Google Keep End-of-Life Date Forecasted

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google Keep End-of-Life Date Forecasted

Posted by Soulskill on Friday March 22, 2013 @07:59AM from the keep-until-this-time dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A smart aleck journalist for UK's Guardian newspaper has turned the tables on Google by compiling data on 39 of the company's terminated projects, summarized in a table and bar graph. The mean lifespan of the doomed products turns out to be almost exactly 4 years, which led Mr. Arthur to conclude that your data would be safe with Google Keep — until March 2017, give or take a few months. Of course, this assumes that Keep is destined to be one of those products and services that wouldn't be Kept, or rather 'didn't gain traction with users' in the familiar lingo of Google marketing."

39 of 164 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

I don't understand all the anger over Google by i_ate_god · 2013-03-22 08:02 · Score: 5, Insightful

Yeah, I miss things like Code Search.
Well that's the only thing I used really.
But like, no one had to pay for these services. There was no contractual obligation in play. What responsibility does Google have to spend time and money on infrastructure on products that are used by the minority of people?

--
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
1. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by Trepidity · 2013-03-22 08:06 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  They don't have to. People are just pointing out that Google has a pattern of introducing services as trial balloons, and then discontinuing them a few years later if it doesn't fit into their overalls strategy. If you understand that and are okay with it, no problem. If you'd rather not have to scramble to find a replacement in a few years in the (not that unlikely) circumstance where the service is shut down, however, you might want to look elsewhere.
  
  --
  10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
2. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by rokstar · 2013-03-22 08:09 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Conversely there is no obligation to use their services either, which I think is the larger point. Their "responsibility" is to not pissing off a sufficiently large portion of their user base such that they have no interest in trying their new products.
3. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by cultiv8 · 2013-03-22 08:10 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  What responsibility does Google have to spend time and money on infrastructure on products that are used by the minority of people?
  It would be nice if they open-sourced these projects and then let the "minority of people" who actually use it maintain it themselves.
  
  --
  sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
4. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by jockm · 2013-03-22 08:15 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  People are just pointing out that Google has a pattern of introducing services as trial balloons, and then discontinuing them a few years later if it doesn't fit into their overalls strategy.
  There is another term for that: Let a thousand flowers bloom. This is what Google has always done, try things. The things that work, that have an audience that can justify continued operation then they live. The ones that don't fail.
  This is no different than how most companies work. The backlash against Readers closure is silly. Products fail, companies pivot, they aren't required to keep things going in perpetuity.
  And Google lets you get your data out, which so many other failed products don't.
  
  --
  
  What do you know I wrote a novel
5. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by mungtor · 2013-03-22 08:18 · Score: 2
  
  What responsibility does Google have to spend time and money on infrastructure on products that are used by the minority of people?
  Google's time and money is what it probably comes down to. Somewhere deep in the accounting department they figure out that the quality of data they are mining is not enough to offset the actual cost of running the service. It's true that a larger user base would create a larger data set and therefore be more likely to be profitable for them, but if it's just a different representation of the same data there really isn't any point. They can figure out what we're interested in from Search, what we actually buy from the email receipts in our Gmail boxes, etc. A new service like Keep might give them new information, but if not there's no reason to continue it.
6. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by SirGarlon · 2013-03-22 08:21 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  But like, no one had to pay for these services.
  It's not about licensing cost, it's about migration cost.
  
  --
  [Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
7. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by grahamtriggs · 2013-03-22 08:25 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Oh, I get the point that we are not entitled to use these products, because we aren't paying for them.
  But there are two points, really:
  1) Anger is a way of expressing that people do actually care about the services. If they shut them down with nobody saying anything, then they are right. Conversely, if lots of people kick up a fuss, maybe they see that they are wrong (in thinking that people don't use it).
  2) And this one is particularly pertinent to things like Google Sync/Exchange ActiveSync. Just because users aren't paying for the services, doesn't mean that they wouldn't. If I had the option to simply upgrade my Google Mail to a paid apps account / simply pay to retain the features that they are cutting from the free account, then maybe I would. I would *certainly* pay for a "Google Apps for Home", which kept Google Reader, EAS (upgraded to work with Outlook 2013), etc.
  But they don't offer that option. That I don't pay for these services, isn't my fault in not seeing the value. It is their fault in providing the option.
8. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by afgam28 · 2013-03-22 08:25 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  There was no contractual obligation in play. What responsibility does Google have to spend time and money on infrastructure on products that are used by the minority of people?
  There's no contractual obligation for users to put on a happy face either. The fact is that it's kinda annoying when a service that you've come to rely on gets shut down.
  Google doesn't have a responsibility to provide free services to everyone but it is in their interest to build trust amongst their user base. Otherwise no one is going to invest any time into things like Google Keep.
9. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by idontgno · 2013-03-22 08:28 · Score: 2
  
