Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google

#121

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 5:51 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #89

pjmlp wrote: post #46

I will save the link for every time someone points out only Microsoft changes its mind.

Not sure who you're talking to (probably 20-somethings) but Microsoft is the champion of backward compatibility. They may have floundered recently but traditionally their adherence to old models has actually been a hindrance.

Yes, you got that right.

My first computer was a Timex 2068. Like many I eventually went through a love/hate relationship with Microsoft products, to eventually realise, that when compared with many enterprise companies, Microsoft is quite good.

Re: Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google

#122

Post by fineIllregister » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 5:52 PM UTC

methehack wrote: post #114

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…

It is a little unfair, I agree. And I think it's all too easy to be snarky about other peoples hard work (haters gotta hate), especially when it doesn't work out. At the same time, Google seems to want it both ways. They have an idea and use their size to attract users and, perhaps even unintentionally, effectively block others from implementing the idea or scare others away (a size thing). Then, if they decide they…

For some projects, they could release the code as open source, like they did for Wave.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave#Open_source

Re: Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google

#123

Post by jimktrains2 » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 5:54 PM UTC

leddt wrote: post #42

jimktrains2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2012/11/google-sets-still-a... It's part of their spreadhseet now. You type things out and drag the items, like you would numbers to count. I too missed sets a lot and was very happy to have found that:)

This no longer works, unfortunately.

:( I haven't tried it in a while, so :(

Re: Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google

#124

Post by chrisfarms » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 5:57 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #37

raldi wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were some real-world situations where you used Google Sets? It always seemed to me like a cool toy without much practical use, and certainly not the most worthy sink of a good engineer's limited time.

Naming servers. Doesn't matter if you use colors, or star trek characters, or nautical terms: plug the existing servers into a set and get a couple new name suggestions.

This was my only valid use for sets too, I can kind of see why it wasn't a project worth serious time maintaining. I always thought it would eventually be integrated into Google Proper via a comma separated syntax or something.

This is my current goto for naming duties:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lists_of_lists

Re: Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google

#125

Post by dyoo1979 » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 6:02 PM UTC

xroche wrote: post #9

RIP 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 s…

SourceGraph might be interesting to look at. https://sourcegraph.com/

Re: Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google

#126

Post by bduerst » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 6:04 PM UTC

laumars wrote: post #31

skj wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

github isn't a replacement?

Yes, if the code is on Github. However not everyone who publishes code uses Github (myself included)

Why not? (I'm genuinely interested here - not trying to snark)

Re: Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google

#127

Post by nightpool » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 6:05 PM UTC

livingparadox wrote: post #118

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm yet its leaky, buggy and low-feature. Useful for casual use but nowhere near professional. When will they drop it, or break it? Like some gmail features got broken this week. Lesson: don't hang anything important on Google apps.

Google docs is fantastic. I use it exclusively (docs and sheets) and haven't seen anything buggy about it. I have never found myself a wanting a feature in google docs that wasn't also missing from Office. The only limitation I came across in sheets was the limited scope of conditional formatting. That's pretty much it.

FWIW there are a few features I would love to have in docs: different headers/footers for title pages pops out to me. Sheets is a LOT less featured then excel but the scripting is pretty excellent so that actually makes it a better product for most of what I want to do. Plus who really uses the advanced features of excel?

Re: Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google

#128

Post by Kluny » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 6:07 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #30

raldi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think github is all that and more?

GitHub's search doesn't support regular expressions. (I'm aware you can clone the repo and search it locally, but that somewhat defeats the point - especially for large projects.)

I'm pretty sure Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood, and probably a lot of other github employees, lurk around here... if you harp on it enough they'll probably make it happen.

Re: Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google

#129

Post by bduerst » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 6:07 PM UTC

Slackwise wrote: post #104

gdulli wrote: post #18

I've had this persistent nagging feeling that I shouldn't use Google Keep for anything important because it could be gone tomorrow.

I've found need for a note taking mobile app recently, but after trying to use Keep and seeing that it has zero organizational tools such as tags or folders, I just started to use Evernote instead. Frankly, it is nearly impossible to recommend Keep when Evernote exists. Until they have, at minimum, some way to organize notes, it's just a pile of notes sitting in one window. But it would still be a hard sell when comp…

I've been using OneNote, solely because I can use a keyboard shortcuts to click+drag screenshots or pop up a new ad-hoc, unfiled note immediately. Does evernote do this?

Re: Google Memorial: the small museum of projects abandoned by Google

#130

Post by notatoad » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 6:08 PM UTC

yasth wrote: post #111

stathisg wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add one more in the list, Google Talk eventually became Hangouts. The list states that it was abandoned in 2013, but it was actually still working properly at the end of 2014 when I last used it. I don't know if it works any more, since I eventually switched to hangouts (although I was reluctant to do so - https://twitter.com/StathisG/status/530740696719060992 ).

Talk was replaced by Hangouts, not became. There are important differences because talk was based on open models, and Hangouts... was not.

no, talk literally became hangouts. For the android and chrome apps at least, the change was pushed as an update to the existing talk app. There's differences between what it is now and what it was before, but it was an update.