The Abandoned Google Project Memorial Page 150
HughPickens.com writes: Quentin Hugon, Benjamin Benoit and Damien Leloup have created a memorial page for projects adandoned by Google over the years including: Google Answers, Lively, Reader, Deskbar, Click-to-Call, Writely, Hello, Send to Phone, Audio Ads, Google Catalogs, Dodgeball, Ride Finder, Shared Stuff, Page Creator, Marratech, Goog-411, Google Labs, Google Buzz, Powermeter, Real Estate, Google Directory, Google Sets, Fast Flip, Image Labeler, Aardvark, Google Gears, Google Bookmarks, Google Notebook, Google Code Search, News Badges, Google Related, Latitude, Flu Vaccine Finder, Google Health, Knol, One Pass, Listen, Slide, Building Maker, Meebo, Talk, SMS, iGoogle, Schemer, Notifier, Orkut, Hotpot, Music Trends, Refine, SearchWiki, US Government Search, Sparrow, Web Accelerator, Google Accelerator, Accessible Search, Google Video, and Helpouts. Missing from the list that we remember are Friend Connect, Google Radio Ads, Jaiku, SideWiki, and Wave.
We knew there were a lot, but who knew there'd be so many. Which abandoned Google project do you wish were still around?
We knew there were a lot, but who knew there'd be so many. Which abandoned Google project do you wish were still around?
This one (Score:5, Insightful)
>Which abandoned Google project do you wish were still around?
Don't be evil.
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for all intents and purposes google glass is gone.
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That's like saying for all intents and purposes the iPhone is gone because the iPhone S is coming out. Glass isn't gone, it's just being retooled for a v2.
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google glass v2 will be released just after that spherical speaker music streaming thing.
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Retooled to ripoff the MS Hololens you mean?
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It may be gone, in its current form, but I am sure it will spawn new markets in new incarnations. I can see this as nice solution for surgeons, to be able to record things from their perspective either for auditing or educational purposes. Maybe even get pilots to wear them to study user interactions with the cockpit.
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For quick notes, you can use Google Keep. I don't think it requires an Android phone to use the web site.
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I thought notebook was cool at first. Then I saw a few jokes I had jotted down (in a private notebook) on an episode of the Simpsons. They jumped the shark long before google notebook, so my humor couldn't have saved it anyway. Def stopped using google for any sensitive information after that though.
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you beat me to that one!
open thread, search for evil.
fuuuuck, too slow :(
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I'd have been satisfied if they had merely maintained a credible pretense of not being evil.
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>Which abandoned Google project do you wish were still around?
Don't be evil.
None, and if Google disappeared, I would be sad for about 2 screens of commercial postings that I wont have to look at with a search. I just love my rapid scrolling reflex.
I miss Google Search (Score:4, Interesting)
They used to have a great search engine, but then they replaced it with something that keeps second-guessing my search terms.
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Yes, there at least three levels of "second guessing", the first is harmless ("did you mean" suggestions) but usually stupid, these don't change your results; the second level is "improving" your search by deleting various terms from a multi-term query (how else to get specificity?) in the top list of results; the third level is deciding you really wanted to search for something entirely different, and searching on that instead. And all of this is in addition to their type-ahead suggestions, which prompt yo
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Yea, before I gave up using google search I found I often had to do searches of the form: "phrase A" -"wrong A1" -"wrong A2" -"wrong A3" etc. And it would still start the results with stuff like: Did you mean to search for "wrong A1" -"wrong A1"...?
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I remember when Google first came out it assumed a boolean AND for the search terms instead of boolean OR like most other sites. This was huge as right away you got results for what you searched. Then they started searching using boolean OR, and searched for related words. First you could use "+" to force boolean AND, they removed that and you have to put it in quotes. It's like they're trying to make it harder to use.
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Google Desktop Enterprise Search. That tool could read Lotus Notes nsf files along with everything else on my HD. Now I'm back using Explorer and Notes separately for searches.
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This is what I miss most. At one time Yahoo and Google were competing in desktop search and you had two powerful engines to choose between.
