4 ms·

What other company has a literal graveyard of products? https://killedbygoogle.com https://killedbygoogle.com

izacus 4y ago
Pretty much every single corporation of that size and age. And many startups too (they call it "pivoting" though - it's not like startup workers complaining over Google here are first in line to maintain failing products forever).
jsnell 4y ago
Amazon and Microsoft would have graveyeards just as large, if compiled via the same criteria. You know all that shit Google gets about chat apps? Microsoft has also launched and killed more than a dozen of them. Jeff Bezos used to brag about how many failed products they launched and killed. So it comes back to the question that ed_mercer had: why is there such a double standard? Why does somebody obsessively maintain that site, and why does a large part of the HN audience love spamming "when will Google cancel search lol" into any discussion about Google, when Amazon putting two bullets into the neck of yet another product goes unnoticed?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > Microsoft has also launched and killed more than a dozen of them Microsoft is religious about maintaining backward compatibility and support. They also have some concept of service, which makes cancellations smoother. (All this makes product development aware of the costs of abandonment. Google doesn’t have that in its culture, and it’s a constant problem with hiring from them now.)
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    I think this is what makes the receptions between Microsoft and Google's axings different, the former at least tries to axe things with some cushioning while Google just offs things like it's Tuesday.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Mostly, they really messed up in Win32 => WinRT => UAP => UWP => WinUI 3.0, and .NET Framework to .NET Core, to the point .NET Framework is the "Python 2" of Microsoft's ecosystems, and no one besides WinDev themselves takes WinUI/WinAppSDK seriously.
- barneygale 4y ago
  https://killedbymicrosoft.info/ https://killedbymicrosoft.info/
- Ensorceled 4y ago
  Why are you and ed_mercer so intent on defending Google here? I mean I HATE Microsoft and I have to admit they do a much better job of handling product shutdowns than Google. Microsoft tells you the dog is going to "Aunt Joy Ann's farm" and gives you a puppy. Google blasts the dog right in front of you and leaves you to bury the poor thing.
  - jsnell 4y ago
    My claim is just that they're not actually exceptional in how many products they cancel or how they cancel them. If the HN community realized that, then we'd get fewer low-quality submissions like this, and fewer low-quality comments in any Google article. That'd make HN a better place. Which of the "products" on _this list_ was shut down badly, in comparison to what MS would do? Not products on some other list, but this list that's at the top of the front page. Code Jam was not a product. Stadia refunded all purchases. Street View is still accessible from the Maps app, this is just removing some ancient standalone app that nobody had heard of. Currents and the wifi routers had long deprecation cycles. I bet nobody here knows anything about the wearable computing stuff or how it was shut down. If these are all products that were reasonable to shut down, and were shut down reasonably well, then what's newsworthy about this?
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > and were shut down reasonably well Nobody who developed for Stadia thinks this. And this is far from a HN view—it regularly comes up at conferences for financial types.
      - jsnell 4y ago
        People who developed for Stadia mainly did so because Google paid them outrageous amounts of money for ports, not because users they were making a lot of money buying games. If there were no users buying games, shutting it down would not have had any meaningful impact on the developers. How do you think they should have done it instead? What would have changed for those developers when done your way?
rippercushions 4y ago
This exists: https://killedbymicrosoft.info/ https://killedbymicrosoft.info/ But if you search for "killed by Amazon", you get back news articles about people actually dying in its warehouses. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/17/amazon-warehouse-worker-deaths https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/17/amazon-wa...
- apocalyptic0n3 4y ago
  Looking at the Microsoft link, the big difference seems to be age and relevance. 1. Skype for Business - 18 years old. Upgrade path to Microsoft Teams 2. Windows Server Essentials - 26 years old. Unsure how relevant this is today with everything going cloud-based 3. Atom - Wasn't originally a Microsoft product and they maintained it despite there already being a better Microsoft alternative for longer than expected. Also 9 years old 4. Internet Explorer - 27 years old and a clear upgrade path was available 5. Forza Street - F2P racing game. Can't excuse this one 6. Microsoft Academic - No excuse, however the data had an open license and migrated elsewhere 7. Channel 9 - 17 years old 8. Silverlight - 16 years old and the web had evolved beyond it long ago Microsoft has killed 13 products since 2021 and many of them had simply run their course. Comparatively, Google has killed 57 products in that same time frame. Most of them are under 10 years old, many of them under 5. Many of them had not run their course and almost all of them had no clear upgrade or migration path.
belter 4y ago
https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://gcemetery.co/ https://gcemetery.co/
jsheard 4y ago
That site really stretches the definition of killed sometimes, like "Backup and Sync" (the old desktop Google Drive client) is on there because it was renamed to "Google Drive for desktop" as part of a redesign. The only thing that was killed was the "Backup and Sync" branding, the actual functionality it provided still exists.
GuB-42 4y ago
Microsoft has already been mentioned but Mozilla also has quite a significant graveyard for its size. https://killedbymozilla.com/ https://killedbymozilla.com/

