Google Confirms Shut Down of Schemer

Here we go again... by Frosty+Piss · 2014-01-12 09:34 · Score: 2, Interesting

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.

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Re:Here we go again... by 50000BTU_barbecue · 2014-01-12 09:48 · Score: 2, Informative

"Cue". Unless you really mean to travel the world and get all these people to form a lineup.

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Re:Here we go again... by Nerdfest · 2014-01-12 10:15 · Score: 4, Interesting

Well, unless it's based on a a free, open protocol that you can host yourself if required.
Re:Here we go again... by maxwell+demon · 2014-01-12 10:35 · Score: 3, Informative

Well, unless it's based on a a free, open protocol that you can host yourself if required.
And you can easily get your data out of the system. Because if you cannot get your data, you cannot host it elsewhere.

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The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Re:Here we go again... by maxwell+demon · 2014-01-12 10:36 · Score: 2

And other people are ignorant enough to not know the difference between "ignorant" and "stupid".

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The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Re:Here we go again... by TWX · 2014-01-12 10:37 · Score: 2

Even more to the point, Google provided a backend that allowed startups to build on, but given the history of Google cutting things, once the proof-of-concept was created by the startups, it would have been in their interest to either license the backend from Google or to write their own. Google hasn't exactly been shy about this kind of behavior.

If commercial, paid-for products are allowed to write the floor out from under one, then I don't really see why a no-fee service should have stronger rules or expectations.

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Re:Here we go again... by jtownatpunk.net · 2014-01-12 10:40 · Score: 4, Interesting

Raises hand.
My last company decided to Googleize just as I was leaving. The VeeP who set it in motion had a list of services he wanted. Thing is, we already provided nearly everything he wanted and none of the things he wanted were unique to Google's offerings. Even back then, there was a pretty significant list of services that Google had shut down and it was clear that it would be risky to heavily integrate anything beyond docs and email into our business practices. I have no idea how it turned out because my last day was in the middle of the transition.
Re:Here we go again... by hairyfeet · 2014-01-12 12:27 · Score: 2, Interesting

In reality it shows what many of us have known for awhile now, which is that Google, like every other western corp, can't be counted on for anything whether you pay for it or not. FYI Google WAS getting paid for this, Google Reader, and every other app they shuttered THROUGH ADS, THAT is their business model, THAT is what they based the company on, now they are acting like "if it don't make iMoney it ain't worth having" and THAT is what is wrong with western corps and why they frankly ain't worth shit anymore.
Take IBM's PC division, they were making between 8-12% profit every year, year after year. But you see while most countries have companies that would say "solid profits every quarter, that's good right?" they weren't making the same as the #1 company of the time which was Dell, so out it had to go! I bet my last dollar that if you looked at all the apps Google has killed, Reader, Buzz, this? That they were all making a profit but it wasn't the profit of (insert #1 company) so it doesn't matter, its worthless.
This is why I've been telling people that actually like Google+ "Don't care about it, look at it as a throw away fly by night service as Google WILL shit all over it trying to make it FB and when it don't make FB money? It'll be shitcanned" and I have been saying this for months. Now what do we see? Google shitting on Google+ AND on Gmail by making it so ANYBODY can add you to a circle and then spam you. its opt OUT not opt in, why? because G+ isn't making FB money, that's why! this is why you can consider every bit of Google to be as worthless as any fly by night, because if it isn't #1? It WILL be shit on and shitcanned, because all that exists is #1 as far as western business is concerned. being #2? is being shit, doesn't matter if its profitable, doesn't matter if its growing, its not #1 so its shit, its worthless.

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Re:Here we go again... by Tool+Man · 2014-01-12 12:35 · Score: 3, Interesting

Well, unless it's based on a a free, open protocol that you can host yourself if required.
And you can easily get your data out of the system. Because if you cannot get your data, you cannot host it elsewhere.
That part at least is something that Google does put some work into. You can use Google Takeout to get quite a bit back, in a form you may conceivably use elsewhere. Not sure about Schemer specifically though.
Re:Here we go again... by Ash+Vince · 2014-01-12 12:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

Raises hand.
My last company decided to Googleize just as I was leaving. The VeeP who set it in motion had a list of services he wanted. Thing is, we already provided nearly everything he wanted and none of the things he wanted were unique to Google's offerings. Even back then, there was a pretty significant list of services that Google had shut down and it was clear that it would be risky to heavily integrate anything beyond docs and email into our business practices. I have no idea how it turned out because my last day was in the middle of the transition.
Generally though, most companies struggle to compete with the reliability of Google offerings.
Also, they only seem to shut down side projects that I only hear about when they announce shutting them down. Call me when they shut down maps, gmail, search or android.

