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Killed by Google
- l5870uoo9y 3y agoA market Google never successfully entered, even though they tried, was social media. This site shows the failed attempts, most notably Google+. Perhaps Youtube Shorts will die soon too.
- SllX 3y agoI’m not one to put stock in new Google products, but YouTube Shorts probably isn’t going anywhere anytime soon as long as the partner program that launched in January does well for itself.
- tempest_ 3y agoYoutube is social media, just instead of the tweets or reddit posts the currency is videos.
- Darmody 3y agoThere are dumb shorts in Youtube with tens or even hundred millions of views. I think it is safe to say they keep people engaged somehow.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- makoto12 3y agoPrevious conversations https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30219442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30219442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24694459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24694459
- Vermyndax 3y agoStill do not understand why people trust Google at all.
- 3adawi 3y agotbf some of these products are simple features like the youtube stories one, if you made a similar list for a large web company (like Meta), that list might just be as big
- manuelabeledo 3y agoStories is hardly a "simple feature". Most of the examples, if not all, are standalone products.
- butterNaN 3y agoNot the biggest Google fan, but this page presents only one side of the picture. Google has some solid services that have been going on for a long time. Additionally, a personal opinion: They are relatively better than Microsoft/Apple/Amazon.
- shaftway 3y agoI don't understand why anyone trusts anyone. If you build your business on anyone else's back, then you have to be ready for them to disappear at any time. That being said, if the choice is between building on Google or JonathansAwesomeSoftwareCompany, then I'm picking Google every day of the week. Google may kill the project, but they are infinitely more likely to remain solvent and be able to throw resources at what I care about than Jonathan is.
- ttul 3y agoAbsolutely never build on top of Google. They steam roll you and then drive the steamroller into the wrecking yard.
- sidcool 3y agoWhy is this a surprise any more? Except Google Cloud and Google Workspace, everything else is a risk. I know many people don't trust Google even for Cloud and Workspace, but I give them a strong benefit of doubt on those two.
- noman-land 3y agoThey deserve no such benefit.
- flir 3y agoGmail would be the last to go, I think.
- sebzim4500 3y agoI would be shocked if Google killed search in the next 10 years. I guess it could become unrecognizable by being merged with bard, but the product will exist
- nunez 3y agoNeither of those are safe either.
- kleinmatic 3y agoFelt twinges of grief as I recognized some of these. I still miss Reader. But some weren't killed so much as became other products -- Urchin became Google Analytics, Google Mini became CSE (now Programmable Search), Google Refine became Open Refine, etc.
- coldpie 3y ago> I still miss Reader. Have you tried Feedly? Works great, and has a real business model, which means you can give them money to keep providing you with a product.
- manuelabeledo 3y agoI used to run everything Google: had an OnHub, then a set of Nest WiFi pucks, my domains were in Google Domains, my Photos in Google Photos, have a bunch of Nest cameras and other IoT stuff, Stadia, etc. They started by killing my OnHub, suddenly it wasn't good enough to operate as just another Nest puck. I moved off that. They killed Stadia, OK fair enough. Surprisingly, they killed my Nest Guard system too, now I have to move on to some third party they partnered with. Half of my cameras don't work as expected in the Home app, only the "new" ones do. Then they killed Domains for whatever reason. I don't think I'll be paying for any new Google products any time soon. When the cameras and smoke detectors stop working, I'll move on to something else. Unifi perhaps?
- kemayo 3y agoWhere are you winding up moving your domains? I need to make a decision on that in the next 29 days...
- datameta 3y agoYeah, that was an unexpected turn of events.
- manuelabeledo 3y agoCloudflare. Cheap and is relatively painless to manage, DMARC included. It doesn't hurt that their dev documentation is pretty great.
- robertlagrant 3y agoYes - I use Cloudflare now.
- dancemethis 3y agoIt is tragic that they won't support .MOE domains. Would have moved years ago by now.
- 9dev 3y agoCloudflare has been promising to add support for all the missing TLDs for years, but seemingly just forgot about the product entirely. And I don't mean esoteric new endings, but mere country TLDs (e.g. `.de`). Google might be outright killing stuff, but Cloudflare moves from one interesting thing to the next like a goldfish with too much money and a huge supply of speed.
- tambourine_man 3y agoI read “I still miss Google Reader, never forget” at least once a week. Why hasn’t a replacement popped up? Surely the operating costs are much lower these days and there’s clearly demand. Isn’t it the perfect startup product?
- fullstop 3y agohttps://feedly.com/ https://feedly.com/ might fit the bill
- InitialLastName 3y agoI just wish Feedly would stop forcing their insipid (and broken) "AI" features on me. No, articles about variable sports standings don't involve "leadership changes".
- fullstop 3y agoYes, agreed there. With that being said, I'm not paying for the service so I can't complain too much.
- browningstreet 3y agoI tried to use some of the Feedly AI and it’s not even available in Pro, just Enterprise levels. It’s becoming annoying enough I’ve started thinking about moving elsewhere. Even though I mostly use Unread to read Feedly feeds on my phone.
- kemayo 3y agoThere's a bunch of replacements. I like https://newsblur.com https://newsblur.com but there are 4-6 large-ish similar sites. That said, partially what people miss is the relative cultural hegemony of Google Reader. It was RSS front-and-center, prominently featured on websites, supported by the biggest company in tech, with all the users there and able to take advantage of the (sparse) social features.
