News Google culls unpopular services

Google vice president gives details of services heading for the bin.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2011/11/23/google-culls-unpopular-services/1

 

They got rid of what now? Eh. *shrugs*.

 

Inevitable that some ideas won't work or be popular enough to justify. I use a lot of their services although only suffered a big loss when they axed notebook a few years back. Still, have evernote now

At least they try the ideas and give them some developement, rather than just discounting them at birth.

 

Google have been tweaking a bit over the last few weeks too - I noticed a message a couple of weeks ago that the + modifier had been dropped, but that message seems to have disappeared now.

Frankly, I'm not surprised at Google dropping these services - how many people use anything beyond searching and (perhaps) Google+?

On a completely unrelated note, today's Google Doodle is an ultra cool homage to Stanislav Lem. YouTube link for those reading this on Thursday:

 

Er...lots of people....like, me!

Google Maps - every day
Google Mail/Gmail - every day
Google Docs - at least once a week
Google Reader - every day
Google Shopping/Froogle - every week
Google Translate - every week
Google Earth - every week
Google Picasa - every day
Google Sketchup - every week
Blogger - most days

...and, of course, Google+ and Youtube every day.

I'd guess "quite a lot of people" use at least 2 of these on a regular basis....

 

Wave was brilliant! shame most people just prefer to use Dropbox.

Wave allows 5 people editing the same LaTex document at the same time, then just copy+paste the whole thing into text file and hit compile for a very nice looking document. without Wave, my final year group project probably would be much, much more difficult to coordinate and require at least 1 person do a one-nighter before the hand-in date.

 

Google Health is also being discontinued as of January 1, 2012. It was a good place to store your medical information for easier access.

 

I'm pretty much the same apart from Translate, Sketchup and Blogger. I think its safe to say the above services will be around for a while .

 

TBH they'll recycle a lot of what their scraping and integrate some of it into other services.

 

Google Apps is probably the single most important thing for me (well second to search) on the entire internet

Everybody should have an Apps Account and probably would if they new what it could do

I swear you could make a decent living solely setting up peoples Googles apps accounts for them (and have to do very little)

 

Wish they'd get rid of Apple!

 

I still see no urge to use google+
I may be getting old thou...

Anyway, I wish they would buy a small country in south america! that would be cool!

 

Google vice president makes me aware of services for the first time.

Can't say I've heard any of those listed.

 

That.

Google is a fantastic company though. Google search has completely transformed the way I use the internet, and Google Maps & Google Earth have massively improved certain elements of my life in general. I don't really use anything else of theirs, but the way some people are talking up their other stuff I suppose I may just have to take a look...

 

I think the thing is at least they experiment. If it doesn't work, cut it out, if it does then, well, that's just dandy.

 

The cool thing about google is that they give ideas a try. They seem to always have something new coming out that is just an idea that "might" work, but they give it a go anyway and if it dont work, they kill it.

 

Better to innovate and. Fail than not bother!

 

the biggest issue is surely that most of us never HEAR about these projects until they're being canned.

how many of the things they end up getting rid of would take off if they were just brought to more people's attention?!

 

I think y'all memories might be faulty - even I remember Wave for the nerdrage it caused because nobody could figure out what it was or what it was supposed to do. They had a 30-minute intro video to show people just that, but by then no one cared...tbh, my only surprise there is that it hadn't been killed years ago.

I remember hearing of Gears, but apparently I didn't find it interesting enough to figure out what it was. Knol was supposed to kill Wikipedia. Friend Connect I'd never heard of, but then again, I have no friends.

I'm with delriogw and mi1ez - glad that they try new things. How often do you see that with big companies? I just wish I worked at a place that gave me "20% time"

 

Nope nobody else can be bothered either beyond the initial sign up, it's bollocks.