I noticed in the "recent deaths" section, YouTube for 3DS. This made me laugh, because at Netflix, supporting the 3DS was always a big pain. Regardless, Netflix still supports it to this day.
In fact, as far as I know, Netflix has only ever killed support for one platform -- The PS2. And that was only because there were only about 10 people left using it.
So we sent them all Rokus and told them we're discontinuing PS2 support.
Netflix is the last app that works on my Sony Google TV from 2011. The YouTube app shut off after like 2015, but 8 years later Netflix is still trucking.
I love that you sent them Rokus. Most companies would just tell them they are out of luck and to go buy something.
My old Panasonic TV has a handful of apps left (it's got like three home screens for apps, and like four still even exist). Thankfully Vudu, my app of choice, still works. As does Netflix and I believe Amazon Prime.
That is impressive. I've seen it have hiccups before, but I just tried again on my (old) 3DS XL and it did indeed still work.
Not being able to switch users is pretty aggravating, though. (Both for me and the family member who's account the 3DS forces me onto.) That issue alone prettymuch keeps me from using it :(
Love this a ton! How does Netflix ensure reliability for those platforms with an ever growing codebase and the evolving business? Was the platform built to be extensible from the start?
Okay, so the page/statement is inaccurate, and not just because it's been spammed to HN three times before today (seven months ago).
Since I run Killed by Google, I feel it's important to clarify that the average Google product lifespan is much longer than four years thanks to flagship products like Gmail, Maps, Docs, etc. I can't actually get a solid number despite a lovely spreadsheet of products that I actively track because I haven't even compiled them all yet. Anyway, I made a choice not to draw stats in killedbygoogle.com for a reason, and it's because they're misleading to most people. When I'm asked about it, I say, "The products listed lasted an average of about four years." KBG is cynical view of Google's product strategy by any measure, but at least it's not drawing empty and misleading conclusions.
Like always, I have issues with these lists. Project Ara is there despite never actually launching a product. Or Google Glass is on there despite a new Google Glass hardware that was released this year.
They also list Google Sky Map ( https://gcemetery.co/google-sky-map/ ) which they call discontinued because Google released it as open source and handed over reigns to another group of developers, but looking at the github it still gets updates too, so I can see this one being either way. https://github.com/sky-map-team/stardroid
As an owner of a $1,500 Google Glass - which now is pretty much a brick, as the companion app doesn't work anymore - knowing there is a new version in the market isn't very helpful.
About a quarter of the projects in the graveyard had replacements, and often automated transfers to the new tools (writely, a bunch of analytics tools, songza, etc.)
Another quarter were explicitly experimental (labs, glass, ara, etc.).
And another handful are products that no longer make sense in the modern world (google desktop, various toolbars, browser sync, the gmail notifier, etc.)
Hell, one of them is apparently the webconferencing software google employees used internally in like 2012, it wasn't a product.
Not a Google fanboy by any means, but couldn't this be read with the opposite conclusion as well - that the average time that Google keeps marginal products alive is 4 years?
Of course it's possible that everyone has some personal favourites amongst those 164, but if an idea really has legs what's to stop people from exhuming it from the Google graveyard?
It's probably more like a year with actual support and updates, two years where it's left to whither and slowly die, and then a year of notice before sunsetting it.
Id be interested in seeing the median lifespan. I feel like it's possible there are long lived products bringing the average way up, although I could be wrong without diving in further.
I imagine Google views this as a positive thing, trying a million ideas, so that hopefully it increases the chances of having at least one good and popular idea. The downside is, a lot of products they killed were good ideas, but its sink or swim and they don't get the products the needed love and attention so they don't take off and thus they kill them. And now even when releasing a good idea or good piece of hardware people will always be worried if it will be gone tomorrow, which leads to less adoption and more axing of products.
Maybe, but some are exceptionally bad. Why did Allo exist at all for example? And the merging, demerging involved with Messages, Hangouts, and Voice have been a complete mess. There's more there than just trying some ideas, as some of the ideas actively damaged older ideas.
Yes, I see this as healthy turnover, the circle of life. I can testify that every main project I worked on when at Google is gone now except Chrome, the last thing I coded for. However, I don't think my time on other stuff was wasted.
Each of those previous projects shipped and did something useful for the public and helped Google in some way, like providing technical research or laying down infrastructure later used by other projects that still exist. At the very least something got killed because the team was needed on a high priority project, where they made a big difference.
I am genuinely curious if we are only seeing tip of the iceberg so to speak and there are a much larger number of projects getting killed before they are even released? Although it does not affect end consumers, I am curious from an engineering point of view.
Any Xooglers care to comment? I am not asking for actual numbers, but just ballpark numbers / estimates.
If it turns out Google experiments in the open while others experiment internally and kill products too early, may be this isn't so bad after all. Society got to see what worked and what didn't.