And the way they dropped their desktop search application was infuriating - it was dropped with less than a week's notice, which was little publicized (I missed it) so you did not have a chance to save the installer (assuming it was complete in itself), and they did not open source the code base so that others could maintain it.
Now the best I have for Linux systems is Re
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They used to have a great search engine, but then they replaced it with something that keeps second-guessing my search terms.
Probably the most annoying part of this for me is the blazingly stupid way they'll just drop words from your query. There have been times when I submit a phrase with 4 or 5 search terms, and most of the first page is filled with results that have 3 or 4 of the words crossed out. The results were useless garbage and I'd rather have been told there were no pages found. Along with this is the absolutely horrible decision to remove the functionality of the (+) symbol to mean "required". I don't know what so
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Oh, and don't forget the malicious adwords results serving up malware for popular software titles. That's always a winner.
They have fixed the problem for now. Try to search for VLC for example.
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Except for Meebo.
Meebo was awesome, and while we're at it, it was NOT a Google project. It was an independent startup which was acquired and then left to rot.
I remember using Meebo from machines which had Yahoo Messenger ports blocked and each time I was using it I was gaping at how beautiful it was. AJAX was "da shit" back then, and Meebo implemented it b-e-a-utifully.
I still despise Google for axing it.
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Sure, eventually. But keep doing it too soon and when transitioning to something else is too painful and people will start avoiding your new shiny so it doesn't get yanked out from under them later.
Re:Things aren't supposed to live forever. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that when you do it too often, you get a reputation as a company that you can't trust. I mean hell...even Google+ which was launched with more fanfare than ANY Google undertaking the past few years is now getting the step motherly treatment.
Google taught me one important lesson - when it comes to online services, choose companies that do ONE thing, and do it well. Don't use stuff from conglomorates that have their fingers in dozens of pies. That way, each service gets the attention it deserves, releases updates regularly, and never loses focus.
Ergo, I use Lastpass instead of Google Chrome's password manager, am trying to transition away from Google+, and don't want to use Google Keep. I now use Google for their mature products only - Gmail, Search, Android, and Chrome.
I lost all my Google Health data, my Google Wave data, my Google Buzz data, and my Google reader feeds (at least I could transition that one). Moral of the story: Stick to single service companies.
Single Service, or open/data-portable? (Score:2)
Reading this my first thought was "What if that single-service company goes out of business?" Is it really any different for a single-focus company to go out of business than for a Google (etc) product to be discontinued?
I loved Google Reader too, and was happy to be able to move over to Feedly pretty easily because Reader allowed me to export my data.
Maybe what we really want is not companies that have a single focus, but rather companies that allow us to move our data/patronage elsewhere?
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True, both can go out of business. But it's my experience that single focus companies take more care of their product. I remember far too many abandoned Google services that just stopped receiving any love. Not that they lost users or anything...just abandoned.
Prime example: Feedburner. It's still hugely used by bloggers around the world. But the last update from Google was when? 5-6 years ago?
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choose companies that do ONE thing, and do it well
I did. I chose the company which does integration.
I used to be all for specialised apps, but these days I'm getting sick of lack of interoperability and trying to make things behave together. I could store contacts and backup my phone onto any cloud service, but really I could just tick the backup icon on Android and have it link to my gmail account. I search for a location on my desktop and when I get to my car I can automatically navigate from my phone because everything is linked in a common way.
Yes the
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So, you're the one!
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Touché :P
Reader (Score:5, Insightful)
By the way, 90% of these projects don't ring any bell.
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I miss Google Reader, their RSS reader.
Too bad you didn't step up to the plate and become the maintainer, when Google offered to give the source code away to anyone who wanted to run their own "Google Reader" service.
I guess you maybe couldn't figure out a revenue model for the damn thing, either?
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Too bad you didn't step up to the plate and become the maintainer, when Google offered to give the source code away to anyone who wanted to run their own "Google Reader" service.
It is not a problem of code, it is a problem of providing the service
I guess you maybe couldn't figure out a revenue model for the damn thing, either?
Feedly seems to have found it...
