Google Shuts Down Patent Search Homepage, Picasa for Linux & More | Hacker News Reader

Google Shuts Down Patent Search Homepage, Picasa for Linux & More

techcrunch.com

83 pointssdtransier45 comments

Why not link to the horse's mouth: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/spring-cleaning-in-sp...

Actually submitted that here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3869567

Lot of stories get submitted more than one time. People just don't like searching.

Maybe people notice that techcrunch articles get upvoted. Hence they submit TC articles (to get karma. humans love to have more than their fellow of anything: green beans, salt rocks, pieces of paper etc).

This can be addressed in two ways:

1) Randomly allow a subset of users to upvote article (like slashdot's moderation system).

2) Cap karma from articles.

Sorry if I'm massively mistaken and people don't get karma from article submissions.

People do get karma from article submissions.

Several ideas related to limiting the influence of article submissions were made here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3842554

I also wonder if people repost a different article/URL for the same news story, hoping their post will be the one to get upvoted.

You'd think so, but if you look at both the comments and submissions of "sdtransfer," the poster of this article, they don't seem like they'd be terribly hope-y.

Sorry, I saw the article on Techmeme and posted it here. I didn't think about posting the original blog post, but I realize that would have been better.

I know that submitting articles gets you more karma, but I didn't do this to get more karma. I don't really care about getting more karma as I'm mostly just a passive observer of HN and not really an active participant.

I read a discussion on here the other day about abolishing submission karma, and I agree with it. It doesn't make sense why someone should get more karma just for posting a link, or if they do, more karma should be given for comments than for submissions.

At least they are integrating Patent Search into the core (which I think makes sense and happens to be something I like).

I guess Google should make a point and release a NaCl Picasa version.

If I could grant to a NaCl app the right to read photos from USB attached cameras and a folder on disk with read/write rights then there wouldn't be a need for a dedicated Linux version.

Isn't this the sound of a company that has reached it's practical limit of growth?

When you utterly own the search marketing space, yeah, you do run up against a hard wall unless you can either get that market to grow, or you can weasel into another market.

Android doesn't seem to have made much of an impact to their profits. Their other web properties, like Google+, make Apple's legendarily empty "eWorld" look like a boomtown. It seems like of all their acquisitions, only YouTube has really changed what Google is.

Still, better to take some projects out back and...bury them...than to Yahoo!-ize yourself with thousands of semi-popular things you have to maintain in perpetuity.

Dropping Linux Picasa is tellingly lame.

Telling of what? How few people use it, or . . .?

Commitment to excellence.

I disagree that Linux as a supported platform is a significant indicator of excellence.

IIRC it ran through Wine, it wasn't really supported or excellent to begin with.

Support for all three platforms is a requirement for me (and most other developers I know) these days, it's one of the reasons why I haven't bought various standard tools including Photoshop... yet use Filezilla, Gimp, Sublime Text 2, Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office, Clementine, etc.

For dev tools, maybe. Personal photo apps? Let's be realistic here, developers are a tiny, tiny portion of the target market.

Holy crap, Clementine is on Windows and I didn't even know it. In case anyone else needs it - http://clementine-player.googlecode.com/files/ClementineSetu...

It is lame because a company like Google should be able to provide a Linux version of its perfectly serviceable photo organization and basic editing app. I know they don't have to do what I want them to do, but "pfft...", y'know?

Considering it was only a WINE version that was little-used, I think it makes sense.

(Same with the Mac version...if you're using Picasaweb to host your photos, you're probably already, or would be better off, using Picasa to organize them instead of kludging a plugin into iPhoto.)

Making a Wine version instead of the real thing was also lame.

I would have guessed that at least a few Googlers would be using Linux on their primary computers.

its a call to stop using google services altogether. I am personnally sick of their now frequent habit to discontinue stuff without even asking before. That shows how little they care. Get LARRY out.

Picasa is more than just a web service, it's great for fixing images (with minimal effort) and searching local collections of photos via face recognition.

I agree Picasa for Linux (Wine or No Wine) was great for some quick picture manipulation. I was well connected to Picasa Web. Picasa is being slipped into G+.

I suspect Google might be working on a better webapp. A lot of picasa style picture editing can now be done in G+ while you post picture. Google has to bring something out for Chrome OS.

A lot of picasa style picture editing can now be done in G+ while you post picture.

What about pictures that won't get posted?

Well, what I mean is that it might be work in progress.

We need more open source cloud based software. The trouble with relying on services provided by companies and corporations is exactly this - they make no promise to do a hand-over should the service be discontinued.

Dropping Picasa for Linux is quite okay. Since it's a lame wined one. I hate it. Having a good HTML5 version would fulfill my needs to does not need a app for that.

One Pass shutdown is most interesting to me. It isn't old cruft that isn't interesting to Google anymore, it was a pretty bold year old forward looking project that launched with fanfare (mostly due to the in-app purchase controversy of time) and apparently just fell flat. Replacing it with a more Googley type of business like Customer Surveys is probably for the best, but seems like a retreat.

Is anyone else surprised at how many rounds of closures Google seem to announce? I'm not sure why these were kept through the previous 2 culls.

  Google Sync for BlackBerry

I wonder if this is a subtle way to nudge BBM users towards Android.

I'm not sure it's even subtle. RIM is circling itself at this point with no one really even caring if they pull out, such have their string of bad decisions come to taint them).

Actually RIM has added a lot of the features of Google Sync into the core of the consumer-focused BIS service. (thus, Google Sync is less necessary.)

I was using most of them quite regularly. They are doing this so they all can focus on what ? Google+ , the shit that all going to do is wasting my time without helping me in anyway ? Google should change their motto to "Do not do stupid." with immediate effect.

The Patent Search shutdown is a dud to me. I wish the dedicated undiluted space continued.

They didn't shut it down.

I forgot to add the word "homepage". They have merged it with the Google Search results. Probably a side effect of SPYD. Let me try that again.

> The Patent Search "homepage" shutdown is a dud to me. I wish the dedicated undiluted space continued.

The voting of comments here represents a fact of life. In no time, you get downvoted than upvoted. "Negative" opinions prevail over positive ones. Never understood this mentality.

What is the reason why Google is shutting down Patent Search and (they already shut down Uncle Sam)? I mean - does it really cost them a lot of money to keep these sites running but not update them? For search products like that they should at least make a google product archive to at least access some stuff that could be easily found via those search products even though they no longer update or provide support for them anymore.

They are going away from their motto of "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". Yes you can find patents via other means or get government info via other means but it's defeating the motto of making it universally accessible.

Google+ is ruining everything.

They're not shutting down patent search - they're just kludging it into the regular Google search interface.

(My Google Scholar still has a []patents check box. Will that go?)

From TC: "Other tools, like Patent Search, are being integrated into the main Google experience."

From Google's own announcement: "We're redirecting the old Patent Search homepage to google.com to make sure everyone is getting the best possible experience for their patent searches. Over the past few months, we've been making updates and improvements to the Patent Search functionality on google.com—not only are you able to search the same set of U.S. patents with the same advanced search options, the new experience loads twice as fast as the old Patent Search homepage, contributes to a unified search experience across Google, and sports Google Doodles as well. The team looks forward to including patents from other countries soon, and will be rolling out additional features to Patent Search on google.com in the future."

Please re-read the whole announcement.

Oh and I don't think I see anywhere Google+ being mentioned....

the reason why i said google+ is ruining everything is referring to how they are focusing on one thing and that thing is Google+ as per the convo Sergey had with Jobs about concentrating on one thing and stop turning into Microsoft.

And... they aren't shutting down Patent Search. Your rant is baseless.

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