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The Abandoned Google Project Memorial Page
HughPickens.com writes: Quentin Hugon, Benjamin Benoit and Damien Leloup have created a memorial page for projects adandoned by Google over the years including: Google Answers, Lively, Reader, Deskbar, Click-to-Call, Writely, Hello, Send to Phone, Audio Ads, Google Catalogs, Dodgeball, Ride Finder, Shared Stuff, Page Creator, Marratech, Goog-411, Google Labs, Google Buzz, Powermeter, Real Estate, Google Directory, Google Sets, Fast Flip, Image Labeler, Aardvark, Google Gears, Google Bookmarks, Google Notebook, Google Code Search, News Badges, Google Related, Latitude, Flu Vaccine Finder, Google Health, Knol, One Pass, Listen, Slide, Building Maker, Meebo, Talk, SMS, iGoogle, Schemer, Notifier, Orkut, Hotpot, Music Trends, Refine, SearchWiki, US Government Search, Sparrow, Web Accelerator, Google Accelerator, Accessible Search, Google Video, and Helpouts. Missing from the list that we remember are Friend Connect, Google Radio Ads, Jaiku, SideWiki, and Wave.
We knew there were a lot, but who knew there'd be so many. Which abandoned Google project do you wish were still around?
We knew there were a lot, but who knew there'd be so many. Which abandoned Google project do you wish were still around?
>Which abandoned Google project do you wish were still around?
Don't be evil.
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
They used to have a great search engine, but then they replaced it with something that keeps second-guessing my search terms.
I miss Google Reader, their RSS reader.
By the way, 90% of these projects don't ring any bell.
Except for Meebo.
Meebo was awesome, and while we're at it, it was NOT a Google project. It was an independent startup which was acquired and then left to rot.
I remember using Meebo from machines which had Yahoo Messenger ports blocked and each time I was using it I was gaping at how beautiful it was. AJAX was "da shit" back then, and Meebo implemented it b-e-a-utifully.
I still despise Google for axing it.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Google+ and Hangouts
I loved Google Reader. All other 3rd party solutions like Feedly, etc, all just don't work the same. What I ended up doing was setting up my own instance of Tiny Tiny RSS on my shared web host I already had. Has a great Android client app, works for me. http://tt-rss.org/
https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e
Abandoned while new devices with those versions are still being sold.
Those aren't "new devices", those are "old devices, still being manufactured by vendors who are unable to come up with new devices in a timely fashion", or they are "old devices that used to live in a warehouse, and which are now being sold at a discount, because no one would buy them otherwise".
Let this be a reminder of why Software as a Service should be avoided when local software can be used instead. How much user data is now lost forever(1) because Google suddenly decided it didn't want to bother?
1) Well, it's kept away from the user; what Google decided to keep is entirely up to Google.
I have pretty much missed this on a regular basis since it was discontinued. I own a Note 4 and can use the google search app but some times I want to be able to do it hands free and S Voice is way more awkward then Goog-411 was.
They carve a niche, realize it's a niche, abandon it.
Then open source solutuions come in to fill the gap and i make myself use them. May the trend continue.
-- "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." --Dijkstra
Gmail Paper gets my vote.
One click, and the next thing I knew the door bell was ringing and a print out was delivered to my door. How handy is that???
Too bad the service only lasted for one day in April.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
Nope it's google's fault. In order to go the whole hog and have all the google apps etc, the vendors have to do certain things. Google could easily have insisted on upgrades, or a standard hardware model (like PCs have) and so on. They didn't because old stuff is for losers.
They've finally grown up a bit and realised that it's their responsibility and they're trying to retrofit in OTA upgrades by making almost every component except the kernel and filesystem layout upgradable via the app store.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Like others have said, Reader was a true loss. But equally high on my list was "iGoogle" (ie. a Google-powered home page). It had widgets for everything I wanted, it was easily configurable ... basically it was the perfect home page.
www.ighome.com has tried to recreate it, but the quality of engineering is seriously lacking. Many of the widgets don't work, and if you leave it open in a tab for too long the memory leaks in it start chewing up all your RAM (Google's version never did that).
I don't know why Google Alerts isn't considered dead.
I have not received an alert from then about anything in over two years. Which is very unfortunate as I relied on it for my company. I would have it alert me anytime it was mentioned so I could watch for trouble, positive and negative reviews, etc. My company is still around and making news, but the alerts just stopped showing up.