Re:Reader (Score:5, Interesting)
Too bad you didn't step up to the plate and become the maintainer, when Google offered to give the source code away to anyone who wanted to run their own "Google Reader" service.
It is not a problem of code, it is a problem of providing the service
When Google originally offered the code, they offered to host it on Google's hosted infrastructure service for a year, at no charge, until the project got up on its feet. There were no takers.
This will probably be moderated down as well... however, yes, "providing the service" is *exactly* the problem, and it's *exactly* why Google cancelled the thing when the back end hosting infrastructure APIs changed out from under the (unmaintained) Reader codebase. The maintainers had moved onto other projects.
And while Google could have either brought them back (the ones who wanted to revisit their old code), or they could have put new hires on the porting problem, and gotten Reader back on its feet on the new hosting infrastructure, it wouldn't have solved the basic problem.
The basic problem is that there was no sustainable revenue model for the service. Google's Reader service allowed the use of any client that someone cared to write, and a heck of a lot of people wanted to write clients that excluded advertising as a means of supporting the costs of running the service. Which would be fine, if there were any way to charge for it, *other* than advertising, which didn't break the client/back-end-service model, which is what people *liked most* about Reader in the first place.
So Google didn't throw good money after bad, and no one else stepped up to throw good money after bad, and (possibly) figure out some other way to monetize the service, such as changing the over the wire representation such that advertising was indistinguishable from content. Which wouldn't have worked, since that would just trigger an arms race for clever advertising exclusionary filtering in the display services, instead of at the protocol level.
So you're right: "it is a problem of providing the service", and the specific problem is "no one wanted to pay to do that".
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TT-RSS for the win. They have a couple of Android clients, too: http://tt-rss.org/redmine/projects/tt-rss/wiki
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Re:Android 4.3 (Score:2)
Abandoned while new devices with those versions are still being sold.
Those aren't "new devices", those are "old devices, still being manufactured by vendors who are unable to come up with new devices in a timely fashion", or they are "old devices that used to live in a warehouse, and which are now being sold at a discount, because no one would buy them otherwise".
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Nope it's google's fault. In order to go the whole hog and have all the google apps etc, the vendors have to do certain things. Google could easily have insisted on upgrades, or a standard hardware model (like PCs have) and so on. They didn't because old stuff is for losers.
They've finally grown up a bit and realised that it's their responsibility and they're trying to retrofit in OTA upgrades by making almost every component except the kernel and filesystem layout upgradable via the app store.
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In what world do PCs have a standard hardware model?
Case size/shape- nope.
Cpu socket- nope.
RAM type- nope.
Peripheral bus- nope.
The only thing that all PCs have in common is a CPU instruction set. And not even 100% on that (x86-64 or IA64 was a battle not too long ago).
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In what world do PCs have a standard hardware model?
The BIOS followed by a bunch of self-descovery mechanisms. This is why a generic Linux kernel will operate on almost any PC, but a generic ARM can't.
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Nope it's google's fault. In order to go the whole hog and have all the google apps etc, the vendors have to do certain things.
You mean change these things?
Carrier business model:
(1) Contractually obligate you for 2 years
(2) Entice you with "upgraded phone" every 18 months
(3) Prevent them upgrading their own phone and escaping carrier lock-in after 2 years
(4) Benefit from customer lock in
(5) Goto 2
Cell phone vendor business model:
(1) Bring a new phone to market
(2) Contract with a carrier/seller who considers it enough of an upgrade to entice an early re-up on a customer contract
(3) Start work on the next phone to sell more hardware
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The pressing question though is whether there's a void for someone else to fill if Google starts making Android a true iOS clone by nixing sideloading. They've inched closer than ever with Lollipop, and I don't see that changing going forward. Meanwhile, no sideloading means that Amazon loses whatever Android customers were using Android phones. While the Fire tablets are surely the biggest slice of the Amazon App Store/Music Store pie, I don't know if they'd just pack up and go home if Google locked them out. Conversely, I don't know if the disappearance of F-Droid, Appbrain, AAS, and other third party app stores would be the tipping point that would prevent people from pining for the Galaxy S7.
Is Android too big to fail? At this point, I'm stuck saying 'yes', at least for now.