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Re:Here we go again... by Grishnakh · 2014-01-12 13:06 · Score: 3, Insightful

This (and the getting data out of the system bit that another responder mentioned) is precisely why I added the phrase "unless it's something that's easily transferred between competing services". Web services are fine if you can transfer everything to a competing provider with a few keystrokes, but when your business is reliant on something totally proprietary run by one other company, which has no alternatives whatsoever, you've put your business at great risk.
Re:Here we go again... by fast+turtle · 2014-01-12 14:11 · Score: 5, Insightful

WTF is Schemer? Even the god damn article doesn't tell me and if I don't know WTF it is, how does anyone else? Just another effen Google tool that nobody was told about being shut down because nobody used it. Chicken and Egg Issue. You don't tell folks about it so nobody fucking uses it. Shut it down.
Google could save lots of time/effort/PR by simply not starting these many apps/tools that they keep shutting down because they're not telling anyone about them.

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Re:Here we go again... by fast+turtle · 2014-01-12 14:16 · Score: 2

it's even better to simply have one of the companies build you a god damn android tablet that's already rooted since a large company could then get exactly what they want for a pretty reasonable price. Hell at that point, they'd have a fully customized version of droid that doesn't talk to the Google Mothership.

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Re:Here we go again... by Grishnakh · 2014-01-12 15:48 · Score: 2

Take IBM's PC division, they were making between 8-12% profit every year, year after year. But you see while most countries have companies that would say "solid profits every quarter, that's good right?" they weren't making the same as the #1 company of the time which was Dell, so out it had to go!
I wonder how this compares to companies like South Korea's Samsung and Daewoo or Japan's Yamaha, or other Asian conglomerates. Those companies don't seem to have a problem having lots of different divisions, probably not all super-profitable. As long as something's profitable, why would you want to get rid of it? But these stupid American companies are all about downsizing; if something isn't highly profitable, they'll just sell it off to someone else, like IBM did with their PC and hard drive divisions.
I guess the only parts of Google you can really count on are search and Maps.
Re:Here we go again... by somegeekynick · 2014-01-12 17:23 · Score: 2

Reader was fairly well known and used, despite their claims it had dwindling number of users.
Re:Here we go again... by FireFury03 · 2014-01-13 00:26 · Score: 2

Generally though, most companies struggle to compete with the reliability of Google offerings.
I'm unconvinced about this, purely because when Google takes a project down, they usually seem to give very little notice. There's a really big difference between an in-house service that might go down for half a day *very occasionally* because of some hardware failure or something, and a Google service which goes down permanently with only a month's notice. From a business point of view I'd be much happier about relying on the former than the latter.
I fully acknowledge that services have to be end-of-lifed on occasion, but compare Google's typically "this is being shut down next month" notice with Microsoft's "that bit of software will stop getting security updates in a decade".
Also, they only seem to shut down side projects that I only hear about when they announce shutting them down. Call me when they shut down maps, gmail, search or android.
I'd say that shutting down isn't the only issue - services having wholesale changes made to them on Google's whim is also a problem (and this is a problem with all "cloud" service providers really). Take, for example, the recent Google Maps overhaul - there was no notice, suddenly the whole of Google Maps changed. Worse - on some of my hardware Google Maps thinks it can run the new version even though it's unusably slow: every time I go to google maps on that hardware I have to wait about 2 minutes for the page to finish rendering before I can (slowly) navigate through the menus to switch back to "classic mode", whcih it doesn't remember the next time I go to Google Maps. If I were relying on it for business use, that would be a complete disaster - we've gone from a good reliable service to a service that is often almost unusable overnight with no notice. It's also something that wouldn't happen with an in-house system - for inhouse stuff it would get tested to ensure it's ok first, and at the worst case if it isn't ok it would get rolled back until the problems could be resolved.
Also, I'm seeing quite a few businesses here in the UK make switches over to "cloud" services without *any* consideration for the data protection act - they are frequently storing personal data on offshore servers without the data owner's permission, which is illegal.

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Schemer? by hritcu · 2014-01-12 09:39 · Score: 4, Insightful

Google what?

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If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)

Google Plus by MrEricSir · 2014-01-12 09:40 · Score: 5, Interesting

How long until they shut down Google Plus? Please tell me it's soon.

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Re:Google Plus by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-12 09:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

NEVER going to happen. Seriously, they have embedded that fucker in everything, not the least of which is YouTube. It will never die unless Google dies. Seriously, there is no way they could remove the G+ tendrils that are constantly growing in to new areas. It's obviously one of their core projects.
Re:Google Plus by Adult+film+producer · 2014-01-12 11:41 · Score: 2, Interesting

The Google+ integration with Youtube has forced me to turn comments off on my channel and link people to my own domain where I use Disqus for comments. I only have 7200+ subscribers but the new comments sections on youtube is unwieldly and very difficult to manage, especially because it's combined with Google+.

Not a user, but is it that expensive for Google? by QilessQi · 2014-01-12 09:44 · Score: 2

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?

