Predicting Google Closures (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Predicting Google Closures (2013)

gwern.net

85 pointswskinner32 comments

The author's list of the prediction is at the end (most likely at the top to least likely at bottom). Verified the predictions.

1. Schemer - Closed Jan 2014

2. Boutiques - Closed Oct 2011

3. Magnifier

4. Hotpot - Closed 2011

5. Page Speed Online API

6. WhatsonWhen - Closed When?

7. Unofficial Guides - Closed 2013?

8. WDYL search engine - Closed 2018

9. Cloud Messaging

10. Correlate - Closed Dec 2019

[Edit]

It is interesting to note that couple of products from 'least likely to close' list got closed as well.

4. Picasa - Closed Feb, May 2016

9. Toolbar - Closed Dec 2021

iGoogle is also present in the analysis. I really miss it, and now, years later, I still haven't found a good replacement.

Same. Best I’ve found is: https://protopage.com

Boutiques and hotpot don't really count as they were already closed by the time of the article. it just goes to show how hard it is to keep up with the rapid pace of product cancellation at Google.

To be fair the author specifically called out Picasa and Toolbar as subjectively seeming more likely to get dropped than the model predicted.

To be fair they don't need Google Toolbar any longer as people just download their whole spyware suite these days, even if it doesn't tell you the page rank of sites - which was the main reason anyone technically competent would use the tool bar :-)

I believe Cloud Messaging was in fact killed (deprecated 2018) and replaced with Firebase Cloud Messaging (which was an acquisition that happened after the article).

edit: And I believe Magnifier became Google Music which was shut down and replaced with Youtube Music.

Rule of thumb: Google will eventually shut down everything that isn't directly involved in printing ad money and gaining more control over the internet.

How do you see Google Docs? It doesn't have ads but instead I think some people actually pay for it.

Google docs is part of the gmail suite that is sold into businesses (Twitter uses it) so they MAY keep it alive for now because it’s strategically important.

It’s part of the battlefield against Microsoft and they don’t want to give that up.

It’s sad that Google doesn’t spin some of these shutdowns off as separate companies.

it ties people to a Google account from a young age and keeps them in the Google ecosystem. A loss leader to collect more data to help deliver more precise ads.

Most schools pretty much require students to make a Google account. It's probably profitable by now due to kids in school who used it bringing it into the workplace, but compared to ads it is still a drop in the bucket in terms of revenue

Isn't Picasa basically Google Photos, though? Same with messaging, it just rebranded.

This isn't the same as shutting down Reader or Stadia, with 0 replacement.

It is, I had some photos on Picasa back then, they’re still here among my oldest on google photos.

"One can’t imagine flagship products like Search or Books ever being shut down."

I can totally imagine Books being shut down.

How can you NOT imagine Books being shut down?

how is Books a flagship product? :D

In 2013, it seemed that Google intended to expanding its online search dominance into the real world by cataloguing books, and then giving users access to the contents of books in search results.

They did some of that, but it didn't pan out as successfully as was imagined.

Books was looking way bigger in 2011; I think Google decided it wasn't the copyright battle worth having.

I’m hindsight we should’ve known, they even called their build tool the “closure compiler”.

The perennial Google Reader mention makes me feel obligated to mention that there are still many blogs alive and well and with RSS feeds. You can still do it, and there are so many reader applications. My recommendation is The Old Reader (basically a GR clone), and Reeder on iOS (syncs to stuff like The Old Reader)

Yes there are no RSS feeds for Twitter or FB. But there’s a lot for a lot of places. I’ve never found a website where I wanted an RSS feed and where it wasn’t available (absent maybe FB, where a feed for my closest friends would be nice)

I'm firmly convinced that YouTube RSS feed feature is just thing they forgot to remove at that point.

And so far only way to get notification from channels that don't get eaten by google's whims

Let me provide a simpler model.

If it's not driven by ad revenue (e.g. Search and, increasingly, Maps), helps Google maintain a grip on showing ads (Chrome and Android), or is critically used within Google (Mail, Docs, Calendar, Meet), it will be eventually shut down (looking at you, Cloud!).

Oh, and if it's a messaging app, it's on the chopping block from they day of launch.

From the article:

>These all seem like reasonable products to signal out ... except for Cloud Messaging which seems to be a key part of a lot of Android

Case in point: deprecated in 2018.

-----

Sheds a tear for Picasa, which is perfectly usable in 2022, but not available for download

What do you think about Flutter, Dart, Go, and Fuchsia?

>What do you think about Flutter, Dart, Go, and Fuchsia?

* Go : Google's infra uses Go. Guaranteed survival.

* Dart/Flutter: Google Ads app was written in Dart/Flutter. Likely to stick around.

* Fuchsia: it's the OS on Nest Hub. Fits into the same category as Android, but is currently low-impact (and hence deprecatable). I don't know what will come of it.

> * Go : Google's infra uses Go. Guaranteed survival.

Actually, I think that even if Google abandons Go (I agree that it's unlikely though), the community is now big enough that it'll survive on its own.

It's not a service, so Google can't even shut it down, only abandon.

Not only are there a lot of Google closures, they even have a closure compiler to optimize them away.

Kind of funny that Google actually does have a product called the "Google Closure compiler". It creates different kinds of compilations though.

https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler

It'll be hilarious if Google closes the Google Closure Compiler, which of course at some point they'll do.

When will Google Search close?

I feel like this was posted in reference to the announcement about Stadia, but I don't see any mention of it (didn't read the whole thing, though, tbh)

Stadia was launched in 2019, while this article is from 2013

Oh well that makes sense. Thanks.

https://killedbygoogle.com/

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