Sure, eventually. But keep doing it too soon and when transitioning to something else is too painful and people will start avoiding your new shiny so it doesn't get yanked out from under them later.
"old" most definitely should be in quotes. You're talking about EOL for something that's only 2.5 years old. Windows 7 is 5 years old and you can still find a few computers with Windows 7.
Except that when you do it too often, you get a reputation as a company that you can't trust. I mean hell...even Google+ which was launched with more fanfare than ANY Google undertaking the past few years is now getting the step motherly treatment.
Google taught me one important lesson - when it comes to online services, choose companies that do ONE thing, and do it well. Don't use stuff from conglomorates that have their fingers in dozens of pies. That way, each service gets the attention it deserves, releases updates regularly, and never loses focus.
Ergo, I use Lastpass instead of Google Chrome's password manager, am trying to transition away from Google+, and don't want to use Google Keep. I now use Google for their mature products only - Gmail, Search, Android, and Chrome.
I lost all my Google Health data, my Google Wave data, my Google Buzz data, and my Google reader feeds (at least I could transition that one). Moral of the story: Stick to single service companies.
I miss Google Maps. The laggy pile of trash they have now makes me go to Bing when I want to map things out now.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I thought Google Real Estate using the old Google maps was impressive, accurate and fast. The new Google maps is slow and horrible. I am not really impressed by Trulia or Zillow compared to the old Google Real Estate.
There was another Google graveyard site which had little tombstones where we could deposit flowers. I remember visiting it around Google Wave's closure. But I can't find it now. Does anyone know where it is?
> Which abandoned Google project do you wish were still around?
Latitude, by a wide margin. As a built-in to Maps, Latitude was a very useful resource. When Google pulled it from Maps, where it arguably belonged, and hammered it into Google Plus to try to drive users there, I tried to continue using the feature, but all the fluff and baggage in G+ made it a terrible user experience. I switched to Waze, even though it's more clunky to use, but dropped that a couple years ago when Google bought them out. For now, I just do without the feature.
When daughter was in school I would use Latitude as added confirmation that she had gotten home safely. Now that she's an adult I arguably don't need it anymore, but I miss the security of knowing where she is.
Somewhat less important but still worth mentioning is Google Talk. My circle of friends were early adopters and have a long history with the tool. I still use whatever they call it now... Hangouts? ...on the Android phone but still use Talk on the desktop because I really can't stand the Desktop version of Hangouts. Looks and useability have taken a big step backwards. I occasionally get email from Google "we notice you're still using Talk. Please switch to Hangouts". So far I've been able to ignore it.
Sometimes it seems like Google is their own worst enemy. They come out with well-written, useable apps that fill a real need, and then just when you develop a dependence, crap all over them. And so, for instance, instead of using the Latitude features of G+ to broadcast my location, I use Facebook's "check in" feature. It doesn't work as well, but I don't have any other reason to use G+ (only, like, three of my friends have accounts) and I'm already a Facebook user. I still use Google Maps occasionally, it's a good app. It'd be a better app if Latitude still worked.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I miss iGoogle the most from that list. There are third party options that work (specifically I use igHome), but I liked iGoogle better.
I also miss the old version of Google Voice. At least it is still functional as part of Hangouts, but I like the simplicity of the Google Voice layout more than with Hangouts.
In what world do PCs have a standard hardware model?
Case size/shape- nope.
Cpu socket- nope.
RAM type- nope.
Peripheral bus- nope.
The only thing that all PCs have in common is a CPU instruction set. And not even 100% on that (x86-64 or IA64 was a battle not too long ago).
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Reading this my first thought was "What if that single-service company goes out of business?" Is it really any different for a single-focus company to go out of business than for a Google (etc) product to be discontinued?
I loved Google Reader too, and was happy to be able to move over to Feedly pretty easily because Reader allowed me to export my data.
Maybe what we really want is not companies that have a single focus, but rather companies that allow us to move our data/patronage elsewhere?
A friend had a small side business which made use of Gears. When Gears went away, it wasn't worth the effort to redesign, so the biz shut down.
Though it was trivial, it does make me nervous about basing anything critical on Google services.
WALSTIB!
