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Comment by codetrotter | Hacker News Reader

> Anyway, just thought that whipping out "Google kills products" meme for a mere feature was a bit much.

I know I’m beating a dead horse^W^W^W dead Google products but, they really do kill a lot of popular products

That being said, if they add eSig for Google Docs I agree; I don’t see why nor how they’d kill that individual feature unless they kill Docs all-together. Which, hopefully, they won’t do for many years yet.

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A great many of their killed products ended up being merged/evolved into other ones (Duo into Meet). A great many more weren't even "killed"; over the past 20 years their in-gmail chat program has evolved from Talk to Hangouts, and then from Hangouts to Chat. It has kept the same chat history throughout the past 20 years, but "killed by google" lists Talk and Hangouts as two killed products.

> It has kept the same chat history throughout the past 20 years

So how come I can't access chats from before mid-2013? Not even by Google Takeout?

(It so happens that some of the most important conversations in my life happened in 2012, so I'm to date super annoyed that, for no good reason, 2013 is some kind of cut-off date.)

You seem to be right. I'm pretty confident in my memory that the history persisted from Talk to Hangouts, but the Talk history may not have persisted again from Hangouts to Chat. That would line up with your data, as the Talk to Hangouts switch/rename happened in 2013.

but the other part is even when they replace services the new one lacks the same features or ux that made the original special.

inbox vs gmail play music vs youtube music

They certainly kill services, my point is the "Google Graveyard" is very overblown.

Some popular products,sure.

Much of the listed "casualties" were throwaway wrapper apps that have perfectly fine webapp replacements, apps for platforms that no longer exist, duplicates, and stand alone apps that are now features of bigger apps etc.

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