It's a difficult question.
Can you side-load on an iPhone? Yes, you can. There are three ways:
(1) Jailbreak the device; some people are willing to do this. The preeminent reason is to work around carrier limitations on tethering/hotspotting to get around the fact that the carrier has unlimited data on some phone plans, but either does not permit, or has capped charges for, tethering/hotspotting through the phone, or through mobile hotspots. Other than a few applications to work around Apple/carrier agree
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"old" most definitely should be in quotes. You're talking about EOL for something that's only 2.5 years old. Windows 7 is 5 years old and you can still find a few computers with Windows 7.
And things we wish would join the list (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:And things we wish would join the list (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yes. None.
Hangouts is part of a list of technologies that seems like it helps. But what it adds is outweighed by all the little bullshit technical problems. But at the time, it never feels like that. It's always almost there. So people use it. And all anyone remembers is that last half of the meeting when it worked, not the first half when everyone watched Joe in Wyoming fuck around trying to get somet
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Yes. None.
Hangouts is part of a list of technologies that seems like it helps. But what it adds is outweighed by all the little bullshit technical problems. But at the time, it never feels like that. It's always almost there. So people use it. And all anyone remembers is that last half of the meeting when it worked, not the first half when everyone watched Joe in Wyoming fuck around trying to get somet
Google Reader (Score:2)
You mean which abandoned CIA project ? (Score:1)
https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e [medium.com]
Software as a Service (Score:2, Interesting)
Let this be a reminder of why Software as a Service should be avoided when local software can be used instead. How much user data is now lost forever(1) because Google suddenly decided it didn't want to bother?
1) Well, it's kept away from the user; what Google decided to keep is entirely up to Google.
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Was the data lost forever?
In the only examples I personally had experience, such as Reader, Google gave plenty of notice and made the data easy to retrieve for use in other services.
I miss Reader but the migration to Feedly was seamless.
Goog-411 (Score:2)
None really (Score:2)
They carve a niche, realize it's a niche, abandon it.
Then open source solutuions come in to fill the gap and i make myself use them. May the trend continue.
Gmail Paper! (Score:2)
One click, and the next thing I knew the door bell was ringing and a print out was delivered to my door. How handy is that???
Too bad the service only lasted for one day in April.
Reader and iGoogle (Score:2)
Like others have said, Reader was a true loss. But equally high on my list was "iGoogle" (ie. a Google-powered home page). It had widgets for everything I wanted, it was easily configurable ... basically it was the perfect home page.
www.ighome.com has tried to recreate it, but the quality of engineering is seriously lacking. Many of the widgets don't work, and if you leave it open in a tab for too long the memory leaks in it start chewing up all your RAM (Google's version never did that).
Google Alerts (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know why Google Alerts isn't considered dead.
I have not received an alert from then about anything in over two years. Which is very unfortunate as I relied on it for my company. I would have it alert me anytime it was mentioned so I could watch for trouble, positive and negative reviews, etc. My company is still around and making news, but the alerts just stopped showing up.
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I am definitely still getting all of mine. I have about 6 subscriptions I receive daily to my gmail account.
Google Maps (Score:5, Insightful)
I miss Google Maps. The laggy pile of trash they have now makes me go to Bing when I want to map things out now.
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Switch back to the old version of Google maps [google.com]
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1) There is no Pro for Linux. Google cares not for Linux for Earth. :(
2) Google Maps doesn't use Java.
Real Estate (Score:2, Interesting)
Another graveyard site? (Score:1)
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It was probably abandoned.
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which project? (Score:3)
> Which abandoned Google project do you wish were still around?
Latitude, by a wide margin. As a built-in to Maps, Latitude was a very useful resource. When Google pulled it from Maps, where it arguably belonged, and hammered it into Google Plus to try to drive users there, I tried to continue using the feature, but all the fluff and baggage in G+ made it a terrible user experience. I switched to Waze, even though it's more clunky to use, but dropped that a couple years ago when Google bought them out. For now, I just do without the feature.
When daughter was in school I would use Latitude as added confirmation that she had gotten home safely. Now that she's an adult I arguably don't need it anymore, but I miss the security of knowing where she is.
