Killed by Google | Hacker News Reader

Killed by Google

killedbygoogle.com

105 pointsgreenSunglass58 comments

For comparison's sake...

Killed by Mozilla: https://killedbymozilla.com/

Killed by Microsoft: https://killedbymicrosoft.info/ (curiously DuckDuckGo which apparently takes search results from Bing didn't show me this)

Killed by Apple: https://killedbyapple.nl/

There's also one for Facebook, but it doesn't seem to be filled out: https://killedbyfacebook.nl/

Actually, why don't we have something like https://awesomeopensource.com/ but for projects that have been retired, to remember them more easily or view which company has created what? Maybe even just a GitHub repo, like https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted ? Anyone know of other good links like that, perhaps?

There used to be unmaintained-free-software.org, but that is dead and gone now too.

> Killed by Microsoft: ...

The big difference being many of those things are still usable for users. Just fire up the binary and be happy. Google on the other hand do SaaS to spy, at their core.

I thought about expanding the "Killed by" concept to other companies and doing precisely that "Awesome"-style project, but it takes a lot of time between researching and verifying old, mostly broken internet links to compile that data.

The sheer size of Google’s list vs Apple’s is why I’ve decided to never again use a Google service. There is no reliability there, nor is there any consistency - they kill products for no apparent reason - popular beloved products. The latest decision to turf anyone on Legacy Google Appa for your Domain accounts was the final straw. They are a truly reprehensible company.

Apple's list is utterly incomplete. The thing is, Apple won't necessarily discontinue named services because they don't really like to name their services.

They've killed things like their book printing from iPhoto/Photos, but it never had a marketable name, so a list like that is kind of dumb to use with Apple.

Ok that’s a fair comment. I think with Apple one can at least recognize that when they cancel something it is due to a lack of popularity. With Google, they kill services constantly that are popular, or they randomly change the rules (for example, suddenly users need a gmail account but NOT a Google Workspace account to log into Nest Cams).

Dealing with Google is like being in a relationship with a schizophrenic.

Apparent reason is losing hope to monetize the product. They literally do not care how popular or beloved it is. In the end it is the business and not a charity foundation.

Right, but if you have a popular product and can’t monetize it, particularly with Google’s business model of inserting ads, then you aren’t very good at business. What’s the difference between someone logging into Gmail and paying for it via ads in Gmail vs someone logging into a legacy Google Apps for your Domain email account and paying for it via ads shown exactly like Gmail?

Honestly, it feels like the company is filled with warring factions and the users are collateral damage.

So many Google products that I only discovered existed after they've been cancelled. I wonder if there's a marketing problem here.

As a side note I genuinely couldn't tell you what the name of the current chat app they're promoting (Hangouts, Meet, Duo, Allo), or what they're currently calling their smart speaker this week. Sorry but "Nest" is a thermostat and always will be to me.

Mostly the products are nice and you can see how it will fit in, but they are making them complex and hard to use. And by that, people will not use it.

I guess they are trying their chances with RCS (Rich Communication Services) which is a standard rather than a service.

And now let me just get this out of me: Google is really bad at naming things. "Hangouts" is too casual, "Meet" is too confusing (it's sounded more like an outdoor activity planer), and I don't even know what Duo or Allo means (I'm not even interested to look it up).

Just call it "Chat" or "Chat service", Google, and then sit on it really REALLY steady.

They have Google Chat now, but it's just a Microsoft Teams spin-off for education.

Sounds like something they'll cancel soon.

Hmm, that is true. I suppose a lot of companies have made these types of products in wake of the pandemic.

I remember that every time I bought a new Android phone, there was a new chat app that was - obviously - not backwards-compatible with the previous one. Some of the contacts were usually there, some random ones from my Gmail account appeared too. All chat history was gone.

Some of my friends used Hangouts a few times - it was working reasonably well, and Gmail integration didn't hurt either. Granted after a few "iterations" of Google messaging apps, no one I know uses them, ever.

Apparently Stadia is shortly going to be the new member on the list, as most of us expected.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30211457

Considering it's supposed to live on as a white label service, and partners such as Ubisoft were adding games as recently as a few months ago (Far Cry 6), it's highly unlikely the service will be completely shut down soon. Keeping it for now without much investment into improvements is more probable.

Disclaimer: I've been using Stadia for more than a year now, on the Stadia Pro tier, and have probably around a hundred games ( of which I've bought ~10). I'm quite happy with it, Red Dead Redemption 2 was marvelous to play on it.

I seriously doubt it can compete with Azure PlayFab or Amazon GameLift, I won't give it more than one extra year to fully ramp down.

I used it at the start for Destiny 2 and had a lot of fun with it.