  So, your argument is that software is a popularity contest?
  Very perceptive. Market share is just popularity. And the unpopular eventually lose, every time.
  So the object lesson is: if you depend of a software product, make sure you depend on a popular software product. Otherwise, expect to be inconvenienced (or worse) sooner rather than later.
  Potential object lesson 2: don't depend on any one else's software product. That's the point of the Free Software movement. But that requires a degree of technical competence to provide independent support, so that's beyond realistic expectations for the majority.
  
  --
  Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
10. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by drcln · 2013-03-22 08:33 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  There was no contractual obligation in play. What responsibility does Google have to spend time and money on infrastructure on products that are used by the minority of people?
  It's not hate, its disgust at the stupidity of it all. Google created these ancillary products to draw people into the Googlesphere, and it worked. As someone from Google has said "The lifetime value of a Chrome user is enormous." Google's ancillary projects drew in people and Google prospered.
  In the short term, Google can kill the products that are marginally effective in drawing in new eyeballs, but that sound you hear as they cancel projects that drew people in is the sound of people heading for the exits. That smoke is from the burning of bridges.
  Google's near sighted cancelation of today's well liked projects is erecting barriers to acceptance of its future offereings. Google's real product is people, and Google is polluting its product stream with disapointed people who are tiring of learning to use a tool only to have it taken away. Not a good long term strategy.
  I won't be using Google+, or Google Docs, or or Google Drive, or Keep, or Google's NIK software, or Chrome, and definitely not a Chromebook, since any of these can disapear or be rendered unusable on a whim.
  
  --
  your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through
11. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by mwvdlee · 2013-03-22 08:39 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  What responsibility does Google have to spend time and money on infrastructure on products that are used by the minority of people?
  None.
  What reason do people have to give personal information to a company that takes no responsibility over it's products?
  Remember; your time and information is only free if it's worthless. You ARE paying Google with something valuable, just not currency.
  
  --
  Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
12. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by skids · 2013-03-22 08:55 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  This deserves a car analogy.
  Suppose a private individual decides to allow drivers to use some of his privately owned land to take a shortcut to avoid a swamp.
  Now suppose there are competing grits delivery companies. Delivery Companes A and B start using the shortcut, and they sell off their SUVs because they no longer have to muck through the swamp. Company C uses the shortcut, but since he cannot trust it to stay there, he holds on to the SUVs. Company C goes out of business because Companies A and B don't need to buy as much gasoline since they do not have SUVs, and they underbid company C for new contracts.
  Then the private individual decides he wants to close the shortcut to build a large statue of Natalie Portman.
  The business of grits delivery being one with tight margins, Company A and B cannot afford to buy SUVs on such short notice. Company A goes bankrupt trying to finance SUVs, and Company B just stops grits delivery to people that live on the other side of the swamp.
  Now nobody on the other side of the swamp has any grits at all. Sure they all saved a few pennies on 4AM deliveries of hot grits in the meantime, but it wasn't worth going cold turkey.
  The moral of the story is that building something useful but ephemeral, especially if the stability of that thing is unpredictable, destabilizes markets by playing on their inherent vulnerability to human greed and shortsightedness. There may be zero legal obligation to ensure the stability of the service, and your standard disclaimers in the EULA that you can end it at any time may protect you from any sort of legal action, but for a company with a "do no evil" motto, marketing, advertising, and then killing such a product tends to produce consequences far from their stated ideal.
  
