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Comment by stephenr | Hacker News Reader

I have never heard of or used this Blackboard software that keeps being referenced, but I find it hard to believe that Google entering nay market is "good news" for anyone except Google fanboys.

Google has an atrocious history of entering a market with commercial and open source options, obliterating them all with "hosted, free" solutions, feeding all the new data into their already massive profile building infrastructure, and often, shutting it down after a few years, after the previous solution providers have all had to shut shop because they couldn't compete with free.

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Do you have an example of that sequence happening (other than Google Reader)?

google voice. google browser sync. google send to phone. google wave.

then there's a list of things that are STILL around but have stifled competition anyways: gmail (hopefully people might get behind mailpile but i doubt it), gtalk (again, we have to wait another decade at least before a sensible IM standard is used), G+ (how many in the tech community have moved from one company (facebook) to another (google Plus). Just because they haven't axed a product like they did with reader of voice doesn't mean they won't misuse their power. Look at all the features they've removed from google maps because "mama google knows best". And no one dares to compete with them.

>gmail

How does this stifle competition? If people use Gmail, it's because they think it's better than the alternatives. There aren't even network effects in play, since it's just email.

>gtalk

...is now called Hangouts, and is a flagship product.

>G+ (how many in the tech community have moved from one company (facebook) to another (google Plus)

Um... not me, for one, and certainly not for non-professional contacts. G+ is a ghost town.

> G+ is a ghost town.

G+ is very much not a ghost town....

Except for wave, all those things are still around aren't they? Send to phone got rolled into browser sync, but the functionality is still there.

And Wave did not drive out any competitors. It tried and failed to open up a new market (perhaps competing with email).

Google Voice is still around. Browser sync is built in. Send to phone, I don't recall what that was. Wave is built into the browser, too, iirc.

I believe the GP meant Chrome to Phone which was one of Google's first examples of using push messaging. It's still around and usable. [1]

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

the firefox version of it was axed. you have to use chrome. perhaps chromium can be hacked to work with the service, idk, haven't tried.

gvoice is still around but it was axed a few times (talk with google voice users in canada, it was start and stop and start again)

send to phone was a firefox feature. it was axed. the functionality is now only available in chrome.

wave isn't built into the browser, it was axed. but as others have pointed out it wasn't my best, most shining example

I use as few of Google's services as possible so I don't have a list of the top of my head no, but the extensive list[1] of products they've shutdown should give you a hint. One article[2] I found has analysis of service shutdowns and states that 1 in 3 things Google buys or creates gets shutdown.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discont...

[2] http://bgr.com/2013/05/07/google-services-shut-down-study/

7/10 businesses fail in a few years. Google's record is pretty good. Especially for paid products

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