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Google Confirms Shut Down of Schemer
An anonymous reader writes "Google has confirmed it is shutting down its goal sharing service Schemer. The company says Schemer's last day will be February 7, after which all data will be permanently deleted. The iOS app has already been pulled from Apple's App Store while the Android app on Google Play hasn't been updated since October 2012."
Google confirms it will shut down goal sharing service Schemer...
Queue the folks who built their entire business plan around this free service and will now bleat about how unfair it is, proving once again the Google == Apple == "Micro$oft" == pure corporate evil.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Google what?
If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
How long until they shut down Google Plus? Please tell me it's soon.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I mean, Google was about to offer US$4B for Snapchat. I can't imagine it's that expensive for them to keep a service like this running, if for no other reason than to avoid the inevitable negative press like when they shut down Google Reader. Does anyone know how many users we're talking about, and how much administrative time?
Koans and fables for the software engineer
I never heard of thisbut now that I have it looks intresting
People once told me 68K ram was all we needed,
See the first post, modded down by morons.
The first post was a pre-emptive whine, why shouldn't it get modded down? it added nothing to the discussion.
Google what now?
You'd think for a company like GOOGLE, they'd, you know, ADVERTISE their products.
I've literally never heard of this at all and I could name everything that was on Google Labs and the More page that lists "all" their services. (which are pretty damn hidden too, no wonder nobody bloody used them!)
ADVERTISE YOUR SHIT, GOOGLE.
, after which all data will be permanently deleted.
Yeah, right. Made inaccessible to the people it's associated with, perhaps.
The cloud: because centralisation into the hands of a distant, lofty few has worked really well throughout history.
If it doesn't generate advertising revenue, Google will kill it.
Google's news archives recently went away. Google Scholar is a likely next candidate for the chopping block.
I'm worried about Google buying all those robotics companies. Profitability in advanced robotics is probably 5-10 years away. Google has not, in the past, demonstrated that kind of patience. "More wood behind fewer arrows" was their slogan for the first big round of cuts. Google could destroy the US robotics industry.
ours is a post-emptive whine adding even less!
Queue the folks who [...] will now bleat about how unfair it is
Unless you really mean to travel the world and get all these people to form a lineup.
The complaints do end up lining up one after another in the comments section. So both "cue" and "queue" work.
"The end of the beginning of everything worth doing."
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
Schemer is very interesting, but Google closes it, like Reader, just because it isn't ad-friendly. Oh, no.
Do you know about an alternative to Google's Schemer?
I have to agree. This is the first time I've ever heard of it! I have no idea what it's for, what it's limitations are, or where it might have gone had it survived. It is, literally, zero loss: it never existed as far as I'm concerned.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Maybe they should add that to their list of goals. Oh, wait...
I was hoping it was just that scheming Google being shut down. That anti competitive piece of garbage, who wants nanobots in your brain
Source: Eric Schmidt
Something about Google today makes me want to run to Microsoft's arms. At a time I even entertained the idea of working (well, seriously applying) for Google, when life situation would allow relocating. But something has gone sour, like milk. First there was just something in the taste, now it seems there are clumps in it already. Wave. Reader. Insistence of linking everything together in ways I am not comfortable with. This. Soon Scholar?
Who in their right mind is going to make any kind of investment (of time and effort) into any of Google's future stuff? Not me.
perhaps you should look up the definition of whine and pre/post emptive for that matter as you don't seem to understand there meaning.
I had only heard of it because I found the iTunes page where they list all of the apps by Google. There are a couple others most people have never heard of there.
...After the average half-life of a Google product idea.
perhaps you should look up the definition of whine and pre/post emptive for that matter as you don't seem to understand there meaning.
Meanwhile, you better look up the definition of "there" ...
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
God the irony of a company who makes 90+ % of their revenue from advertising not being able to market ANY of their own products for shit.
On the other hand, kudos to Google for not using their dominance in mail, search, Android and other services/products for trying to push Schemer down the throats of their users. They had a product, it didn't fly on its own, it's OK for it to die. Which is not what other companies are doing with bloatware software on phones, tablets and laptops. Nobody got a killer app by doing this and the people at Google seem to realize this.