Let's say you need to tweak an old MFC app, and you search for "CString". Many of the results you get back are now NSFW :-(.
I tried using my phone to search for the nearest Kinkos. The spellcheck changed it to "Kinky".
I guess this tells me a lot about the sorts of things that average people search for.
Nobody else knew it existed, which meant there wasn't a crapflood of angry reviews everywhere. I used it to put hours of operation notes on a bunch of local businesses that didn't list them, and in the case of one oddly-set-up webpage, instructions on how to get it to work. (Trying to get samples from a company that for whatever reason ships to just about every country in the world save the US, and if you email them about it they say oh yeah register as canadian and give a us address, rather than registering with a us address, submitting the sample request, and simply never getting any sort of response at all.)
Sidewiki would have become useless if it had been popular, but as an almost unknown service, it was extremely useful.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Nope it's google's fault. In order to go the whole hog and have all the google apps etc, the vendors have to do certain things.
You mean change these things?
Carrier business model:
(1) Contractually obligate you for 2 years
(2) Entice you with "upgraded phone" every 18 months
(3) Prevent them upgrading their own phone and escaping carrier lock-in after 2 years
(4) Benefit from customer lock in
(5) Goto 2
Cell phone vendor business model:
(1) Bring a new phone to market
(2) Contract with a carrier/seller who considers it enough of an upgrade to entice an early re-up on a customer contract
(3) Start work on the next phone to sell more hardware
(4) Goto 1
Phone OS vendor business model:
(1) Continuously work on the OS
(2) Convince cell phone vendor to use OS
(3) Cell phone vendor takes snapshot of tree
(3)(a) Cell phone vendor productizes snapshot, because OS vendor could not produce a finished product to save their mother
(4) Goto 1
Admittedly, Google would *like* to change things, but at this point, it's really kind of too late; they should have started with lock-in to their own App store.
Apple doesn't have this problem because the next iPhone only has to compete with the previous iPhone, and Apple *actually* tends to improve the iPhone hardware in a less-than 18 month cycle (which keeps the carriers happy), and it doesn't have to fight with all the other cell phone vendors for mind share because, hey, where else are you going to run all those apps/listen to all that music/watch all those movies, that you've already paid for.
Apple has App-based lock-in, and 18 month upgrade cycle carrier satisfaction, and they sell both the hardware and the software, so there's no hardware company to push-back on software updates, and there's no PITA continuous development cycle that prevents software updates from being polished products to push back the other direction.
Google could *probably*, *eventually* fix things, if they were willing to swallow some incredibly bitter pills, and if they were to do profit-sharing of App revenue with the hardware vendors so that the hardware vendors for Android device were willing to be commoditized, but ... it would be an incredibly bitter pill, to have to change their development model away from waterfall, and it would be an incredibly bitter pill to lock down Apps and side-loading.
Android App Inventor was my favorite
choose companies that do ONE thing, and do it well
I did. I chose the company which does integration.
I used to be all for specialised apps, but these days I'm getting sick of lack of interoperability and trying to make things behave together. I could store contacts and backup my phone onto any cloud service, but really I could just tick the backup icon on Android and have it link to my gmail account. I search for a location on my desktop and when I get to my car I can automatically navigate from my phone because everything is linked in a common way.
Yes the privacy implications are huge. But really I'm getting sick of doing everything twice.
Likewise I'm about to drop owncloud which I setup years ago. Onedrive integrates with windows and all office applications seemlessly, as does sharepoint. Owncloud is superior in control and privacy aspects, but for me convenience is really starting to win out.
And that's why I use Google services.
So, you're the one!
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. -Gandhi
Touché :P
The pressing question though is whether there's a void for someone else to fill if Google starts making Android a true iOS clone by nixing sideloading. They've inched closer than ever with Lollipop, and I don't see that changing going forward. Meanwhile, no sideloading means that Amazon loses whatever Android customers were using Android phones. While the Fire tablets are surely the biggest slice of the Amazon App Store/Music Store pie, I don't know if they'd just pack up and go home if Google locked them out. Conversely, I don't know if the disappearance of F-Droid, Appbrain, AAS, and other third party app stores would be the tipping point that would prevent people from pining for the Galaxy S7.
Is Android too big to fail? At this point, I'm stuck saying 'yes', at least for now.