These stand alone products get killed but I would be interested in seeing a similar summary by feature. It's always seemed like a strategy to me that they build and release an MVP, early adopters explore it, love or hate it, and the best of what's killed winds up integrating into the core suite.
For example, I miss Google Latitude but location sharing is a feature of Google Maps now. I never used Inbox but I assume some of the new Gmail features are from what they learned there.
For all the fun people made of Yahoo back in the day, this is more or less the trajectory their many products went through. With the difference being a lot more of the internal discussions, consolidations and "new direction" decision-making was known, making them seem headless and chaotic.
There seems to be a general problem supporting employee-led innovation at scale, when the bean-counters start to control the product pipeline (and rarely look beyond the next quarter).
I find it amusing that, in a comments section that is generally irritated with Google about product shutdowns, there are also complaints that some of the products _suck_.
well one of the popular things said on HN is that ideas are cheap and execution is the determining factor for success. I think Google was deceived by their first idea which was so good that mistakes could not derail it and now they expect every idea to be of the same caliber.
This is of course aside from all the other problems they have with a company culture rewarding ideas but not rewarding growing a product, and so forth.
I wonder what this is the average of? It is the average of just things that were killed, or the average of all products, including living ones like Search? And is it really average or is it median?
> based on discontinued products listed on our website
This makes me think it is only dead products, which seems like it would skew things a bit.
If anything this tells me it takes them a long time to make a decision to kill something.
While some might be seeing 212 potential youtube scale success stories that google killed "for no apparent reason", I'm seeing 212 potential wework scale disasters that google avoided by killing off successful pitfalls and focusing on their core. The truth is somewhere in between, but obviously with google being what it is today, none of these cases chip-ed of anything from their success.
Meanwhile on AWS I was using SimpleDB until recently on a small project - I make AWS NO money - but they seem to still support SimpleDB even though it is not actually marketed? It's 12 years old and can't be generating a lot of new signups because it doesn't actually show up anywhere I don't think.
Does anyone know how AWS handles depreciating items on AWS. I've yet to be bitten despite beng a long time user (S3 still going / Simple DB was going last time I needed it etc).
As I've understood it, AWS keeps things alive as long as someone is using it. Once they want to get rid of it, they take it off the catalog of items you can provision, and start encouraging users to move to it's successor, and once it's abandoned fully they get rid of it. That's how they've always done old ec2 instance types, for example.
SimpleDB is indeed still up and running. Considering how it was described from the start as "retail store product catalogue" I wouldn't be surprised if AWS is keeping it around due to demand from a single large customer which starts with "A" and ends with "Retail".
I wouldn't be surprised if SimpleDB has been reimplemented on top of DynamoDB though.
It surprises people that Google kills products because people them as traditional products. But they're exploratory vessels for selling ads. Of course Google's ads are the product.
It's unsurprising, to me at least, that they explore lots and lots of ways to sell ads. That's exactly what you do with whatever widget your company peddles.
As I understand it, a successful product launch is a strong addition to a "promo packet". What we are seeing is the inevitable result of a system that prioritizes new products above all else. If google wanted to combat the stigma that they kill 3 out of every 4 products they launch, they could just start rewarding promo packets that demonstrate maintenance and growth. I still have Reader bookmarked as a reminder to not get to invested. Show people that they are committed to the longevity of their products and you might just get more early adopters for you next big launch.
Trips was one of the few examples of how letting Google know everything about you lead to a great experience. It'll automatically figure out my time tables, hotel reservations, and flight times. The ability to download city info and store it offline was wonderful, and its recommended itineraries, while often silly in their listed time tables, were a great jumping off point.
Nothing else can exist that does the same job, because only Google has access to literally everything about you.
Most of these could have been a success but google has no idea how to connect with customers. An idea and a product is what we have. If customers accidently start using the product and it becomes a success it stays but if it doesn't meet some corporate goal it gets killed see g+(first they pushed it everywhere making everyone hate it, the moment groups of people started using it google saw it would never reach facebook and killed it. If they would have left it could have pivoted).
I don't know what many of these products are either. Cloud VR cloud, but it doesn't sound like something I would shutdown maybe sell.. maybe rethink.
[+] [-] jedberg|6 years ago|reply
In fact, as far as I know, Netflix has only ever killed support for one platform -- The PS2. And that was only because there were only about 10 people left using it.
So we sent them all Rokus and told them we're discontinuing PS2 support.
[+] [-] sct202|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|6 years ago|reply
My old Panasonic TV has a handful of apps left (it's got like three home screens for apps, and like four still even exist). Thankfully Vudu, my app of choice, still works. As does Netflix and I believe Amazon Prime.
[+] [-] kylec|6 years ago|reply
https://www.polygon.com/wii/2018/11/11/18085282/wii-netflix-...