Google in many ways looks like Microsoft of the early 2000s. It has lots of bright people, lots of money, and has an enormous range of products that make no money while being sustained by one monopoly product that makes incredible money. It was lucky enough to be the Last Big Thing before Apple hit top gear and it's desperate to find the Next Big Thing before it falls behind.
In its approach to products, however, Google is more accurately the ANTI-Apple. Apple starts from "what do customers need?" and ruthlessly eliminates everything but the purest core product that meets that customer need. Apple focuses on a tiny number of things that people want and does them as perfectly as it can within the time it has at a price that no competitor can match.
Google on the other hand starts from "what cool shit can we do and how can we make money out of it?" "Hey employees, spend 20% of your time brainstorming cool stuff, we'll see if we can use that shit". Google then dribbles ALL OF THAT SHIT out - not launches, dribbles - in broken half-finished beta versions and then waits to see if anything works. Google has no product focus and just has a nonstop conveyor belt of "cool shit" projects coming out the door - Answers, Jotbot, Jaiku, Notebook, Sidewiki, Gears, Wave, Buzz, etc etc etc - that die because they are technically nifty solutions to problems that nobody actually has. Even when something potentially cool like Google+ comes off the production line it's fighting an uphill battle from day one - is fundamentally crippled - because no thought has been given to how people will actually use it.
Actually, they did advertise it-- it's just that nobody pays any attention to Google ads. And why do you think people still continue to use Google? The same reason they started using it, you don't notice the ads.
Does anyone know how many users we're talking about, and how much administrative time?
Can you imagine what kind of 'schemes' or 'shared goals' the trolls would be posting, without administrative monitoring?
I can already imagine the kiddies posting goals like "Go on a shooting spree," and every sort of criminal and racist objective in the book. And of course spammers......
Without substantial resources spent on moderation, it would be likely to degenerate into an internet cesspool, that makes Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia and Slashdot look like Utopia.
Do you suppose if Facebook was called Stalker it would have been a success?
Interesting point. Although I would imagine that spammers could be dealt with automatically, much as they are in GMail.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
You know they're just gonna roll it into G+ don't you?
That's how they'll try and monetize it
Watch those corners
Isn't it strange how we hear about these types of 'services' going down, but we never hear about them going up? Am I missing something? By the looks of it, many people are like me in that they didn't know that this service existed at all. Is there a place that Google let's people know when they have a new service? It's not listed here anywhere (maybe it's been removed already since it's about to be dumped). But is this a complete list?
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Apple is dead. Didn't you get the memo?
Named after atheist Michael Shermer. It greatly simplified goal sharing. It new UI emphasizes "let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die" and to simply work to live and not live to work because you've only got one life to live. It also fixes a bug in Schemer where users could set goals for time periods after they die. Shermer fixes this issue by permanently setting a users goal to "worm food" or "ashes" and set to the status "accomplished" after other users report the said user dead.
Hi Swampash' Google Earth was and is "a wonder product" with many benefits - and risks, perhaps only eclipsed by wikipaedia. I get the impression that it's getting too Microslop.com friendly (such may be ESSENTIAL for many large internet corporations) ... but hey! who DOES own and direct it .... this "Schemer" may be a good idea that MS wants to control or kill... What is "Schemer", can it be non-corporately rescued? Should it be?
I'm new to Slashdot, so please forgive any mis-operation in writing to you
Oxford
If you like your goal-sharing service, you can keep your goal sharing service!
Then 2014.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Google on the other hand starts from "what cool shit can we do and how can we make money out of it?" "Hey employees, spend 20% of your time brainstorming cool stuff, we'll see if we can use that shit".
Actually, last I heard, Google was no longer doing the 20% thing. It seems like they've given up on the "what cool shit can we come up with?" tack, and now are trying to force more integrated services on everyone, which no one seems to want.
Is this the beginning of the end for Google or, just the end of "The beginning of everything worth doing."
First time I've heard of this Google service and I use Google for almost everything web related.
No, that is incorrect. 20% time is alive and well.