It's a difficult question.
Can you side-load on an iPhone? Yes, you can. There are three ways:
(1) Jailbreak the device; some people are willing to do this. The preeminent reason is to work around carrier limitations on tethering/hotspotting to get around the fact that the carrier has unlimited data on some phone plans, but either does not permit, or has capped charges for, tethering/hotspotting through the phone, or through mobile hotspots. Other than a few applications to work around Apple/carrier agreements, or add functionality Apple doesn't/won't approve, this is not so big these days.
(2) Enroll the device as a developer device using a developer certificate. This allows you a limited number of devices, however, and isn't useful for wide scale distribution. It's a dead end.
(3) Enroll the device as an enterprise device. There are already Chinese "app stores" which do this; you enroll voluntarily, or the phone comes already enrolled when you purchase it from the vendor, and they install an enterprise cert, signed by Apple, which allows them to run their own distribution system. Typically, they pirate U.S. Apps, rewrap them, resign them, and then sell them on the cheap, giving no money back to the authors. In addition, there's often malware included with the applications sold this way. Apple hates it, and I have no doubt, there's active work on enterprise support to prevent this, going forward.
So side-loading isn't the biggest issue, since if there's a will, there's a way, and Android would also end up with methods similar to these thre to increase the difficult of, but not eliminate, side-loading.
The flip side of this is that, unless they do something, the pure *volume* of malware for Android will almost certainly kill their viability as an app platform eventually, even if it's not going to happen today or tomorrow.
The biggest problem with Android, with regard to apps, is that there are are too many targets.
Apple is in the process of screwing themselves over this way, for short term monetary gains that will likely not have long term value for them. At a minimum, a developer has to target 7 iOS platforms at this point in time - even if that ends up being wrapped up in a single distribution package, so it looks like a single thing in the App store. In addition, video content is split between 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios. Apple eats the transcoding costs and the duplicate CDN costs for these, but the decision to change the device means twice as much content has to be carried around.
But 7 is manageable, if you are targeting the same OS version, or an earlier but forward compatible OS version for all devices.
The Android ecosystem is the wild west, in comparison. And automatic updating of Android versions on older devices won't gloss over hardware differences in input methods, sensors, and so on.
So...
(1) Yes, there's room. If Samsung wanted to own this, they probably could, just by standardizing minimal feature set on their entire product line, and then forcing version updates on the carrier, or making sufficiently compelling new devices that the carrier doesn't think the version updates will impact their 18 month
Is Chrome on the list yet?
(posted using SeaMonkey)
If I had to chose one project for killing which I would hate Google, it would be Google Notebook. With browser plugin it was one of the best tools for doing online and offline research I have ever used. They claimed that it could be replaced by Google Docs, but GD is nowhere close to the functionality and convenience Notebook offered. Another project I missed was Google Reader, however I found Feedly to be a decent replacement.
For projects that have been virtually killed by Google's "improvements", my personal number one are Google Groups. Started as Deja's Usenet archive, but over the years has been turned into unusable and annoying as hell post browser, with all the amazing search functionality gone.
Google Maps is also turning into unusable, bloated piece of junk. So far I still can revert to the old interface, but once this option is gone, I will have to look for other online mapping solutions.
Google Wave was really cool idea and service. Thankfully the Apache Wave exists now but without a large corporation pushing it the chances of it getting anywhere are slim at best. Oh, and I wonder where Google left its "Don't be evil" mentality.
I also hope to see Google Plus on the memorial page as soon as possible. But for the sake of fairness it should be mentioned that as a service G+ is better than the Facebook. OH AND THE CURRENT USER INTERFACE of the Youtube. It's absolutely horrible and dysfunctional.
In what world do PCs have a standard hardware model?
The BIOS followed by a bunch of self-descovery mechanisms. This is why a generic Linux kernel will operate on almost any PC, but a generic ARM can't.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You do realize we are the only country to do that. The one reason Xiami isn't here has to do with that.
Google had a decent tool that would sync a calendar in Outlook with Google Calendar. It was a simple way to keep my work calendar visible on my phone. When one of their upgrades stopped it from working I just installed an old version. Finally they killed it entirely last year. Probably because there was no revenue stream. Pity.
Smile, it makes people wonder what you're up to.
the Do No Evil project. I miss that one.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.