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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

#61

Post by throwawaymsft »

raldi wrote: post #28
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.

The chances of it being "gone" tomorrow are basically zero. The worst thing that could happen tomorrow would be an announcement that in 60 days, no new Keep items could be added, and you'll have a year to download all your old ones as text, HTML, or JSON.

The hassle of having to switch is a giant burden though. Imagine grep was replaced every 3-4 years on your machine with some new, slightly different regex tool.

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

#64

Post by Aldo_MX »

res0nat0r wrote: post #54
rdtsc wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really don't like things like this. Really? Can you explain more why. Is there an article accompanying it that shames Google or says anything bad about it. To me it just looks like a company that iterates and is trying new things. > A lot of these projects ended up as other projects or built into other projects. Well it would be bad if they completely threw away the code, and then hired a whole new group of peopl…

Nah, the whole reason it exists, and is linked here is to try and pile on that Google is terrible and shuts down products that everyone in the world loves. But the reality is the minor minor subset of the world that is HN loved some of these projects and were upset no one else used them, thus they were shut down. I haven't seen any accompanying MS articles like this, mainly because there haven't been angry posts here…

> I haven't seen any accompanying MS articles like this, mainly because there haven't been angry posts here of MS shutting down products

Quite the contrary, people seem to be happy when MS shuts down a product.

http://ie6countdown.com

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

#65

Post by tedunangst »

raldi wrote: post #44
eli wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn't work if you plug them into regular web search?

Have you tried googling for "kirk spock"? You don't get a list of other star trek characters.

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

#66

Post by arihant »

I always wondered why Google didn't spin off some of this as open source projects.

It seems to me that the bottleneck wasn't the hosting, but the man hours being wasted on them. Google could have reduced their involvement to providing an API and the development could have been managed by community.

It's easier said than done, obviously. Maybe the bottleneck was psychological and focus related, and they wanted to wipe the slate clean?

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

#67

Post by eplanit »

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".

I don't really see how it is awkward or hurts relationships with consumers (especially when most all products and services are free) -- it's a form of market research and product testing. Who needs focus groups when you have the world?

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

#68

Post by Navarr »

rdtsc wrote: post #52
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…

> I really don't like things like this. Really? Can you explain more why. Is there an article accompanying it that shames Google or says anything bad about it. To me it just looks like a company that iterates and is trying new things. > A lot of these projects ended up as other projects or built into other projects. Well it would be bad if they completely threw away the code, and then hired a whole new group of peopl…

I volunteer time for a project called The Shotbow Network - it's a Minecraft game network. We've got lots of projects, and there are features etc that we hype up and then either cancel or don't release.

Inevitably, though, everything that went into building either those mini-games or that feature for another game ends up in all of our future projects.

This sort of thing makes it look like those projects are completely dead, despite the fact that they live on either in full or in part under rebranded names or driving Google's next big feature.

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

#69

Post by tedunangst »

sotiris-k wrote: post #56
laumars wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

not everyone used Google Code either. What's your point?

Code Search searched a lot more than just what was stored on Google. What's your point?

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

#70

Post by Navarr »

arihant wrote: post #66

I always wondered why Google didn't spin off some of this as open source projects. It seems to me that the bottleneck wasn't the hosting, but the man hours being wasted on them. Google could have reduced their involvement to providing an API and the development could have been managed by community. It's easier said than done, obviously. Maybe the bottleneck was psychological and focus related, and they wanted to wipe…

Some of their projects were, see "Google Wave" (now "Apache Wave") [1]

[1]: http://incubator.apache.org/wave/

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