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.

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.

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".

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?

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.