- 3y ago
- quirkot 3y agoThis graveyard is such a great list of fads. Reading thru it I remember how hot each on of the services google was mimicking was for a time. Ahh.. google. The world's biggest Also Ran
- alberth 3y agoPaid vs free I wish that site would denote & track, which of these services were paid or free. Because to me, it's a lot more understandable to shutdown a free offering.
- buttersbrian 3y agoThis is the distinction that people often fail to make or care about when lazily lobbing hate at anything new google creates.
- sys32768 3y agoThe Picasa photo organizer by Landscape, which Google purchased in 2004 and then killed eight years ago, is still the best photo organizer I have found. It is fast, light-weight, and intuitive, and totally functional so long as you don't ask it to handle newer image or video formats.
- penciltwirler 3y agoI think in Picasa's case, they learned from that and turned it into Google Photos. I don't think there's any shared code, but at least they learned from it from a product perspective. I would say Google Photos turned out great.
- pjturpeau 3y agoI agree, too bad it's not maintained anymore nor open sourced.
- Jcampuzano2 3y agoI've slowly been moving more and more stuff off of Google, but the last few things are ones I've had for years. Gmail and Google Fi. Google would never in its wildest dreams kill Gmail, but sometimes I do worry about Google Fi. I know others have mentioned not having great experiences, but I've used it since shortly after it was announced with practically 0 issues. Luckily I've never actually had to contact support for anything though so that probably contributes (I hear its pretty terrible). I'd hope its something that will last the long haul.
- bboygravity 3y agoWhat makes you believe they won't kill Gmail? The equation is pretty simple: cost higher than revenue = kill. Why can't that happen according to you? I'm not saying that it will happen tomorrow, but...
- butterNaN 3y agoI feel they would try to enshittify Gmail (much more) before killing it off.
- berdon 3y agoSwitching to fastmail was surprisingly easy and having control of my own domain means I'll never lose access to my emails - I might just need to switch providers.
- csydas 3y agoi do agree with some of what you’re saying google is t limited to just discontinuing a product when it wants to kill it. it could easily make a new google mail branded as a a secure one and only existing accounts or business/edu accounts can get through. i have many of the same concerns about google, and at this point as long as there aren’t interruptions to their biggest contracts in a meaningful way, i would not put it past google to get more closed off.
- nicechianti 3y ago[dead]
- robofanatic 3y agowas the real goal of "Google Code Competitions" was to build a dataset for AI?
- xigoi 3y agoI don't think an AI trained on competitive code would be usable for anything other than code competitions.
- jstummbillig 3y agoLest we forget that people are more easily frustrated by loss, than inspired by gains.
- fh9302 3y agoSurprised they didn't add the Pixel Pass yet.
- Decabytes 3y agoDoes anyone feel like Go will end up on here one day? Or is it safe due to the fact that it's open source unlike these other products?
- robin_reala 3y agoI definitely feel that Dart is high up on the list.
- zinclozenge 3y agoThis might have been a concern within the first few years of its life, but at this point Go has too much community inertia to get killed.
- majewsky 3y agoGo is sufficiently entangled in a lot of modern tech to ensure that someone would take ownership. Possibly even the CNCF, seeing how most projects under their wing are Go-based.
- butterNaN 3y agoSome of these I didn't even know existed, and they do sound like cool ideas. Also I wonder what's the difference between killed services with Gillotine icon vs Gravestone icon?
- Tao3300 3y agoThe guillotine hasn't dropped yet. The graves are already dead.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- JohnMakin 3y agoGoogle domains going away is going to be such a pain in the ass for some people. They say that the "Google domains team" will be assisting people with the transition. What a crock of shit. One time, my google domains account got locked for no reason I'm aware of - tried to find out but could only reach bot support. They kept charging me though, of course - and I couldn't cancel because I was locked out the account. Tried unsuccessfully for a few months to resolve the situation and found it easier to cancel the credit card associated with the bill. "Google domains team", lol, there is no team. People will be on their own here.
- mythz 3y agoIt's not just the products they kill that sucks, it's all the Apps they kill with their "Free" product, only to kill that off when they get bored of it - leaving the entire ecosystem much worse than if it never existed in the first place.
- ajross 3y ago> I don't think I'll be paying for any new Google products any time soon. Here's a parable: would you buy a product from a YC-funded startup? This whole site is dedicated to the idea of chasing new ideas at great risk, so... yes, right? You'd buy a product from a startup? Needless to say, YC-funded startups fail at a rate rather higher than Google products (and startups in general at a rather higher rate still). Would you come to this site to exclaim how you "don't think you'll be buying any YC-funded products any time soon"? Why is the purchase calculus different? I'm not asking for the ethical calculus, those arguments go nowhere. I'm just curious why you'd make a practical argument about a purchase decision in one case that you wouldn't in another. Bluntly: I think you're making an emotional argument, not a practical one.
- glonq 3y agoGoogle Workspaces has not been outright killed, but Google does seem to enjoy shooting it in the leg every once in a while.
- todd3834 3y agoMy favorite one on the list would be Google Wave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave For some of these other ideas, I’m actually surprised Google even launched them. It’s hard to imagine most of these ideas moving the needle for Google at all. This must be the result of 20% time. I’ve heard they no longer have that?
- njroute22 3y agoI wonder how long Google Voice will last.