This is yet another example of how 'business decisions' can cause a Cloud service you rely on to shut down for no technical reason, and without warning. You can't rely on Cloud services unless you are running them yourself. They are fun to play with, and can aid efficiency in the short term, but they must be regarded as fun, practical toys.
John_Chalisque
You have to wonder what's going on in the original dev's heads -- they create something, get bought by Google and then shut down.
I have to agree. This is the first time I've ever heard of it! I have no idea what it's for, what it's limitations are, or where it might have gone had it survived. It is, literally, zero loss: it never existed as far as I'm concerned.
I think I have heard of this once before, but it was saying how it sounds nice, but most of the stuff on it was just spam.
They want me to share my goals on Google+?
Fuck you Google.
I don't think they have just one monopoly product. Sure, search is huge. But what about Android. What about advertisement potential of data gathered through Analytics. What about Apps and App Engine? Or even the infamous Plus. They have numerous products that are quite successful and that not all of their products are like that? It's a good thing they're trying new ideas out.
Google doesn't make any money out of search. Google makes money out of ADVERTISING, that's its "one monopoly product that makes incredible money". Advertising is responsible for 96% of Google's revenue.
Unlike Microsoft in its salad days, Google doesn't have an anti-competive monopoly clause built into your hardware. You can buy a computing device without Google and still interact with the rest of the world. Comparing Google to Microsoft at this point is specious.
Apple starts from "what do customers need?"
I'll fix that for you:
Apple starts from "what does Average Joe need?"
There.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I was talking to a Google recruiter about a month ago. She was using 20% time as a selling point. Possibly its harder to get a 20% product released, but its not dead.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Seriously.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
And the really dumb thing about shutting down iGoogle is that threw away some of their search business as a result. Like many other former iGooglers, I switched to MyYahoo. So now, instead of generally always having a Google search page at the ready, I have a Yahoo search page at the ready.
Apple? What do they have to do with this? Apple is a hardware vendor, Google only tangentially so. Google does advertising and web services, making most of its money on the former while spending it on the latter.
In what way would Google 'fall behind' Apple? Google's products are mostly operating-system and hardware agnostic, running equally well (or poor) on all supported platforms. For Apple to change this they'd have to exclude Google from their products. They tried, and failed, miserably. They might try again but even if they succeed in booting Google from iOS and OSX they'd only have limited impact given the (declining) market penetration of their product lines. Apple is good at serving its target group, but that group is only a small part of the entire market.
--frank[at]unternet.org
> It was lucky enough to be the Last Big Thing before Apple hit top gear and it's desperate to find the Next Big Thing before it falls behind.
Apple didn't hit top gear, it just engaged a retro rocket called Steve Jobs. Rocket is now spent, and Apple will slow to its usual coasting speed over the next few years. There's no reason to think Apple will perform at the same level from now on. The right-place-right-time market breakthroughs are over.
Android will take over from here, becoming embedded in all kinds of devices - which is Google's breakthrough, if they play it right. IOS and Windows has missed the boat there. You can make phones and tablets to compete with Apple, but try making another device OS that embeds the way Android is going to embed over the next few years.
Android is going to be everywhere, and that will send Google's brand way beyond Apple's reach. People will begin to prefer Android devices, simply because of its pervasiveness - ironically, achieved the opposite way to Apple's lock-in, walled-garden approach.
This is why I'm making an effort to move away from Google products. Anything that doesn't turn enough profit disappears. Smaller companies are better suited to handle smaller products that aren't directly related to the Google business model. I won't use Sketchup for this reason, nor will I use anything new they put out in the future, unless it appears to be generating substantial income for them. Everything else just disappears.
Android makes Google no money. The only company that makes good money if Android proliferates like crazy is Microsoft, since it gets royalties every time an Android device is sold.
The only way Google can make money as a result of Android is to use it to monitor your behavior and show you advertisements.
Why the fuck get out of bed tomorrow? I mean, what will I do?
Microsoft is desperately trying to become a nonviable alternative to Google and Apple. Unless it pulls out of its Windows 8 death spiral, stay away.