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Google Keep End-of-Life Date Forecasted

Posted by Soulskill on 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."

7 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. I don't understand all the anger over Google by i_ate_god · · 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 cultiv8 · · 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.
    2. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by jockm · · 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
    3. Re:I don't understand all the anger over Google by drcln · · 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
  2. downside of SaaS by crgrace · · 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.

  3. headlines write themselves! by noh8rz10 · · 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)"

  4. Struck a Nerve by Grizzley9 · · 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.