbies (such as woodworking) because it's free, works well, and now there's a bajillion community add-ons.
The problem is that it's Windows/Mac desktop software. It's completely orthogonal to Google's strategy. There's no ad revenue, and while there is a paid-for commercial version, I can't imagine it's big bucks for Google. The commercial version is $500, and at that price there's plenty of competition from other commercial packages.
I'm sure someone in the headier days of Google saw it and thought "wow, this is cool, let's buy it!" and so they did. But what really is the strategy/purpose of owning it? It's great software, no doubt, but I think Google would be hard-pressed to explain how it moves their company forward.
And so I fear for Google SketchUp. The free version is so awesome and I use it extensively...and I suspect some day someone in Google is going to discard it as carelessly as they bought it.

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Advice: on VPS providers
1. Re:I fear for Google SketchUp by Tacvek · 2012-01-21 08:35 · Score: 2
  
  The only real reason Google is keeping Sketch-Up is that it ties into Google Earth.
  Unfortunately Google Earth's cancellation is already planned. As soon Google can reliably replicate enough of its functionality into the WebGL version of Google Maps, Google Earth will be gone.
  In the plus side, at least there is some hope of Google releasing the Sketch-Up source, since it is not tied into any of Google's core technologies.
  
  --
  Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
Re:What are alternatives to by kwerle · 2012-01-21 09:30 · Score: 2

Reader
... any news aggregator?
http://www.newsonfeeds.com/faq/aggregators

Gmail?
You're kidding, right? Any mail provider... I don't know what to say.
* I hosted my own until a few years ago
* yahoo
* hotmail
* my isp
* everyone and their brother

I mean we know they are going to close them eventually as well, right?
I don't get it. Why are you just spreading FUD? OK, maybe you don't like google. But you can't come up with a single service that they have shut down and really inconvenienced their users. And you're naming gmail just looks dumb - they make money off that. And while it would not surprise me even a little if reader goes away, I fully expect that it will just roll into some other service they provide (plus, probably); not to mention that they make it trivial to migrate away, should you so choose:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/07/export-feeds-from-google-reader-folder.html
What's the deal?