Google To Shutter Knol, Wave, Gears

An anonymous reader writes "Google announced today on its official blog the impending closure of a number of its less successful services. In addition to retiring minor features like Bookmarks List and Friend Connect, Google has outlined a plan to close down Wave. The experimental communication medium will go read-only on January 31, and on April 30 they will shut it down completely. Also on April 30, Google will be changing Knol so that individual knols are not viewable, though users will still be able to download and export them until October 1, at which point they'll disappear entirely. Google Gears is also getting the axe, as is Search Timeline and the Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal initiative."

They cancel products left and right

[CmdrPony]

I cannot take them seriously anymore. Anyone to use them for business would be insane.

Re:Try minus the condescension

[syousef]

I hate to break it to you, but every vendor has its own agenda.

That's my freaking point, isn't it. Cloud means they get to pull the rug from under you. Most moderate to large companies and savvy individuals shoudl keep their own data in their own hands and keep at least binaries of what they want to run out of the control of the vendor. Yes it is more work and more money. Yes you can get it wrong so you have to make an effort not to. But software as a service and your apps and data on the cloud is a cancer to your ability to do anything with your own data.

Re:They cancel products left and right

[demonlapin]

Wave also was slow as hell on older/weaker computers, a problem that only compounded as the wave got longer.

Re:They cancel products left and right

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. I had to have this conversation several times. Google just sent our CEO a notice that Google Health was also going to be pulled. His comment, "That's crazy. I believed all of their bullshit about how great it would be. What else can't I use? What else do we have on Google?" He meant what products or apps that we use or develop depend on google services other than google core. Too many.

Google, at least give us a couple of years notice. Bing it is! not

Re:Welcome to the cloud!

[JoeMerchant]

They cancel them because no one really uses them.

For sufficiently imprecise definition of "no one". What you means is no one you personally care about.

Scary thing is, a community of 10,000 people could use and love a service, come to depend on it as part of their lives, but 20,000 just isn't enough eyeballs to pay the bills with advertising. Maybe Google should open an option for conversion of dying services to subscription basis instead of (addition to?) advertising?

Google has been infiltrated.

[gottabeme]

It's like that episode of TNG, "Conspiracy" [memory-alpha.org]. The leadership at Google has been infiltrated by aliens (or bean counters), and they're suddenly making decisions based on very different criteria. Google's making money hand-over-fist--they don't need to cut projects to pad the bottom line. But that's exactly what they're doing now--that and ruining the UIs of their best services. Google's eventual decline has begun sooner than expected. They're abandoning the formula that's gotten them where they are. Time to prep the lifeboats and prepare our own ships.

Re:Welcome to the cloud!

[inviolet]

That, in a nutshell, is why I have no particular interest in web applications I do not myself host. Aside from the vast privacy implications, you are totally at the mercy of the provider. A standalone, self-sufficient client with the option of web storage and/or sharing, fine. All of my work on a box run by someone who doesn't even have any contractual or regulatory obligations? No thanks.

Yep yep.

Remember when knol was first introduced? It was supposed to be a "verified wikipedia", written by experts. Those experts (you, me, anyone) were to spend a lot of time, effort, and domain knowledge in writing high-quality articles... and in return we would receive a per-click royalty. This would incentivize the creation of actionable content that would something something revolutionize something synergy something leverage.

I remember thinking through the subjects for which I am credible authority, and considering whether to produce some knols in order to develop a bit of side income. I very seriously considered it... and judging from some of the knols I've seen, lots of other people went all the way.

Now we see how it all ends up. Just like the DRM game ended up. "Oh, sorry users, but this quarter we have decided that the project isn't profitable. Or we just hired a new VP and he's shaking things up. Or whatever. We're closing it down, so f*** you and your investment, you're just an externality."

I will now NEVER, EVER contribute content to a for-profit enterprise. Be it amazon reviews or knols or sidebar markups or whatever, that's it, I'm done.