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."

Comments

Schemer?

[hritcu]

Google what?

Google Plus

[MrEricSir]

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

Where?

[Chompjil]

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

Re: Where?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

[VortexCortex]

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 I hear news of ransomware encrypting machines, and leave my cold backups -- the only preventative measure -- out of date and incomplete.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.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Live by the cloud, die by the cloud

[Anonymous Coward]

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:Here we go again...

[Nerdfest]

Well, unless it's based on a a free, open protocol that you can host yourself if required.

There was a time when I thought Giigle was cool

[Urkki]

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:Here we go again...

[jtownatpunk.net]

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:Live by the cloud, die by the cloud

[TWX]

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?

Re:Google. An Advertising Company.

[excelsior_gr]

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.

[Swampash]

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:Here we go again...

[Ash Vince]

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.

Re:Here we go again...

[fast turtle]

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.