  --
  Someone had to do it.
13. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by Reapman · 2013-03-22 09:00 · Score: 2
  
  like Wave?
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave
14. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by jockm · 2013-03-22 09:04 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  No my argument is that nothing is really ever assured. Anything and anyone can fail. Asteroids hit the earth, fires burn down houses, hard drives die, commercial software can fail to find a market, etc etc etc.
  The world of software is littered with the corpses of dead companies and products. It has always been thus. Even free software can end up orphaned and so unmaintained it won't work on modern systems. It is foolish to believe any product will exist forever.
  In the same way you should have a good 3, 2, 1 Backup strategy for your data, you should have a plan for what to do if products you rely on stop working.
  I really don't get your point...
  
  --
  
  What do you know I wrote a novel
15. Re: I don't understand all the anger over Google by PixetaledPikachu · 2013-03-22 09:10 · Score: 2
  
  Well, for free, ad-supported service? Yes. More users means more eyes for their ads
16. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by gl4ss · 2013-03-22 09:12 · Score: 2
  
  people didn't even have a chance to pay for them.
  that's the gist, it seems so random from user point of view.
  people gave flack to gm for cancelling ev1 too. some people liked it, but gm didn't want to bother with it.
  
  --
  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
17. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by Grizzley9 · 2013-03-22 09:24 · Score: 2
  
  The backlash against Readers closure is silly.
  
  That may be true (I was never a user), but that does not negate the bad PR they are getting from geeks telling normal people about not trusting Google anymore.
18. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by jopsen · 2013-03-22 09:44 · Score: 2
  
  What responsibility does Google have to spend time and money on infrastructure on products that are used by the minority of people?
  It would be nice if they open-sourced these projects and then let the "minority of people" who actually use it maintain it themselves.
  True, on the other hand some of these projects can't... Because they are based on complicated infrastructure... Google Code search for example...
  Anyways, we have seen Google open source etherpad, when they closed that service...
  
  I also hate it when a service I use is closed (Google Reader for example), but at the end of the I respect Google for innovating and trying out different things, and that includes admitting that something was only a partial success, or not a success at all..
19. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by Grizzley9 · 2013-03-22 10:09 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Yeah I am not sure how true that is. If you can show some quantifiable effect, please do. Otherwise I suspect the so called Normal People will just continue to act as they otherwise would. I think we overestimate our influence on them.
  Does it affect common users? Yes as I and others that usually vouch for Google are now cautious. They really should have held off longer between the two announcements and added more features to Keep. I won't be using it and will likely be wary of new services and will look to have alternatives lined out to switch current ones. Basically, I'm not as loyal to Google anymore, and that hurts them in the long run as I'm not alone.
20. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by Junta · 2013-03-22 10:24 · Score: 2
  
  What people *should* take away from this is that the fad of software as a service carries an extreme risk. Sure, for things highly contingent upon networking effects (e.g. mail), SaS doesn't really change the dynamic. However, for things like RSS reading, document editing, photo editing, and so on and so fourth, with all other things being equal, it's better to pick the offline capable model where you still have capability no matter what the vendor decides to do or if the vendor fails completely.
  
  --
  XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
21. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by jockm · 2013-03-22 10:56 · Score: 2
  
  That is a logical argument, not an example of quantified evidence. Show me some evidence that regular users — who either never used Reader or stopped using it some time ago — are more concerned if Google will kill products or services or not; then we can talk.
  But I am not interested in arguing about theoretical measurements of angel's tap shoes...
  
  --
  
  What do you know I wrote a novel
22. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by LinuxIsGarbage · 2013-03-22 14:16 · Score: 2
  
  One of the things I liked about Google when it was introduced was they assumed all terms were for Boolean "AND". Then they dropped that, so you had to add a "+" in front of each term. Now you have to put quotes around each term. Not only do they do a Boolean OR, but they will look for synonym ORs of what you searched for, resulting in strange results. At first it was just different tenses or conjugations of the same word, now the searches are just random.
  Plus it will offer suggestions of frequently searched terms... but not actually give useful results for those terms.
23. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by dinfinity · 2013-03-22 14:22 · Score: 2
  