[+] [-] plumeria|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nfriedly|6 years ago|reply
Not being able to switch users is pretty aggravating, though. (Both for me and the family member who's account the 3DS forces me onto.) That issue alone prettymuch keeps me from using it :(
[+] [-] d0gbread|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arvinaminpour|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scarface74|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] codyogden|6 years ago|reply
Since I run Killed by Google, I feel it's important to clarify that the average Google product lifespan is much longer than four years thanks to flagship products like Gmail, Maps, Docs, etc. I can't actually get a solid number despite a lovely spreadsheet of products that I actively track because I haven't even compiled them all yet. Anyway, I made a choice not to draw stats in killedbygoogle.com for a reason, and it's because they're misleading to most people. When I'm asked about it, I say, "The products listed lasted an average of about four years." KBG is cynical view of Google's product strategy by any measure, but at least it's not drawing empty and misleading conclusions.
[+] [-] ThatPlayer|6 years ago|reply
They also list Google Sky Map ( https://gcemetery.co/google-sky-map/ ) which they call discontinued because Google released it as open source and handed over reigns to another group of developers, but looking at the github it still gets updates too, so I can see this one being either way. https://github.com/sky-map-team/stardroid
[+] [-] openmosix|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshuamorton|6 years ago|reply
Another quarter were explicitly experimental (labs, glass, ara, etc.).
And another handful are products that no longer make sense in the modern world (google desktop, various toolbars, browser sync, the gmail notifier, etc.)
Hell, one of them is apparently the webconferencing software google employees used internally in like 2012, it wasn't a product.
[+] [-] cookie_monsta|6 years ago|reply
Of course it's possible that everyone has some personal favourites amongst those 164, but if an idea really has legs what's to stop people from exhuming it from the Google graveyard?
[+] [-] underwater|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawaytoday5|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] visarga|6 years ago|reply
Averages are misleading when the distribution is bi-or-multimodal.
[+] [-] kedean|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heavymark|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _ea1k|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] w0mbat|6 years ago|reply
Each of those previous projects shipped and did something useful for the public and helped Google in some way, like providing technical research or laying down infrastructure later used by other projects that still exist. At the very least something got killed because the team was needed on a high priority project, where they made a big difference.
[+] [-] harikb|6 years ago|reply
Any Xooglers care to comment? I am not asking for actual numbers, but just ballpark numbers / estimates.
If it turns out Google experiments in the open while others experiment internally and kill products too early, may be this isn't so bad after all. Society got to see what worked and what didn't.
[+] [-] d0gbread|6 years ago|reply
For example, I miss Google Latitude but location sharing is a feature of Google Maps now. I never used Inbox but I assume some of the new Gmail features are from what they learned there.
[+] [-] lubujackson|6 years ago|reply
There seems to be a general problem supporting employee-led innovation at scale, when the bean-counters start to control the product pipeline (and rarely look beyond the next quarter).
[+] [-] leoh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bryanrasmussen|6 years ago|reply
This is of course aside from all the other problems they have with a company culture rewarding ideas but not rewarding growing a product, and so forth.
[+] [-] jedberg|6 years ago|reply
> based on discontinued products listed on our website
This makes me think it is only dead products, which seems like it would skew things a bit.
If anything this tells me it takes them a long time to make a decision to kill something.
[+] [-] steren|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jVinc|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] privateSFacct|6 years ago|reply
Does anyone know how AWS handles depreciating items on AWS. I've yet to be bitten despite beng a long time user (S3 still going / Simple DB was going last time I needed it etc).
[+] [-] kedean|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cperciva|6 years ago|reply
I wouldn't be surprised if SimpleDB has been reimplemented on top of DynamoDB though.
[+] [-] Waterluvian|6 years ago|reply
It's unsurprising, to me at least, that they explore lots and lots of ways to sell ads. That's exactly what you do with whatever widget your company peddles.
[+] [-] asdfasgasdgasdg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ortusdux|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] com2kid|6 years ago|reply
Trips was one of the few examples of how letting Google know everything about you lead to a great experience. It'll automatically figure out my time tables, hotel reservations, and flight times. The ability to download city info and store it offline was wonderful, and its recommended itineraries, while often silly in their listed time tables, were a great jumping off point.
Nothing else can exist that does the same job, because only Google has access to literally everything about you.
[+] [-] Florin_Andrei|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steren|6 years ago|reply
It's only the average lifespan of killed products.
[+] [-] gwern|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skunkworker|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] papito|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrochkind1|6 years ago|reply
"The average lifespan of a DISCONTINUED Google product..."
Note this does not mean the average lifespan of a Google product is 4 years. There numbers do not include products which have NOT been killed.
[+] [-] at_a_remove|6 years ago|reply
"Which is what?"
"Four-year life span." --Blade Runner
Here, though, the emotional response is our attachment to a Google service.
[+] [-] wolco|6 years ago|reply
I don't know what many of these products are either. Cloud VR cloud, but it doesn't sound like something I would shutdown maybe sell.. maybe rethink.
[+] [-] mroche|6 years ago|reply
https://www.cadnauseam.com/autodesk-graveyard/
[+] [-] notadoc|6 years ago|reply