Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google
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Re: Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google
#2I really don't like things like this. A lot of these projects ended up as other projects or built into other projects.
Google checkout turned into Google Wallet. Google latitude ended up as part of the Google+ Identity overhaul.
There's also a lot of projects that are "labs" or "beta." Clearly they didn't gain the traction Google wanted from them.
Google's like any other startup on a project-by-project basis. If the idea doesn't work they pivot and drop it.
Re: Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google
#3I really don't like things like this. A lot of these projects ended up as other projects or built into other projects. Google checkout turned into Google Wallet. Google latitude ended up as part of the Google+ Identity overhaul. There's also a lot of projects that are "labs" or "beta." Clearly they didn't gain the traction Google wanted from them. Google's like any other startup on a project-by-project basis. If the…
To add one more: Writely became Google Docs -- anything but a failure.
Re: Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google
#4[deleted]
Re: Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google
#5Google Wave was simply too ahead of it's time. It's funny to see how Slack and HipChat are so similar to it. I recall it's performance being poor and people being a little confused by how much it could do.
Google Answers was destroyed by Yahoo Answers - you could see the approach they were going for though - a properly answered question can be shown again and again. SO seemed to strike a balance between the two.
Re: Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google
#6I really don't like things like this. A lot of these projects ended up as other projects or built into other projects. Google checkout turned into Google Wallet. Google latitude ended up as part of the Google+ Identity overhaul. There's also a lot of projects that are "labs" or "beta." Clearly they didn't gain the traction Google wanted from them. Google's like any other startup on a project-by-project basis. If the…
As you suggest, just because some idea was dropped doesn't mean that Google did the wrong thing. But, it also doesn't mean that they didn't abandon the idea, so it ends up here in a list. I don't see any general Google bashing yet.
Similarly, I'd put a phonograph in a museum, even though it's features have been replaced by other things.
Re: Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google
#7RIP Google Notebook. I still haven't found a good replacement for you.
Re: Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google
#8I liked Google Squared a lot and it could have been a great comparison tool. For those who never tried it, you could search for "Ultrabook" for example, and have a table with different models, the screen size, autonomy, price etc ...
Re: Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google
#9RIP Google Code Search, aka the best code search ever. No credible competitor has yet emerged, and this is a real loss for all programmers: no more easy searching for sample code in obscure WIN32 Api, easy searching for arch-specific POSIX implementation details used by various open source projects, global error message grepping, and countless other little things which are not incredibly painful and difficult. I am still puzzled that we suffered such a tremendous regression.
Re: Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google
#10Google Wave was simply too ahead of it's time. It's funny to see how Slack and HipChat are so similar to it. I recall it's performance being poor and people being a little confused by how much it could do. Google Answers was destroyed by Yahoo Answers - you could see the approach they were going for though - a properly answered question can be shown again and again. SO seemed to strike a balance between the two.
Google Wave was a collaborative editor. It was nothing like Slack or HipChat (unless I've managed to really misunderstand Slack despite building a few things on top of it). It's problem was that it didn't have a purpose - no one really knew what to do with it because a "Wave" was presented an amorphous blob of "knowledge" that people could contribute to at the same time. It was an online notepad, sketchbook, and spreadsheet all at the same time, yet it was also none of those things because you couldn't easily get the document out of Wave.
Wave was a textbook example of how you can fail if people don't understand why they should use your product. They gave up on it (by handing it to the Apache Foundation where it continues to be developed), rolled the clever collaboration technology into Google Docs, and told everyone they'd made it so you could edit a doc at the same time as someone else. Everyone continues to love it to this day.