Google Flops & Failures - The Failed Google Graveyard | Hacker News Reader

Google Flops & Failures - The Failed Google Graveyard

wordstream.com

13 pointsbillpg15 comments

That's what happens when you encourage your employees to build things on their own. You have more failures than successes as far as products go.

Personally, I like that Google has these pet projects that they try out for a while and see if they work. Not everything you do is going to be successful.

I'll take my gmail/maps/apps/reader and be happy. And who knows, maybe in the near future they will come out with something new that I can't live without.

Exactly -- without having swung and missed so many times, they wouldn't have hit so many out of the park, too.

Gmail, Maps, Docs, and Reader all started out as these same sorts of embryonic projects that got critical mass and justified their development into the blockbuster services they are now. It seems ingrained in Google's corporate culture to push things out there and see what has staying power. Some things stick and some don't, that's life.

You know what else is a failure? Presenting text in a JPG in 10 point font.

I was going to say the same thing. When I first visited the page, I quickly scrolled down to the bottom of the page, thinking "I hope I get past this huge ad and on to the text of the article." Luckily, I realised my mistake and moved closer to the screen in order to read the tiny text.

They forgot:

1. Lively 2. Google Print

Also, Google Answers preceded Yahoo Answers -- they got that wrong.

Google Answers predated Yahoo Answers by quite some time (3 years).

That's just not true. Maybe a Yahoo! Answers redesign and rebranding, but certainly not the launch of Yahoo! Answers which was formerly known as Ask Yahoo!

That's not actually correct.

Answers came from the Taiwan version of Answers, which was itself a clone of Naver in Korea.

Ask Yahoo was unrelated. And still appears to be there.

Remember Google Knol?

http://knol.google.com

Their answer to Wikipedia....

It was never intended to be an "answer" to wikipedia.

They also seemed to forget the photosharing service hello.com

Wasn't it Picasa's project before Google acquired them?

great graphics on this badboy.

Google Buzz listed but not Google Wave?

Someone scrolled to the bottom too fast.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com