Fusion Tables… Fabric… Inbox… Google+… goo.gl… Goggles… Site Search… Glass… Now… Code… Bump!… Gears… Desktop Search…
Just some of the projects and services that Google has offered and then killed; this site aims to catalogue them all. Some, like Wave, were given to the community (Wave lived on for a while as an Apache project but is now basically dead), but most, like Reader, were assassinated in a misguided attempt to drive traffic to other services (ultimately, Reader was killed perhaps to try to get people onto Google+, which was then also killed).
Google can’t be trusted to maintain the services of theirs that you depend upon (relevant XKCD?). That’s not a phenomenon that’s unique to Google, of course: it’s perhaps just that they produce so many new and often-experimental services that they inevitably cease supporting more of them than some of the many other providers who’ve killed the silos that people depended upon.
How could things be better? For a start, Google could make a better commitment to open-source and developing standards rather than platforms. But if you don’t think you can trust them to do that – and you can’t – then the only solution for individuals is to use fewer Google products to break the Google-monoculture. Encourage the competition to weaken their position, and break free from silos in general where it’s possible to do so.
148+ projects and services dead. But hey, we’re getting Stadia so everything’s okay, right? <sigh>
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