Somewhat less important but still worth mentioning is Google Talk. My circle of friends were early adopters and have a long history with the tool. I still use whatever they call it now... Hangouts? ...on the Android phone but still use Talk on the desktop because I really can't stand the Desktop version of Hangouts. Looks and useability have taken a big step backwards. I occasionally get email from Google "we notice you're still using Talk. Please switch to Hangouts". So far I've been able to ignore it.
Sometimes it seems like Google is their own worst enemy. They come out with well-written, useable apps that fill a real need, and then just when you develop a dependence, crap all over them. And so, for instance, instead of using the Latitude features of G+ to broadcast my location, I use Facebook's "check in" feature. It doesn't work as well, but I don't have any other reason to use G+ (only, like, three of my friends have accounts) and I'm already a Facebook user. I still use Google Maps occasionally, it's a good app. It'd be a better app if Latitude still worked.
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Just wanted to add another voice to Latitude, definitely one of the used to be useful
and no hangouts isn't what I would call useful :(
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Glympse (https://www.glympse.com/) does basically the same thing as latitude as far as I can tell (I never used latitude when it was around but use glympse all the time).
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I occasionally get email from Google "we notice you're still using Talk. Please switch to Hangouts". So far I've been able to ignore it.
SO many apps are missing a "Fuck You" button... Just saying.
iGoogle (Score:1)
I also miss the old version of Google Voice. At least it is still functional as part of Hangouts, but I like the simplicity of the Google Voice layout more than with Hangouts.
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I miss iGoogle the most from that list. There are third party options that work (specifically I use igHome), but I liked iGoogle better. I also miss the old version of Google Voice. At least it is still functional as part of Hangouts, but I like the simplicity of the Google Voice layout more than with Hangouts.
Yep, I missed iGoogle the most as well. I also miss Google toolbar for Firefox.
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Gears (Score:2)
A friend had a small side business which made use of Gears. When Gears went away, it wasn't worth the effort to redesign, so the biz shut down.
Though it was trivial, it does make me nervous about basing anything critical on Google services.
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Didn't Gears go away because its features got folded into HTML5? Seems like a much better solution than an optional proprietary plugin.
I miss sidewiki (Score:2)
Nobody else knew it existed, which meant there wasn't a crapflood of angry reviews everywhere. I used it to put hours of operation notes on a bunch of local businesses that didn't list them, and in the case of one oddly-set-up webpage, instructions on how to get it to work. (Trying to get samples from a company that for whatever reason ships to just about every country in the world save the US, and if you email them about it they say oh yeah register as canadian and give a us address, rather than register
Android App Inventor (Score:2)
Android App Inventor was my favorite
Chrome. (Score:1)
Is Chrome on the list yet?
(posted using SeaMonkey)
Dead and nearly dead Google projects I miss (Score:1)
If I had to chose one project for killing which I would hate Google, it would be Google Notebook. With browser plugin it was one of the best tools for doing online and offline research I have ever used. They claimed that it could be replaced by Google Docs, but GD is nowhere close to the functionality and convenience Notebook offered. Another project I missed was Google Reader, however I found Feedly to be a decent replacement.
For projects that have been virtually killed by Google's "improvements", my perso
Google Wave (Score:1)
Google Wave was really cool idea and service. Thankfully the Apache Wave exists now but without a large corporation pushing it the chances of it getting anywhere are slim at best. Oh, and I wonder where Google left its "Don't be evil" mentality.
I also hope to see Google Plus on the memorial page as soon as possible. But for the sake of fairness it should be mentioned that as a service G+ is better than the Facebook. OH AND THE CURRENT USER INTERFACE of the Youtube. It's absolutely horrible and dysfunctional
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I miss Calendar Sync (Score:1)
how about (Score:1)
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Let's say you need to tweak an old MFC app, and you search for "CString". Many of the results you get back are now NSFW :-(.
I tried using my phone to search for the nearest Kinkos. The spellcheck changed it to "Kinky".
I guess this tells me a lot about the sorts of things that average people search for.