Remember Google Code Search? That was a great feature of Google search. You could search for swear words in all the code available worldwide. In one (Sun Microsystems?) code there was a comment "The user is a wanker. He cannot remember his password." The old days were much more fun.
Yes, google code search was a great service. One could use regular expressions and limit the search to particular language or license. Moreover it indexed code from any tarball or repository google bot run into, so the sheer size of data one was searching was hard for others to match.
Google still uses code search widely internally. It's one of their greatest internal-only productivity boosts. The fact it has knowledge of includes and cross-references and function prototypes and templates is amazing...
You can still use it as an outsider to search Chromium:
I wonder if the writer of that comment was American or British - it appears that the term is somewhat less offensive in the US.
Once, whilst watching a relatively mainstream US series I was surprised to see a character refer to their colleagues as "wankers", which seemed rather incongruous.
"why dead? - Google Wave was discontinued because there just weren’t enough active users. The IP was later transferred to Apache when the development was discontinued."
Kinda. But more accurately, there weren't enough active users because Google __completely__ botched the beta. In restricting the invites then prevented already establish groups for trying it. For example, if you have a group of 4 or 5 and not as many invites, it was no go.
Keep in mind, Wave was pre-Slack. The market was there. It was primed. It was waiting for something smart and collaborative. Yet Google did the one thing you don't want to do with a team-centric tool...intentionally leave out at least one team member.
Wave, for all it's novelty, interesting parts and hints of genius ... was simply a terrible product.
It's I think the prototypical example of over-thinking, over-engineering.
Most successful things are essentially simple.
Slack is embarrassingly simple.
... it's simple, and getting quality, end-to-ed experience, and getting 'the small things' right, and maybe being great at some things while forgoing others, i.e. 'having an opinion' or 'focusing on a segment'.
I remember not being able to explain wave to anyone ...
I honestly think that live typing was a large part of Wave’s failure. It seemed like a great idea on the surface, but in practice what you initially type is rarely what you want your response to be. It was a really painful feature that few people seemed to like, but Google doubled down on it, eventually removing “Draft” checkbox that allowed you to disable it.
The feature was later picked up by Google Docs, where it is quite useful.
I was extremely fond of Wave when it came out, but remember few people I knew shared that view. Now I am trying to think back to Wave and how it differed from Slack... wasn’t it pretty similar?
That lack of invites completely doomed G+, too. Social networks are valuable because of network effects, and you can't get network effects when you dramatically limit the possible number of users possible.
For me it was the fact that you had to check the app for new messages. There was no option to send an email when you got a new message. I realize that sounds silly, but that's how you bootstrap a messaging platform. Facebook still sends me emails for notifications and that's how I like it.
"Google __completely__ botched the beta. In having an open invite, they were unprepared for load. Since it was a brand new system, with a ton of interested users, the system completely bogged down. This was completely predictable with a new protocol, a new app, and Google's prestige. Why they didn't restrict the beta is beyond me."
I remember Wave. It was terribly slow (both server-side and client-side), complex, and complicated to use.
Live typing was a horrible idea too; it looked like it was there just to show they could do it (it was somewhat impressive at the time that you could do that on a website).
Neat! Maybe you could add a line or two to describe what each product was? For example I'd never heard about Sidewiki, Google Jaiku or Google Catalogs. It seems fitting that a tombstone would mention not just the date of death but also a bit about who they were and what they did.
Even after 5+ years, I still miss Google Reader almost everyday. Just pure simplicity and tight community around sharing is yet to be matched IMO. Web has moved on and as someone commented here, it’s walled garden everywhere now.
Thank you Google of yore for creating and running a great service for as long as you did!
I think you're misunderstanding why Google has been criticized wrt Reader. The problem was that Google first ruined the RSS ecosystem, then pulled out of it and tried to lead users elsewhere, leaving torched earth behind.
Ehh, the old reader has scratched that itch for me ever since. And I like that it's a company dedicated to it rather than an irrelevant side product of a much larger company that doesn't really care about it, since it's a large part of my weekly life.
I miss Google reader as well but it’s demise gave me opportunity to check out Apple News. I am actually surprised how much better it is. They aggregate from opposing news sources very nicely (for example, Fox vs MSNBC) so you get to see two sides of each story. Apple News app can really open your eyes to things you don’t explore while Google Reader seem to kept recommending similar things over and over.
What about Google Sets? It was on their Labs page until about 2010. Sets let you type in some words, and then it would return additional words that fit with the previous words. Now there is a Google Sheets feature that does it, but I liked the idea of a stand alone page.
I also don't know if it should be on the list since it hasn't shut down yet. There's a 10 month sunset period. By that same logic it should include Inbox, which it doesn't, because that's also in a sunset period.
EDIT: Also, only the consumer side is shutting down. G+ for G-Suite will still exist.
Guess I better tell my mom, she’s just started using it, the low user count is actually a good feature for her, doesn’t like the “noisiness” of other platforms
Google Spaces lived for so short, it is not included in the list and so far nobody has mentioned it in the comments. It was a product that me and my friends have long thought of. I think if it were implemented in a way that focused on chat but not on shared links, it could have been a success. I still believe that niche future will find its way into a popular chat application.
Oo..cool! I crowdsourced a lot of lesser known products over at https://killedbygoogle.com. I'll be pruning the list this weekend to combine/remove some of the phone/device additions that were added by others during Hacktoberfest.
Looking at this list, it makes you realize that basing your business on a lesser Google product is a major business risk. Consider Spatial OS.[1] This is a new back end for persistent massively multiplayer games. It's a product from a Google "partner", funded by $500M of VC money. It's only available if you use Google's "cloud". Technically, it's impressive. It's being used for a few minor game titles right now.
