Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google

Post by hobs » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 3:24 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #38

adamkochanowicz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wave was a replacement to email, not exactly an online "notepad." It wasn't about documents at all, no more so than email today is. So you're right that it's not like Slack or Hipchat, but I think you may also misunderstand its purpose.

Google pitched it as a replacement for email (another reason for people being confused about it's purpose) but the reality was that it was absolutely nothing like email. A wave was a document that you could edit with other people. The 'about' page: https://web.archive.org/web/20100427183005/http://wave.googl... Actually, looking at the screenshot on that page, I can see why s_dev sees it as something like Slack. It h…

Post by wahsd » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 3:27 PM UTC

und3rw4t3rp00ps wrote: post #33

Navarr wrote: post #2

I 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 me, this is evidence of Google's rather awkward relationship with consumers (i.e. they toss tons of branded endeavors at us, see what sticks), and not a knock against fearlessly trying things or whatever. The best brands are coy and careful with their identity... google sorta slops it around. this is a list of failed consumer facing products more than it is a list of "bad ideas".

Post by nadams » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 3:35 PM UTC

Post by dannyr » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 3:36 PM UTC

minikites wrote: post #36

Remember this before you rely too much on a Google product. Google isn't Microsoft and that's okay, but one of Microsoft's strong points is that they keep things around forever. Google still has the start-up culture where you can throw things away that aren't working. The difference is, in most start-ups, you don't have millions of people using the product you just threw away.

Post by swalsh » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 3:44 PM UTC

bane wrote: post #58

This flakiness is really hurting Google's B2B business. Google tends to do things in a particularly proprietary Googly way that locks companies in, but the history of killing off products makes nobody want to commit to that. Thus the B2B offerings underperform, making it more likely they'll get killed off. I follow google reasonably closely and I haven't even heard of a good 40% of these.