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Comment by achow | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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.

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

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 :-)

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.

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