So if you're a major game developer, should you use this for a long-running game? The Google connection adds business risk. It probably won't be a major moneymaker for Google, and there's a good chance they'll drop the offering in two or three years. Then what? It comes with Google-type terms and conditions, the usual "Google can do anything they want". Drop the product, raise the price, cut off your service because you're doing something that competes with some Google interest, that kind of thing.
How about Google Glass? In all fairness though, quite a few are only dead as standalone products but have merged into other offerings. Take Google Gears for example - offline storage, worker threads and other APIs for browsers, all of which is now part of regular Chrome.
Really amazing how many products were merged into Google+ and superceded. And then also how many products were sunsetted in favor of putting more development time into Google+.
And then Google+ was sunsetted and machine learning and other built in features are doing a better job of prospering than any other Google properties.
Google was always a nerd company. Creating social platforms was always an SMH move.
I feel like there should be an honorable mention for Google Groups/Dejanews. I mean, I guess usenet search is still there, but it's a shadow of its former usefulness.
[+] [-] jansan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] secure|7 years ago|reply
Debian Code Search doesn’t crawl, but it indexes all software in Debian, which is typically helpful enough :)
[+] [-] marbu|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0x00000000|7 years ago|reply
I guess code search is just too niche with no marketability to ever improve
[+] [-] tim333|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] londons_explore|7 years ago|reply
You can still use it as an outsider to search Chromium:
https://cs.chromium.org/
[+] [-] yegle|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] niutech|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sp1982|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gvurrdon|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_duke|7 years ago|reply
I definitely bemoaned the demise of Google Reader.
But if this list is complete, it's really not so bad, considering the size and age of Google.
[+] [-] chiefalchemist|7 years ago|reply
"why dead? - Google Wave was discontinued because there just weren’t enough active users. The IP was later transferred to Apache when the development was discontinued."
Kinda. But more accurately, there weren't enough active users because Google __completely__ botched the beta. In restricting the invites then prevented already establish groups for trying it. For example, if you have a group of 4 or 5 and not as many invites, it was no go.
Keep in mind, Wave was pre-Slack. The market was there. It was primed. It was waiting for something smart and collaborative. Yet Google did the one thing you don't want to do with a team-centric tool...intentionally leave out at least one team member.
[+] [-] sonnyblarney|7 years ago|reply
It's I think the prototypical example of over-thinking, over-engineering.
Most successful things are essentially simple.
Slack is embarrassingly simple.
... it's simple, and getting quality, end-to-ed experience, and getting 'the small things' right, and maybe being great at some things while forgoing others, i.e. 'having an opinion' or 'focusing on a segment'.
I remember not being able to explain wave to anyone ...
[+] [-] luhn|7 years ago|reply
The feature was later picked up by Google Docs, where it is quite useful.
[+] [-] glup|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] will_pseudonym|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lostgame|7 years ago|reply
You absolutely cannot have a group-based system that does not immediately allow a full group to join.
Can you imagine if Slack relied on invites?
[+] [-] colordrops|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SomewhatLikely|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hadrien01|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VikingCoder|7 years ago|reply
"Google __completely__ botched the beta. In having an open invite, they were unprepared for load. Since it was a brand new system, with a ton of interested users, the system completely bogged down. This was completely predictable with a new protocol, a new app, and Google's prestige. Why they didn't restrict the beta is beyond me."
[+] [-] TulliusCicero|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rustcharm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nhaz|7 years ago|reply
Live typing was a horrible idea too; it looked like it was there just to show they could do it (it was somewhat impressive at the time that you could do that on a website).
[+] [-] m12k|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] princetman|7 years ago|reply
Thank you Google of yore for creating and running a great service for as long as you did!
[+] [-] tannhaeuser|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nolok|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vshabanov|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sytelus|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mauricio_|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] russfink|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aleem|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asaph|7 years ago|reply
I wouldn't characterize it as a "software error". It was a security vulnerability.[0]
[0] https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/project-s...
[+] [-] ehsankia|7 years ago|reply
EDIT: Also, only the consumer side is shutting down. G+ for G-Suite will still exist.
[+] [-] mihaifm|7 years ago|reply
Guess I better tell my mom, she’s just started using it, the low user count is actually a good feature for her, doesn’t like the “noisiness” of other platforms
[+] [-] h4l0|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codyogden|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codyogden|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|7 years ago|reply
So if you're a major game developer, should you use this for a long-running game? The Google connection adds business risk. It probably won't be a major moneymaker for Google, and there's a good chance they'll drop the offering in two or three years. Then what? It comes with Google-type terms and conditions, the usual "Google can do anything they want". Drop the product, raise the price, cut off your service because you're doing something that competes with some Google interest, that kind of thing.
[1] https://improbable.io/games
[+] [-] max_sendfeld|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NelsonMinar|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asaph|7 years ago|reply
Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14857120
[+] [-] jordigh|7 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Data_Liberation_Front
They were quite helpful in getting about a decade worth of gmail data out of there when I decided I didn't want to use gmail anymore.
[+] [-] nashashmi|7 years ago|reply
And then Google+ was sunsetted and machine learning and other built in features are doing a better job of prospering than any other Google properties.
Google was always a nerd company. Creating social platforms was always an SMH move.
[+] [-] CodeBytes|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IvyMike|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] myfonj|7 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/03/google-graveyard-does-exi... [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/map_of_the_week/201...
[+] [-] amachefe|7 years ago|reply
Talk was lightweight, history backups and usable in every platform.
Any startups would love to have Talk
[+] [-] michalu|7 years ago|reply
and Google Reader ... from the top of my head, and some enterprise products if I am not mistaken