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Koans and fables for the software engineer

Where? by Chompjil · 2014-01-12 09:45 · Score: 4, Interesting

I never heard of thisbut now that I have it looks intresting

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People once told me 68K ram was all we needed,

Re: Where? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-12 10:25 · Score: 5, Funny

Yeah, I've never heard of it either before today. It looks very interesting to me too. I'm going to start using it now.
Re:Where? by VortexCortex · 2014-01-12 16:07 · Score: 4, Interesting

That's my reaction to many of the news stories about Google shutting down a service. You'd think Google of all companies wouldn't be so shitty at advertising.
My grandfather was a tile setter. Everything from huge granite slabs inside office buildings and store-fronts to tiny bathroom tile mosaics. His kitchen needed to be retiled, but he was always too tired after work. His house was in such state since before I was born. He retired and still his bathroom and kitchen needed tile work badly. I helped him with electrical remodels, cabinetry, painting, but when it came to the tile work, he'd do it himself. Now he's too old to do it himself, so I retiled his house of 60 years with him supervising and barely able to walk, using the tools he left me and the techniques and tricks of the trade he taught me.
I'm a programmer and cyberneticist -- an OS and game developer by hobby -- I live to code, I do computer security research wherein I discover and report exploits and even create guidelines and OS paradigms so that such bugs can not crop up again... I haven't applied my OS updates in 2 months. Granted, I don't use OSs I haven't built myself for anything requiring security, but still... I hear news of ransomware encrypting machines, and leave my cold backups -- the only preventative measure -- out of date and incomplete. My game's enemy AI code still needs training -- brain the size of small planets, but only chaotic wiring therein. I'm still having too much fun setting selection pressures and environment variables such that the simple powerups evolve to run screaming from the players, not wanting to get eaten. There's a bug in my hobby OS's heap allocator where the first block allocated can't be freed properly -- meh, that only happens on shutdown anyway, It's a simple error in the linked list via hash table, I'll get around to fixing it someday.
My mechanic friend drives a car that's severely in need of engine and body work. My neighbour is a commercial painter, has all the equipment and sprayers, and yet their garage's paint is flaking off leaving the boards in danger of rotting around the very paint cans they contain. I know a nurse who smokes and drinks and eats herself unhealthy consistently, she'll even say matter of factly, "I've stayed up late enough tonight I'll probably be sick by next week, so I can't afford to go out tomorrow."
And now you mention that Google -- The largest Advertising company online -- has shitty advertising for its own products? Well, at once I find this obvious -- par for the course -- yet am also amazed by the cybernetic implications. Probably some phenomena like confirmation bias, but the exact opposite in every detail while remaining largely the same mathematically -- a false satisfaction bias? Rather than add the ability to react appropriately firing off with deadly accuracy, perhaps tonight I'll model the mechanism by which the game's enemies' just fail to kill their hated bosses via defeatist self loathing.

Google. An Advertising Company. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-12 09:51 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

Live by the cloud, die by the cloud by Animats · 2014-01-12 10:01 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.

Re: Live by the cloud, die by the cloud by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-12 10:06 · Score: 4, Insightful

The loss of Google Scholar would be truly devastating. No one is even approaching it's usability (I'm talking to you EBSCOHost and the like). Although, considering Google's recent history of aggressively closing down things that aren't profitable it may be inevitable. Fingers crossed that this won't happen.
Re:Live by the cloud, die by the cloud by TWX · 2014-01-12 10:48 · Score: 5, Funny

Google could destroy the US robotics industry.
Oh crap, what am I going to do when I can't replace that Courier V.42bis so that people can dial in to my BBS?

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Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Re:Live by the cloud, die by the cloud by TheGratefulNet · 2014-01-12 11:31 · Score: 3, Funny

aha, so this is what google +++ is for.
OK _
(dammit)

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There was a time when I thought Giigle was cool by Urkki · 2014-01-12 10:33 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.

Re:Google. An Advertising Company. by DTemp · 2014-01-12 10:51 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.

Re:Google. An Advertising Company. by saleenS281 · 2014-01-12 11:08 · Score: 2

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.

Re:Google. An Advertising Company. by excelsior_gr · 2014-01-12 11:18 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.

Re:Google. An Advertising Company. by Swampash · 2014-01-12 11:19 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.

Re:Both cue and queue work in cases like this by istartedi · 2014-01-12 11:26 · Score: 3, Funny

The complaints do end up lining up one after another in the comments section. So both "cue" and "queue" work.

The resulting thread is exasperating and could take us anywhere, so Q (like on Star Trek) also works.

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Re: Google. An Advertising Company. by Dupple · 2014-01-12 12:05 · Score: 3, Insightful

You know they're just gonna roll it into G+ don't you?

That's how they'll try and monetize it

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Isn't it strange by BringsApples · 2014-01-12 12:33 · Score: 2

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?

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Re:Google. An Advertising Company. by AuMatar · 2014-01-13 00:51 · Score: 2

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.

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Google Confirms Shut Down of Schemer

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