Pretty much every single corporation of that size and age. And many startups too (they call it "pivoting" though - it's not like startup workers complaining over Google here are first in line to maintain failing products forever).

jsnell 4y ago

Amazon and Microsoft would have graveyeards just as large, if compiled via the same criteria. You know all that shit Google gets about chat apps? Microsoft has also launched and killed more than a dozen of them. Jeff Bezos used to brag about how many failed products they launched and killed. So it comes back to the question that ed_mercer had: why is there such a double standard? Why does somebody obsessively maintain that site, and why does a large part of the HN audience love spamming "when will Google cancel search lol" into any discussion about Google, when Amazon putting two bullets into the neck of yet another product goes unnoticed?

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> Microsoft has also launched and killed more than a dozen of them Microsoft is religious about maintaining backward compatibility and support. They also have some concept of service, which makes cancellations smoother. (All this makes product development aware of the costs of abandonment. Google doesn’t have that in its culture, and it’s a constant problem with hiring from them now.)
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  I think this is what makes the receptions between Microsoft and Google's axings different, the former at least tries to axe things with some cushioning while Google just offs things like it's Tuesday.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Mostly, they really messed up in Win32 => WinRT => UAP => UWP => WinUI 3.0, and .NET Framework to .NET Core, to the point .NET Framework is the "Python 2" of Microsoft's ecosystems, and no one besides WinDev themselves takes WinUI/WinAppSDK seriously.
barneygale 4y ago
https://killedbymicrosoft.info/ https://killedbymicrosoft.info/
Ensorceled 4y ago
Why are you and ed_mercer so intent on defending Google here? I mean I HATE Microsoft and I have to admit they do a much better job of handling product shutdowns than Google. Microsoft tells you the dog is going to "Aunt Joy Ann's farm" and gives you a puppy. Google blasts the dog right in front of you and leaves you to bury the poor thing.
- jsnell 4y ago
  My claim is just that they're not actually exceptional in how many products they cancel or how they cancel them. If the HN community realized that, then we'd get fewer low-quality submissions like this, and fewer low-quality comments in any Google article. That'd make HN a better place. Which of the "products" on _this list_ was shut down badly, in comparison to what MS would do? Not products on some other list, but this list that's at the top of the front page. Code Jam was not a product. Stadia refunded all purchases. Street View is still accessible from the Maps app, this is just removing some ancient standalone app that nobody had heard of. Currents and the wifi routers had long deprecation cycles. I bet nobody here knows anything about the wearable computing stuff or how it was shut down. If these are all products that were reasonable to shut down, and were shut down reasonably well, then what's newsworthy about this?
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > and were shut down reasonably well Nobody who developed for Stadia thinks this. And this is far from a HN view—it regularly comes up at conferences for financial types.
    - jsnell 4y ago
      People who developed for Stadia mainly did so because Google paid them outrageous amounts of money for ports, not because users they were making a lot of money buying games. If there were no users buying games, shutting it down would not have had any meaningful impact on the developers. How do you think they should have done it instead? What would have changed for those developers when done your way?

rippercushions 4y ago

This exists: https://killedbymicrosoft.info/ https://killedbymicrosoft.info/ But if you search for "killed by Amazon", you get back news articles about people actually dying in its warehouses. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/17/amazon-warehouse-worker-deaths https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/17/amazon-wa...

apocalyptic0n3 4y ago
Looking at the Microsoft link, the big difference seems to be age and relevance. 1. Skype for Business - 18 years old. Upgrade path to Microsoft Teams 2. Windows Server Essentials - 26 years old. Unsure how relevant this is today with everything going cloud-based 3. Atom - Wasn't originally a Microsoft product and they maintained it despite there already being a better Microsoft alternative for longer than expected. Also 9 years old 4. Internet Explorer - 27 years old and a clear upgrade path was available 5. Forza Street - F2P racing game. Can't excuse this one 6. Microsoft Academic - No excuse, however the data had an open license and migrated elsewhere 7. Channel 9 - 17 years old 8. Silverlight - 16 years old and the web had evolved beyond it long ago Microsoft has killed 13 products since 2021 and many of them had simply run their course. Comparatively, Google has killed 57 products in that same time frame. Most of them are under 10 years old, many of them under 5. Many of them had not run their course and almost all of them had no clear upgrade or migration path.

belter 4y ago

https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://gcemetery.co/ https://gcemetery.co/

jsheard 4y ago

That site really stretches the definition of killed sometimes, like "Backup and Sync" (the old desktop Google Drive client) is on there because it was renamed to "Google Drive for desktop" as part of a redesign. The only thing that was killed was the "Backup and Sync" branding, the actual functionality it provided still exists.

GuB-42 4y ago

Microsoft has already been mentioned but Mozilla also has quite a significant graveyard for its size. https://killedbymozilla.com/ https://killedbymozilla.com/