Then I tried streaming D2 from my home PC to my work PC across town, and my latency was definitely better than Stadia's. After all their talk about how much work they put into lowering latency, I was very disappointed... And I discovered that I could stream better and cheaper with Parsec and Steam/Epic/Uplay/etc that with Stadia.

For a while, I thought the free monthly games were going to save them, but then those went downhill.

Since they never implemented any of the amazing features they advertised, like continuing from where a streamer was playing, it's hard to support Stadia unless you're in very particular situations.

Although the death of Google Reader hurts me to this day, it's impressive how much experimentation Google is able to do. Also, some products were not killed but rebranded (E.g. Tez, which is now Google Pay in India)

Well, considering the number of employees they have ...

But yes, Google Reader was, for me, the start of the decline.

Sure, they're super successful to this day, but they switched off my 'fan-boy' button at that point.

I found that list utterly depressing, actually.

A lot in that list are literally things that migrated in other products or the base of new products.

I do believe it's misleading

Incredible how no competitor could ever totally fill the empty space left by Google Reader. Some of them play recommendations, others are perhaps too simple, or not as linear ux-wise.

Sometimes I feel somebody should just copy Google Reader as closely as possible.

Try Newsblur. It comes very close.

Looks interesting, thank you!

Has there ever been a good explanation for why they killed Reader? It seemed immensely popular at the time and easy to inject ads into.

It feels a bit dishonest to have AngularJS on there without mentioning that Angular superseded it.

I wouldn't say dishonest, but may lead to wrong conclusions. I think most professionals who know what AngularJS is will know about Angular.

I didn’t know is was called AngularJS, so I suppose they’ve named the new thing what I had assumed was the name of the old things.

Supplanted it without backwards compatibility. angular was a complete rework. That's when I switched to react. Also, now I won't touch flutter.

I got burned with Dart 1.0 and its Chrome integration, so not going there as well.

This doesn't indicate "bad practice". At their scale they can run these experiments for no other reason than to let people feel ownership of a project and gain experience. If even only succeeds, that's a bonus.

You are failing to account for the cost on user trust. Each time a user buys into an app or device Google shuts down, that user trusts Google products a little less. Do it once or twice, no big deal. Do it dozens of times and they're never going to try your new products again.

To your point, this is why many developers were reluctant to support Stadia.

This over-dramatizes a bit. For example some of the “deaths” were consolidations that’s were well implemented:

Eg. Fabric’s products were rolled into Firebase with continuity for developers. AngularJS was replaced by Angular.

This is a tired subject.

People bitch when Google doesn't innovate, and moan when the experiments fail.

Cancellation isn't the same thing as the failure of a high-risk experimental undertaking.

Google Reader had a happy and loyal following. That didn't stop Google taking an axe to it.

After the second time of having some Google product be cancelled, I vowed never to use any of their services ( apart from search ) in a commercial setup. My first question for any AWS/Azure service being considered in my organization is "When is it going to be EOL'ed?".

Going with Google is too risky these days.

This is actually great.

Shows that Google is willing to innovate and invest. Lots of new adventures, if it doesn't work - fail fast. I know I grew attached to some of these services, but guess what! I survived and found alternatives. I am also pretty sure that some of these deaths has improved other services.

I do really miss Google cloud print

Is Google really innovating anymore though? In my last year there I felt like all the small projects were getting shut down to fuel ads/search/cloud.

FeedBurner is one that I expected them to have killed years ago, but it's still alive. They even went to the effort of moving it to "more stable, modern infrastructure" last year rather than killing it. Someone at Google must care about it enough to fight for it.

When will Google itself be on this list?

With the decline of Google search quality, it feels like they might have made themselves incredibly vulnerable to an attack against their golden goose.

Google Search pre-AI should be on that list.

It's for sure super strong ATM, but already in the death spiral IMO, just a matter of time.

I think it'll take a complete revolution to debunk Google. It's unlikely to be another keyword-based search tool. It'll be something entirely different. It might have already showed up, bought and killed by Google, though...

In my opinion the google search experience has improved over recent years, especially over say 10 years ago.

I'm having trouble figuring out why HN insists it's unusable these days.

Fun that Google toolbar was only ended 2 months ago.

I think you should add flutter and dart to this list. I don't see anyone using it or any jobs in it at all, sooner or later it will die.

Like everything :) I think the list contains only projects that are dead or for which Google gave an official termination date.

Flutter got a lot of traction in the last couple years.

Although that’s not a requisite for Google not kill it, I don’t see it happening unless some VP wakes up on the wrong side of bed some day or the key people leave to start a woodworking YouTube channel.

Wait, Angular JS is on that list ?

Angular and angular JS are different things

It’s AngularJS being killed, not Angular, which is the framework that’s current.

See, they're really bad at naming...

I wonder when Jax joins this list. 2023?

You mean Tensorflow? Jax is TF’s successor.

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