Google Terminates Six Services 195
Jonah Bomber writes with this excerpt from Information Week:
"In addition to Google's announcements about the elimination of 100 recruiting positions and the shutdown of offices in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden, the company said it would close Dodgeball, Google Catalog Search, Google Mashup Editor, Google Notebook, and Jaiku. It also said it's discontinuing the ability to upload videos to Google Video. ... Jaiku, however, will live on as an open source project. Gundotra said that Google engineers have been porting the microblogging service to Google App Engine and that when the migration is completed, the company plans to make the code available under the Apache license."
Highlights one of the problems.. (Score:5, Insightful)
This just highlights one of the negative aspects of using services out there on the net - if it's not running on your physical hardware it can be closed when the company decides it's not profitable to carry on with it. In the case of these services I doubt there's anyone relying on them to do business, but that definitely isn't the case for things that run in the various compute clouds, or small companies migrating to things like Google Docs, GMail or Google Calendar.
I wouldn't run anything business critical on something I couldn't replace very easily.
Obscure services (Score:5, Insightful)
Much of the reason why Google became popular was because of its clean front page. Other search engines like Altavista made you load a pile of superfluous stuff when you just wanted to search. But this has come back to bite Google because unless you hunt them out, you'll never know most of Google's services even exist.
Re:Uploads longer than 10:59? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe nobody cares about your gaming videos? And maybe it is because of junk like that they are closing it down?
Re:Dear asshats @ google: (Score:2, Insightful)
Shouldn't you be mad at your school district for blocking youtube instead of google for shutting down a redundant video service?
I just don't see the logic in your rant.
Re:Uploads longer than 10:59? (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.wegame.com/ [wegame.com] ?
Re:Highlights one of the problems.. (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't unique to 'services on the net'. Services -anywhere- are subject to this. Nothing has changed.
What you really mean is 'software running on computers you don't control.'
As as someone already pointed out, this is less of a problem for people who are paying for their service, rather than getting them for free.
So what you really mean is 'software that you don't pay for, running on computers you don't control.'
Why is it such a big surprise that it could go away?
The cloud is BS (Score:0, Insightful)
How can we trust the "cloud" if it won't be there?
Re:Uploads longer than 10:59? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know how the web has gotten so centralized.
Its pretty obvious why it got centralized. End users never had the necessary upstream bandwidth, often weren't even allowed to run their own servers, didn't have machines up 24/7, didn't have the knowledge to build their own webpages, didn't want to spend money to rent their own servers, etc. Add to that, that centralized content specific servers provide much better search and user interface then a random collection of pages on the web and it becomes pretty obvious why the web is the way it is today.
Re:Obscure services (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you look for something you don't even know exists?
SaaS (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why Software as a Service is never a good idea. You can have a ton of data stored on that service and it can be discontinued at any time. This is why when I do use Google Docs, I have the data backed up on our own site, and this is also why I won't use Microsoft Live! alternatives to Office.
It is designed to create vendor lock-in. I do not trust the likes of Microsoft to provide a data export option should they decide the service is not working. Thankfully Google has at least up to now been honorable in providing the means to retrieve data even when products have ceased, and provided PLENTY of notice (we knew what, two years ago that Google Video was going to die?) when discontinuation of hosted services were planned.
In light of this. F/OSS and "shared source" solutions you host yourself (or at least have FULL access to not only the data but also the code) is the best solution, and even proprietary/closed-source shrinkwrap software where you have both the software and the data in-house are the best solutions. Even closed-source software with craptivation, er, activation and per-use license verification schemes are vastly superior because should the vendor die, cracking the checks to continue your right of first sale to use the product can still be exercised in the very worst cases.
In this case users are fortunate it's Google services because as stated above Google provides plenty of notice and the means to retrieve data - and in the case of some tools have even have open source so you can continue use of the service in your own hosted environment. Don't expect that to be the case with other SaaS solutions when they are terminated.
Re:Highlights one of the problems.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. As a Google Notebook user, I found it very fast and easy to access. The cost (in clicks) of getting into a Google doc and organizing said doc after is much higher than with Notebook, plus there was an integrated FF plugin that made it very useful for clipping pages.
While Google's statement is "no new development", I think odds are that it will be shuttered completely within 24 months as other notebook services' (Evernote, Zoho) feature sets become compelling enough for existing GNotebook users to migrate, thus lessening the outcry when Google does pull the plug.
I'm sad that they're closing it down, but if you've got to end a service, this is a good course of action.
Right to work (Score:3, Insightful)
I teach at a school district where YouTube is blocked.
If you need YouTube to do your job, and your administrators decline to provide YouTube to instructors, are the private schools hiring? That's the beauty of America: you can choose to work for a different organization that provides the appropriate tools.
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not running MS-Windows, you insensitive clod!
It is the beginning (Score:1, Insightful)
I pity the folk who've moved their core business services onto Google Apps.
How long will it be before Google determines Google Apps as "unprofitable", and closes them down? Google has it's fist wrapped tightly around your gonads.