The Google Graveyard - Leave a flower for a deceased Google product

But some of these didn't begin as flights of fancy, but as startups acquired by Google, and I think that really highlights the problem here, which is reputation.

When you use a product created by a startup, you realize that there's some risk that they're not going to make it. An advantage that a company like Google has is that nobody expects them to go anywhere. So if they create a service like Google Reader, you might expect that it's going to stick around.

And obviously Google doesn't owe that to anyone. But I'll bet that they've benefited from people making that assumption, and I'll bet that they'll see some hurt if people realize that it's not a valid one.

After all, a company that does nothing but reader, has 10% its user base, and makes money off of those users might actually be profitable. But Google's model is to give away a thousand loss leaders, and when you play that game, you have to look at percentages. At this point, I'd be far more likely to take a chance on a small independent service than any new gadget Google puts out.

It may have begun as a 'flight of fancy', but I think a lot of the public outcry comes down to the the fact that a lot of users, as individuals, became quite invested in the product.

Wave is one of those things that some future product will play off of and be massively successful, and we'll all point back at Wave as the forgotten root.

I hate posting something like this without a link, but I read an article quite some time ago (supposedly) written by one of the core developers of Wave. To massively oversimplify the article, he blamed it on having way, way too many developers working on it at once... lots of inefficiencies crept in as portions were duplicated, it ended up much more bloated than it should have been, etc.

IIRC, he also acknowledged many other contributing factors, like the slow release of the features presented in the original videos (some of which never were released), people simply not knowing what to do with it, etc.

Something else I remember was that he suggested the code should/could have been a tiny fraction of the size and dramatically more efficient for what it did.

I'm not saying I agree with the article at all, it's just what I read. For all I know it could have been a hoax.

This appears to shed similar light on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3101201

Personally, I loved Wave and was hoping to run my own server when they released what code they did release. Unfortunately, what has come of it is still lacking key features I'd want before doing so. (I'm not a Java developer, so would not be able to contribute)

As I recall, Wave suffered from a poor reference implementation and such complexity that amateurs were unwilling to create their own. It also received a lot of bad publicity from branding and people who were unsure about what to make of it, but what killed it was that it never left beta (much more concretely than other Google products).

I was a Wave enthusiast. I felt like not even Google really saw how the platform could have been useful. They presented it as a communications thing - e-mail and chat mashed together. But you can edit other people's messages, which makes communication really confusing.

Wave had the potential to be like Google Docs, but using an open protocol for live collaboration, instead of locking you into Google's services. So you could host it yourself, and seamlessly share it with anyone using a compatible system. In my more cynical moments, I wonder if Google realised this and killed it before it could compete with Google Docs.

I saw it as a hybrid between document collaboration and a message board, but they hyped it into the stratosphere as a communications medium & social thing too. Then everyone had to wait months (*edit actually a year or more, IIRC) for invites that came out painfully slow which had the effect of building anticipation and expectations even more.

When it was finally widely available, most of the people I know were disappointed that it wasn't a social network, it was a weird document collaboration-message board hybrid that didn't use documents, posts, or any conventional metaphors and therefore didn't live up to its year of hype and anticipation building.

I really do think wave's only problem was it was just ahead of its time. The idea behind it was good and it worked well, yes it heavily used js resources but faster JS engines these days would cope with that.

Its a shame really, but I supposed they morphed the 'liveness' of it into Google Docs

I'm not sure Google gave it the chance it needed.

I don't see how Glass is even close to DOA. Modern smartphones and tablets are the descendants of product lines with long histories and experienced user bases. Outside of research projects and limited use systems, Glass has little to go on, and a very limited number of understanding potential users. Google is slowly drumming up interest and openly experimenting with its use in public. Google wants early adopters who are thrilled with an expensive, potentially life altering product.

just like they did with the iP[ao]d. I remember that too.

I had no idea this existed, goodbye any productivity I was previously enjoying.

3rd row from the bottom, right side.

Isn't it their biggest failure? It was supposed to be something huge from the start. Something that could compete with wikipedia.

I used it and it was amazing. My utility replaced it with something called SmartHub, which is almost as good. You just can't embed it anywhere. I always like using the iGoogle thing with my power widget on there. Could always tell when I didn't shut down the computer.

It is on the list!

you should use Ben's searchcode: http://searchco.de

Tried - one or two. Actually used, productively - zero.

When it's no longer profitable, like (almost) every other business on Earth.

When they can no longer read the contents of your emails.

With CalDAV being deprecated, the more pressing question for me is, "when are they going to kill the free IMAP protocol?" Individuals who use desktop applications like Thunderbird or even Outlook never see any Google ads. The most sophisticated targeting advertising techniques in the world can't help if a company can't get your eyeballs on the ad in the first place.

If the trend does continue, I can envision a future where everyone will have to use specific "Google connector"-style APIs [1, 2] to access the various Google services.

[1] https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gappssync

[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/provider-...

Still there: http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleTechTalks/

Well for the moment that only MIA, supposedly it'll make an appearance some time this year, hopefully before Google I/O or else that would be quite embarrassing.