Google’s Graveyard: 13 products Google killed off in 2013
By Bob Brown,
Network World |
Oct 10, 2013 2:38 PM
PT
Google Reader has had plenty of company going to the grave this year
Google giveth (including Google Death) and Google taketh away. This year, the company has sent a host of well-known and more obscure offerings to their demise. But don’t worry, the company still has dozens of new and old products in its portfolio. Here’s a look back at the ones killed off this year.
No Google end-of-life decision this year got as much attention as the company’s killing off of the Google Reader RSS reader in July. The offering, which had been around since 2005, had a devoted if shrinking following, some of whom took to the web with online petitions and pleas across social media and forums. Some Google Reader supporters blamed Google’s infatuation with Google+ on the decision. No shortage of alternatives emerged seeking to catch Google Reader users on the rebound.
In with a new Google Maps app for Android and eventually iOS devices, out with the Latitude location-sharing service, which isn’t part of the new maps app and was retired from older versions in August. Latitude debuted in 2009. Google is pushing users toward location-sharing services in G+ now.
The death of Google 20% Time, that perk of spending a fifth of your time at the company to work on side projects, could be great exaggerated. This isn’t one of those things that Google killed off in a public blog post. Plenty has been written this year about Google’s ditching the 20% Time Rule and innovation dying with it, but the consensus seems to be that Google had to put more structure around this given the company’s size and growth.
OK, this Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson comedy set at Google did get “killed” by a lot of critics, but not all the reviews were bad.
This idea is still half-baked perhaps, but it’s been widely reported that Google is looking to nix cookies as its method for tracking web users on behalf of the advertisers that fuel the company’s revenue. Google is said to be working on an anonymous identifier to help advertisers get their content in front of the most appropriate consumers.
Google announced in March that this tool, for making 3D building models in Google Earth and Maps, would be retired on June 1. Users can still snag their 3D masterpieces from a warehouse and Google has alternative tools in Maps and Earth to soften this blow.
This plug-in was designed to help people work in the cloud by automatically saving Microsoft Office files from Windows PCs in Google Drive. But Google would rather have you install Drive on your Windows PC, or for that matter, on Macs, Android devices and iOS devices. Cloud Connect went “poof!” on April 30.
Kicking BlackBerry when it’s down? Google this year announced it was ending support for this app and has directed BlackBerry users who want to keep using Google Voice to use Google’s HTML5 app instead.
This offering was designed to allow consumers access to Google Mail, Calendar and Contacts via the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol, but with Google’s release of technology called CardDAV, the company now offers similar access via IMAP, CalDAV and CardDAV. As for Jan. 30, users were no longer able to set up new devices using Google Sync, but existing Sync connections still will work. Google Sync only has one foot in the grave, however, as the business version remains alive and well.
Google’s Yelpish guide to businesses/restaurants debuted in July of 2012, having been rebranded from Google Places, which was introduced in 2011. But even a name change didn’t save this iOS app, which like others had its usefulness marginalized by enhancements to Google Maps. Google pulled the app from the App Store in August.
Google announced in July that it was putting the kibosh on its standalone Google Shopper apps for iOS and Android, and would instead steer users to employ Google Shopping and Google Search to find what they’re looking to buy.
Launched in 2011, Google Catalogs was billed as a greener way to shop -- via tablet computers rather than paper catalogs -- at retailers such as Nordstrom and L.L. Bean. But apparently this Android and iPad shopping app didn’t result in enough green for Google, because it discontinued the app in August. You can still get to the catalogs via a desktop browser though.
The personalized home-page portal, around since 2005, is slated to meet its end on Nov. 1, 2013. This isn’t a case of Google giving users short notice either, having announced the plan in July 2012: “With modern apps that run on platforms like Chrome and Android, the need for something like iGoogle has eroded over time, so we’ll be winding down iGoogle on November 1, 2013, giving you a full 16 months from the announcement to adjust or easily export your iGoogle data.”
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