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 idea doesn't work they pivot and drop it.
At the same time, Google seems to want it both ways. They have an idea and use their size to attract users and, perhaps even unintentionally, effectively block others from implementing the idea or scare others away (a size thing). Then, if they decide they don't like it, which can feel arbitrary, they pull out. Now the idea is tainted so others are less likely to implement it and users are left wondering what to do. They really seem like a bull in a china shop sometimes.
I like the innovation and the experimentation, but it seems like they could be more graceful about it for both users and other entities trying the same things. Perhaps they should try these experiments in a more stealth way? Pretend not to be Google? Of course, people might super-hate on them for that, huh?
If Google wants to experiment, create projects that don't have the Google brand (they just use G+ login like any other startup) and then reveal it was Google all along.
Let the projects succeed on their own merits, with their own marketing. If you tie in the Google brand you are setting expectations that this will be a long-lasting effort.
I don't think anyone has that expectation anymore :p
[1] http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-markets-prices/processin...
[2] http://smallbusiness.chron.com/failure-rate-new-items-launch...
While Google's 'everything in beta' mentality is endearing in a 'democracy'/'transparent fun-loving engineers' sort of way... it is also evidence to the fact that our information behemoth is rudderless.
Google Buzz.
That sucker was good. Great even.
It would find things across browsers, through documents and files and even collate results from web searches that most browsers - sometimes even Chrome to this day - missed or never registered in the history, in the first place.
I would have gladly paid some $50-$75 a year to have it work across all of my devices.
And I don't typically pay for most offerings. It was that good.
I miss that one badly.
As basically all companies stopped further developing desktop search products, I needed a proper replacement. I developed an enterprise/desktop search engine last year that basically reimplements Google desktop search including advanced search syntax and support for various file formats.
If this were Reddit, this is the point where I would post the "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY" image.
The even more mind-boggling thing is that for Google especially, desktop search would seem to be a huge opportunity. Imagine how precisely you could target ads to users if they let you scan their entire hard drive! Jeez louise.
Lesson: don't hang anything important on Google apps.
Features missing from Word Docs: KeepTogether, orphan/widow management, page layout, reviewing(?)
Bugs:
typeface changes when going back to Normal after any heading (doesn't change but ribbon says it has).
Ctrl-C copies but Ctrl-X doesn't delete text
Font changes randomly DO or DONT apply to the line you're on, when not selected
Google seems to hit their head through the wall that the issue in user adoption are the APIs. Nope, it's politics.
Similarly, I'd put a phonograph in a museum, even though it's features have been replaced by other things.
You can't have it both ways, people.
Of course we can. It's just that companies are now so geared to quarterly roadmaps that nothing has time to gain momentum unless it becomes a phenomenon.
I see this with airlines as well; they launch a route in the middle of winter, or on a business route with schedules that are awkward for meetings, and then can it two months later because 'no-one uses it'. Which dissuades other airlines from trying a more sensible approach.
With a little thought, however, it will be obvious to you that the consumer's definition of "sufficient" cannot possibly match a company's definition in 100% of cases: there will be a grey area where at least some people will like mouthwash-flavored bubble gum, but not enough people do that the company can afford to keep it. (And see if it does take off later, as you say would have happened in many cases.)
Consumers have two alternatives: either allow companies to test products like this without backlash, and accept that some products will be discontinued due to lack of adoption, or to have stagnancy with only upstart companies trying new things and the existing brands sitting on the bylines looking for success built elsewhere that they can copy.
I support innovation and encourage companies to go out on a limb, without any backlash if they discontinue these tests. (Even if I loved the product.)
You have this unstated assumption that they have to quickly abandon products that don't gain traction. But that's not true. It's short-term thinking over long-term.
When a company spends 30 man years developing a product, they can set aside 1 or 2 extra for long term maintenance. By promising or consistently providing this, they can build customer trust and get more users.
Keeping digital services up is cheap. It's shameful whenever DRM or video game servers go down after just a couple years because the company ran out of money or doesn't care anymore. These things could have been funded upfront with the tiniest fraction of the budget.
Not that it matters. Pushing a change "as an update" is a detail of how the app database works. It has no bearing on whether it's a replacement or not.
Wikipedia sure seems to think they're different things, and they love to merge articles.
Also if it's not a replacement they sure could have chosen better wording for: "Google Talk app for Windows will stop working on Feb 16 2015. It is replaced by the new Hangouts Chrome app."
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.
Really? Can you explain more why. Is there an article accompanying it that shames Google or says anything bad about it. To me it just looks like a company that iterates and is trying new things.
> A lot of these projects ended up as other projects or built into other projects.
Well it would be bad if they completely threw away the code, and then hired a whole new group of people to work on a similar project. That would make them look worse.
I haven't seen any accompanying MS articles like this, mainly because there haven't been angry posts here of MS shutting down products we think they should keep running forever that no one uses.
Quite the contrary, people seem to be happy when MS shuts down a product.
Microsoft also gets the reverse treatment: criticism for "excessive" backwards compatibility^ and leaving old products in use that people want to kill (IE6).
^ Except when they were sabotaging Lotus, Quarterdeck, OS/2, and Samba back in the 90s.
Inevitably, though, everything that went into building either those mini-games or that feature for another game ends up in all of our future projects.
This sort of thing makes it look like those projects are completely dead, despite the fact that they live on either in full or in part under rebranded names or driving Google's next big feature.
* - now code.openhub.net