News Google culls unpopular services

Speak for yourself, I.....

hm....

now what did I come in here for?

NURSE!

Edit: Seriously, I don't remember any of those - they can't have been that well promoted.

 

firstly I never heard of any of these services

2ndly

err -WHY?
if the iphone hadn't existed where would google have got all it's ideas for android from?
I don't own anything apple but personnally I've never understood the hatred of apple. Indifference I understand. Ignore them for being expensive, pretenious and smug sure. but competition keeps prices down and basically andriod phones and tablets are clones of what apple did years ago. whatever else you think about apple computers give them some credit for the iphone ipad and the clones it has produced.

 

Bing, Office and IE9 and Facebook. What am I supposed to need Google for again?

 

Well if not enough people are using them we cant blame them for dropping the services.

Cant say I had even heard of any of the services they are culling TBH.

 

You're not *supposed* to need any of them for anything....they're optional, in your life, ya know?

I really don't understand the anti-google sentiment that comes out in bit-tech sometimes...

It's all about choice. You choose Bing, I choose Google. You choose IE9, I choose Chrome. You choose Facef**k, I choose Google+

Technology is there to help you...why do people see the need to take sides on *everything*.

..and, tbh, if you're gonna do a like-to-like comparison of the services you just mentioned above, you might as well accept now that you're gonna lose since, aside from MS Office, which I'm a big fan of, Bing, Facebook and IE9 are all equally horrid.

 

Yawn, old story from goggles. Goggles+? is anyone using that still? Chrome? Goggles search? Come now, you have to get with the times and use the services that run faster, search better and at least have people you know a member of.

No thanks, I can live blissfully without the need to use a goggle adware product.

 

As far I'm concerned apart from Search and Language Tools, Google can shut everything else down. And FFS bring old search engine back you pillocks!

 

You know, I must have been having a brain fart that day. You're right, I use a few of those most weeks.

On the plus side, as others have pointed out, Google has to be applauded for at least trying. If you try that many new things out, some of them are bound to fail.

Android development was started in 2003, and bought by Google in 2005 - 18 months before Apple announced the iPhone.

 

and by the way smartphone manufacturers are all paying Microsoft, I'd say they got it from them instead.

 

Erm, no. Microsoft is just good at patent trolling. It buys companies that hold key patents and then charges competitors. 'Cause it has less faith in Windows Mobile 7 than I have, apparently.

And Apple got there first, sorry. Apple Newton, remember? You kids are just too young to know your history.

 

Somehow I'm not sure that Microsoft have a lack of Faith in Windows Phone 7. It's been a success so far, after all.

Also, Snips, have you ever used WinPhone 7? It's actually rather different from iOS/Android, owing to a number of things. The Metro interface is Typography vs. Icon based, and feels considerably different to both. So no, Microsoft didn't invent the technologies in either. See Nexxo's post above.

Oh, and the Newton OS isn't something I'd consider to be the 'first smartphone OS', considering 1. It was a PDA OS and 2. The entire project was canned. The Newton was subject to feature creep, and what Apple were left with was an unwieldy and unmarketable product. Which was in no way related to Smartphones so the point is moot.

 

Its hardly successful, it has bags of promise but I'd still shy away from saying successful, a fairly small market share and low level of developer support are not success markers.

 

True, but developer support is growing, and once the Nokia devices have been on the market a little while longer (they have only been around for 12 days or so after all) we shall see about market share. Thing is, as the latecomer WinPhone suffers nothing more than a lack of maturity vs. the other, better known devices. Whether that continues to be the case remains to be seen.

 

Aye and the same could have been said for Android in the early days. The problem is momentum people who have "bought in" to an ecosystem will be slow to move if they've spent money on soft/hardware for their OS of choice. My concern would be that MS are late to the game and Android has successfully gathered up the people who aren't already invested in RIM or iOS.

 

True, but there's also a lot of people who have bought into Android because they 'Don't want an iPhone' and at the time there was only Android as an alternative.

I think the real thing that could make or break WinPhone 7 is Nokia. They're a huge entity in the worldwide phone market, and them championing WinPhone as their OS of choice is going to be a huge boost to consumer knowledge.

Really, the issue is people don't know that much about Windows Phone. The iPhone became popular due to a lot of marketing and critical acclaim. Android became popular due to the amount of flexibility it offered, and as the alternative to an iPhone. Windows Phone hasn't really had the advantage of such things, and as such hasn't made that much impact on the market.

Another thing Microsoft has is the fact that WinPhone integrates directly with Outlook (which means direct integration with Exchange Server, very popular for businesses, and Live Mail, still one of the more popular e-mail services) and Microsoft Office, which allows you to work on exactly the same document on your phone as the one on your PC. Sure, that's of dubious usefulness but it's there, all the same.

But still, time will tell. If the partnership between Microsoft and Nokia works out, WinPhone 7 could be very big. If not, then it'll probably stay in the background, and Nokia will probably continue to have a declining market share. We shall see.

 

I wasn't the one knocking Windows Phone 7. I've had one from day one and now have the Nokia Lumia 800 which is an excellent phone.

So when Apple sues HTC for patents it's ok but when Microsoft sues HTC for patents, it's patent trolling? Jesus! I'm sure a brainfart happened there somewhere! o.0

 

Google Romance is still going...

 

I hadn't realized how many Google services I use on a routine basis.

-Google Maps quite often, could be replaced with Bing maps I suppose but why switch? It offers no advantage.
-Gmail for my two personal email accounts, so very often. Just happen to like their service, why switch now that I already have two well established addresses?
-Google Video aka Youtube daily, almost irreplacable.
-Google Translate quite often, it's reasonably accurate for my purposes and quick to use.

I'm still with Facebook rather than Google+ because I see no advantage to make me have both or switch over completely and I use Firefox rather than Chrome for a variety of reason but Google certainly have some services which I enjoy.

 

"Pin All Your Romantic Hopes on Google

When you think about it, love is just another search problem. And we’ve thought about it. A lot. Google Romance™ is our solution.

Google Romance is a place where you can post all types of romantic information and, using our Soulmate Searchâ„¢, get back search results that could, in theory, include the love of your life. Then we'll send you both on a Contextual DateTM, which we'll pay for while delivering to you relevant ads that we and our advertising partners think will help produce the dating results you're looking for.

With Google Romance, you can:

Upload your profile – tell the world who you are, or, more to the point, who you’d like to think you are, or, even more to the point, who you want others to think you are.
Search for love in all (or at least a statistically significant majority of) the right places with Soulmate Search, our eerily effective psychographic matchmaking software.
Endure, via our Contextual Dating option, thematically appropriate multimedia advertising throughout the entirety of your free date."

I thought you were just joking AstralWanderer! I bet no one admits to using that

 

Just remember Apple weren't the first. Touch phones existed, tablets existed long before apple came up with them. They just brought new technology to them and a helluva lot of marketing power. The PR side of things is where Apple can attribute most of its success from as well as a polished first presentation of the iPhone. Right now they are good for competition, but they have been left behind seeing as there are x2.5 more android users than Apple and this is still increasing.