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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."
How long until they shut down Google Plus? Please tell me it's soon.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
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.
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.
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?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.
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.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown