Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/19/the-google-cemetary.html
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*sematary
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Hᴇʀᴇ ʟɪᴇs ɢᴏᴏɢʟᴇ ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ. Bᴇʟᴏᴠᴇᴅ, ɪᴛ ꜰᴇʟʟ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ sᴀᴠᴀɢᴇ ɪɴᴅɪꜰꜰᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ.
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Oh God. Google+ will come back to kill us all.
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RIP Reader, iGoogle, Tasks Canvas, et al…
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I’ve seen it posited that Google tends to kill projects because their engineers only want to work on the cool new projects and no one wants to polish and maintain.
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Google+ is not quite dead yet. They still have corporate clients using it to provide product support. Niantic for their games, etc.
Hmph! I just tried to uninstall it from my phone, but it’ll only let me scrape off the updates and disable it. Time to show it who’s boss. “Bring up the logic probe!”
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An entertaining list that also serves as a warning.
My small business got whacked by relying on Checkout for purchases and Gears for a development project. Personally, I invested much time into Picassa and Portfolios. And they bought and then ruined Waze!
My takeaway (slow learner) - I will never, ever again invest time and money into a Google service or product. A company small enough to have skin in the game is a much better gamble.
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A lot of these were terrible, or (like goo.gl) generic things that didn’t need google-branded insts.
What really burns is the embrace-extend-extinctions, namely usenet and mail. They haven’t shuttered gmail yet, but they will one day, and they mean it to have replaced all competition by the time that happens. Sad!
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I also missed Google Reader. I’ve got a paid subscription to The Old Reader now, which is a lot like Google Reader and which is much faster and more responsive than it was a couple of years ago. Unfortunately consolidation around the big platforms means there are fewer independent sites worth subscribing to, and those sites are still slowly ditching their feeds, too.
I’ve been frustrated by some recent updates to some of the Google apps I still use; it’s very odd to see that even so, I’m only aware of a tiny sliver of the upheaval and chaos that’s been churning around Google all this time. Each one of those dead projects represents a substantial fraction of the working life of a fair number of people. All that money, all that time and effort, all that human capital, all that opportunity cost - toast.
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Google Reader turns up at the back door, covered in muck and looking a bit off
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Google + for businesses has been rebranded Google Currents (which is ironically the name of another shuttered Google service)
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Ah, so they are just moving the headstones!
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Look, I just want Google Inbox back, and if that means I have to put up with a scalpel or two in my achilles tendon, so be it.
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Huh? What happened to Chromecast? They were great value when on sold on discount.
I don’t think they’ll get rid of gmail. They get lots of user data from it. Not just who is emailing who, but the contents.
I think Google Fiber’s days are numbered. They’ve cancelled all expansion, and in cities that have it, are not expanding into new areas. I predict they’ll either shut it down or sell to a competitor within 5 years.
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When they announced they were discontinuing planned expansions, they said they saw the future as being wireless. I have a feeling that the 5G spectrum license auction will see Google trying to pick some up.
I still feel pain over this.