  If you'd rather not have to scramble to find a replacement
  Scramble? Really?
  Please enlighten us which free Google service essential to your life disappeared overnight and how you had to put everything aside for a week to find said replacement and prevent terrible hardships.
24. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by hairyfish · 2013-03-22 14:41 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  So the object lesson is: if you depend of a software product, make sure you depend on a popular software product. Otherwise, expect to be inconvenienced (or worse) sooner rather than later.
  Which is precisely why people stick with MS. Regardless of what you think of their engineering or business practices, there is a certain amount of security in using the products that everyone else is using.
25. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by AmiMoJo · 2013-03-22 22:35 · Score: 2
  
  You are not obligated but they certainly want you use their service, so it is fair to moan about it.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
That's the downside of using the Internet like by Burz · 2013-03-22 08:12 · Score: 3, Interesting

....a set of mainframe services. Re-brand it as 'cloud' all you want-- Over the long term, its not the best fit.
Its better to have locally-running apps that give you a choice of data storage points (especially local and private VPN).
Re:Do no Evil? Right... by Nemyst · 2013-03-22 08:17 · Score: 2

Wait, discontinuing cloud apps is now evil? Damn, I knew English was a "living language", but I hadn't quite caught on about this one.
downside of SaaS by crgrace · 2013-03-22 08:17 · Score: 5, Interesting

This really is a big negative of Software as a Service. When you own something, you can run it forever, even if the developer decides to stop using it.
I have some simulation software for electrical design that was last updated in 1998. Still works fine and gets the job done. If it were on the cloud I'd be out of luck and forced to continually move my data between paid services. Too bad.
Except Your Data Will Still Be Safe... by dr4g0nnn · 2013-03-22 08:35 · Score: 2

Keep uses Google Drive, so your data isn't going anywhere.
Re:companies discontinue software by BLToday · 2013-03-22 08:37 · Score: 4, Insightful

You can still keep using the old software and your data. In Google's case, once the service is gone so is your data. Think of it this way, Honda discontinues the RSX they don't go and blow up all the RSX they've sold. The time, data and energy you put into an online service is your investment and when it's discontinued you lose that investment.
headlines write themselves! by noh8rz10 · 2013-03-22 08:46 · Score: 5, Funny

I'm going to forecast the headlines:

"Google doesn't keep Google Keep"

"What's keeping Google from keeping Google Keep?"

"Keep on keeping: Google keeps Google Keep (for now)"
1. Re:headlines write themselves! by Junta · 2013-03-22 10:26 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Even docs and drive aren't guaranteed. That's the whole thing with hosting services, they could disappear and there would be nothing you can do about it. So anything on cloud storage provider better be backed up by you, and applications to manage the content should either be free or you should have a persistent license and ability to run not tied to the continued whims and welfare of the vendor.
  
  --
  XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Re:iGoogle by misterooga · 2013-03-22 08:59 · Score: 2

I don't think Google Reader that that much notice though. 4 months notice: http://googleblog.blogspot.ca/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-cleaning.html
Are they Trending this? by interval1066 · 2013-03-22 09:06 · Score: 2

I wonder why google trends isn't predicting the end of these various Google services?

--
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Fucked by a cloud by HalAtWork · 2013-03-22 09:19 · Score: 2

Exactly, look how many companies still run some DOS program in a CMD box on Windows. They're doing so because it's more worth it to them than to develop some new solution. The solution they already had still works. If it were cloud-based then they'd be stuck paying bills that they really don't need to. The cloud is always going to fuck over the people who depend on it.

--
Twinstiq, game news
Struck a Nerve by Grizzley9 · 2013-03-22 09:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

Google seems to have reached the tipping point when they cancelled Reader. Now, their main base of loyal geeks are starting to question them, in print no less. This is not a good sign for Google. They are taking a much larger PR hit than just losing some respect from a few Reader users. Granted many of those services likely did need to be cut, or not even started, but it seems they've now pushed enough to where geeks are starting to push back and relaying that mistrust to their non-geek friends.
On the plus side... by Mr.+White · 2013-03-22 09:24 · Score: 2

Google+ launched on June 28, 2011.
They will stop trying to shove it down our throats on estimated June 28, 2015.
We are half way there.

--
witold.org
Google is doing us a service by xs650 · 2013-03-22 12:10 · Score: 2

Google is doing us a service by reminding us that online services, data storage, etc come and go. Don't rely on any one company if a service or your data is important to you.
Reality bites and it's good to have an occasional nip like this latest one from Google to remind us of that.