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

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

#91

Post by lmm » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 4:33 PM UTC

s_dev wrote: post #5

Google 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.

The funny part is how for years we pretended Jabber was good and we couldn't understand why no-one was using it. There are a few critical pieces of functionality that you seemingly can't get with that protocol - being able to sign in from multiple devices and have messages sent to all of them, groupchats as a first-class thing (highlighting when you're mentioned but not otherwise), mobile support.

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

#92

Post by jastanton » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 4:35 PM UTC

weslly wrote: post #74

It's sad to see Sparrow there. It has been almost 3 years and I still didn't find any good alternative.

I came here to say the same, I use sparrow every day and all day. Best email app I have ever used.

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

#93

Post by ericfontaine » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 4:36 PM UTC

Google Ride finder • 2007 - 2009

Wow...killed the same year Uber was founded. Missed out on a nice market opportunity...probably just needed to be refined, remarketed and keep it going. (I never even heard about it.)

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

#94

Post by gnufied » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 4:38 PM UTC

raldi wrote: post #22

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…

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

My primary use of Google Code search was, searching for this rare function (like a POSIX one) whose man page I can't understand and is largely undocumented elsewhere. I would often try to understand how other projects are using this function via internet-wide code search. :D

While Github is great, I think it still hosts only a small fraction of all the code that is public.

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

#95

Post by edem » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 4:39 PM UTC

Please add a hand icon when I hover over a box. It will make me think that each box is clickable (they are) and the UX is improved that way.

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

#96

Post by Slackwise » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 4:40 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #10

s_dev wrote: post #5

Google 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 spre…

Google Wave was an XMPP-based protocol¹. It allowed communication and collaboration with revisioning. It could have been embedded into applications such as office suites, giving you collaboration and communication right inside the app.

Wave.google.com was an example product using said protocol. Since the protocol was barely spoken of, even by developers, everyone assumed the website was the (only) product. Since the website did a lot of things, and none of it well, often being compared to email, it flopped and the entire project folded..

Now the project lives on in obscurity under Apache: http://incubator.apache.org/wave/about.html

¹ Technically, the "Wave Federation Protocol", but anyone that really looked into Wave would know that the protocol was the most important element of the project.

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

#97

Post by theandrewbailey » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 4:41 PM UTC

stathisg wrote: post #84

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 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 ).

It was working up until last week or so. I got an email saying that "it looks like you're trying to use talk. we've discontinued it."

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

#98

Post by theandrewbailey » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

edem wrote: post #95

Please add a hand icon when I hover over a box. It will make me think that each box is clickable (they are) and the UX is improved that way.

Also, don't use white on yellow. Ever.

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

#99

Post by maratd » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

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…

> If the idea doesn't work they pivot and drop it.

Which is nice for Google, but screws over the users. If you're a user, you should be well aware that Google's products are unreliable and are there as an experiment.

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

#100

Post by ignostic » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

Wow, I've forgotten how many Google products I used that were abandoned at some point. I counted 15 that I've used.

To be fair, some of these didn't die - they were renamed, graduated, or folded into another project. Google Talk actually still works on Google Chat if you have the old client. Google Listen became Google Music, Checkout was mostly folded into Wallet, etc.

Sidenote: if you are the developer, that yellow-on-white is almost completely unreadable. I know flat pastels are in, but I have to either strain or open the box to highlight.