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?

Comments

This one

[tehlinux]

>Which abandoned Google project do you wish were still around?

Don't be evil.

Re:This one

[thedonger]

Google Notebook. I was so pissed when they dropped support for it.

Re:This one

[Noah Haders]

for all intents and purposes google glass is gone.

Re:This one

[machineghost]

That's like saying for all intents and purposes the iPhone is gone because the iPhone S is coming out. Glass isn't gone, it's just being retooled for a v2.

Re:This one

[penguinoid]

I'd have been satisfied if they had merely maintained a credible pretense of not being evil.

I miss Google Search

[Anonymous Coward]

They used to have a great search engine, but then they replaced it with something that keeps second-guessing my search terms.

Re:I miss Google Search

[crunchygranola]

This is what I miss most. At one time Yahoo and Google were competing in desktop search and you had two powerful engines to choose between.

And the way they dropped their desktop search application was infuriating - it was dropped with less than a week's notice, which was little publicized (I missed it) so you did not have a chance to save the installer (assuming it was complete in itself), and they did not open source the code base so that others could maintain it.

Now the best I have for Linux systems is Recoll, it seems. Pretty effective on common formats, but clunky, and no features to keep the index up-to-date. (If anyone knows something better, please tell me.)

Re:I miss Google Search

[nmb3000]

They used to have a great search engine, but then they replaced it with something that keeps second-guessing my search terms.

Probably the most annoying part of this for me is the blazingly stupid way they'll just drop words from your query. There have been times when I submit a phrase with 4 or 5 search terms, and most of the first page is filled with results that have 3 or 4 of the words crossed out. The results were useless garbage and I'd rather have been told there were no pages found. Along with this is the absolutely horrible decision to remove the functionality of the (+) symbol to mean "required". I don't know what social media asshats at Google made this call, but I curse them every time I have to put double quotes around a bunch of individual words just so the aforementioned query "optimizer" doesn't screw with it.

I'm pretty sure that bad design on Google's part combined with the constant abuse of the system by "SEO specialists" has turned Google Search into something inferior to what we had 10 years ago. Oh, and don't forget the malicious adwords results serving up malware for popular software titles. That's always a winner.

Re:I miss Google Search

[LinuxIsGarbage]

I remember when Google first came out it assumed a boolean AND for the search terms instead of boolean OR like most other sites. This was huge as right away you got results for what you searched. Then they started searching using boolean OR, and searched for related words. First you could use "+" to force boolean AND, they removed that and you have to put it in quotes. It's like they're trying to make it harder to use.

Reader

[Pascal Sartoretti]

I miss Google Reader, their RSS reader.

By the way, 90% of these projects don't ring any bell.

Re:Reader

[tlambert]

Too bad you didn't step up to the plate and become the maintainer, when Google offered to give the source code away to anyone who wanted to run their own "Google Reader" service.

It is not a problem of code, it is a problem of providing the service

When Google originally offered the code, they offered to host it on Google's hosted infrastructure service for a year, at no charge, until the project got up on its feet. There were no takers.

This will probably be moderated down as well... however, yes, "providing the service" is *exactly* the problem, and it's *exactly* why Google cancelled the thing when the back end hosting infrastructure APIs changed out from under the (unmaintained) Reader codebase. The maintainers had moved onto other projects.

And while Google could have either brought them back (the ones who wanted to revisit their old code), or they could have put new hires on the porting problem, and gotten Reader back on its feet on the new hosting infrastructure, it wouldn't have solved the basic problem.

The basic problem is that there was no sustainable revenue model for the service. Google's Reader service allowed the use of any client that someone cared to write, and a heck of a lot of people wanted to write clients that excluded advertising as a means of supporting the costs of running the service. Which would be fine, if there were any way to charge for it, *other* than advertising, which didn't break the client/back-end-service model, which is what people *liked most* about Reader in the first place.

So Google didn't throw good money after bad, and no one else stepped up to throw good money after bad, and (possibly) figure out some other way to monetize the service, such as changing the over the wire representation such that advertising was indistinguishable from content. Which wouldn't have worked, since that would just trigger an arms race for clever advertising exclusionary filtering in the display services, instead of at the protocol level.

So you're right: "it is a problem of providing the service", and the specific problem is "no one wanted to pay to do that".

Re:Things aren't supposed to live forever.

[war4peace]

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.

And things we wish would join the list

[aaron4801]

Google+ and Hangouts

Re:And things we wish would join the list

[edremy]

What's wrong with Hangouts? You have a better option for a free video conferencing service that can handle ten people at a time?

Goog-411

[SlashdotWanker]

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.

Re:Things aren't supposed to live forever.

[sjames]

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.

Re:Things aren't supposed to live forever.

[bhagwad]

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.

Google Maps

[wiredlogic]

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.

Re:Google Maps

[Clifton Beach]

Switch back to the old version of Google maps

Real Estate

[mike2006]

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.

which project?

[roc97007]

> 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.

Re:Single Service, or open/data-portable?

[bhagwad]

True, both can go out of business. But it's my experience that single focus companies take more care of their product. I remember far too many abandoned Google services that just stopped receiving any love. Not that they lost users or anything...just abandoned.

Prime example: Feedburner. It's still hugely used by bloggers around the world. But the last update from Google was when? 5-6 years ago?

Re:Android 4.3

[serviscope_minor]

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.