February 6, 2025

Failed Google Projects

Failed Google Projects

Failed Google Projects

Tech enthusiasts, business professionals, and everyone who has ever been genuinely curious enough to ask a question online have all benefited from Google services and products. Search, Gmail, Maps, Chrome, YouTube, and Android are all well-known services. The Pixel smartphones and Google Assistant-enabled Nest smart home gadgets are two recent additions to the Google hall of fame.

What about Google’s colossal blunders? For all of the Mountain View company’s accomplishments, a number of the programs, gadgets, and other things it created or acquired eventually failed and perished, frequently without fanfare.

We thought it’d be amusing to sort through the corpses and compile a list of the most fascinating failed Google projects after learning about websites like Google Cemetery and Killed by Google, as well as Ars Technica’s Google Kills Product series. The top items from the Google Graveyard are listed below!

Google Answers [2002 – 2006]

Answers was created to allow curious individuals to pose queries to the internet hive mind in exchange for cash rewards, but it gradually turned into a troll and spammer haven. It was replaced by Google Questions & Answers, which likewise stopped down in 2014. For all of our fast queries today, Google Search Answer Boxes are algorithm-based.

Google announced its intention to discontinue the service completely at the end of November 2006 (except for the Hong Kong and Arabic versions). After November30,2006, no new inquiries or responses were accepted. This continued through December31, 2006. By the end of December2006, it was completely shut down, while its archives are still accessible.

Dodgeball [2005 – 2009]

Google Latitude’s text-based forerunner was called Dodgeball. It informed users when interesting locations and friends were close. Dennis Crowley, one of the original developers, became dissatisfied with Google’s lack of support for the service and went on to co-found Foursquare, which built on Dodgeball’s fundamental ideas. Dodging, ducking, diving, and dying.

The business would “discontinue Dodgeball.com in the next couple of months, after which this service would no longer be available,” according to Vic Gundotra, Google’s vice president of engineering, in a statement made in January 2009. Google Latitude replaced Dodgeball in February 2009 once it was discontinued. In the end, Google Latitude was discontinued in 2013.

Google lovely [2008-2008]

Google made an attempt to capitalize on the hoopla with Lively, a virtual world simulator with user-created avatars and virtual chat rooms, around the time that spooky virtual life simulations like Second Life and Habbo Hotel were taking the internet by storm. It only lasted five months.

Google ride finder [2007-2009]

Did you know that before Uber even existed, Google had a ride-hailing service? In 14 US cities, Ride Finder used the user’s geolocation to locate nearby taxis, shuttles, or carpools. Because of the poor service, it never really took off. The year Ride Finder passed away also saw the birth of Uber; the rest, as they say, is history. However, it gains some credit for being the first.

Google Desktop [2004-2014]

You might install this useful sidebar program on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It provided quick access to a clock, weather, news feed, Gmail feed, and locally stored photos on the PC, among other things. It also added a search toolbox to your desktop for browsing through local files. As it started to concentrate more on cloud storage, Google killed off Desktop. It was a helpful piece of software that inevitably got outdated as desktop operating systems started to provide comparable built-in functions.

Google Labs [2006-2011]

Many of the failed initiatives mentioned in this article were created by Google Labs, which served as a testing ground for new ideas. During the platform’s five-year existence, “adventurous users” had the chance to have some fun trying out Google’s experiments and provide the engineers and researchers immediate feedback. Google had a policy of “launching early and often” at the time, but this appeared to change after former CEO Larry Page declared the business needed to “put more wood behind fewer arrows.” A few days later, Google made the decision to shut down Google Labs, citing Page’s laborious analogy with wood.

Google wave

We had Google Wave in the gloomy era before Slack. Users can collaborate online using a tool called “waves” that takes its name from the (great) Firefly TV series. Users can collaborate online using a tool called “waves” that takes its name from the (great) Firefly TV series. You could see what was changed and when thanks to a timeline that was used to store all updates. That’s because it was complicated and ripe for abuse if anything. Shortly after Wave’s initial release to the public.

On November22,2011, Google announced that all existing Waves would be deleted in April 2012 and that stand-alone Wave development would cease in January2012. On August4,2010, Google announced the suspension of stand-alone Wave development and the intention to maintain the website at least through the rest of the year. The Apache Software Foundation took up development and began working on a server-based solution dubbed Wave in a Box. Apache Wave was discontinued on January15,2018, however it never saw a final release.

iGoogle

A web-based “gadget”-filled interactive home page for your browser with the horribly-named iGoogle. To suit your demands, you might add and remove gadgets (basic widgets) or reposition them wherever inside the browser window. Google claimed that as websites and mobile apps improved, the need for iGoogle “eroded over time.” Numerous websites and Chrome extensions make an effort to mimic iGoogle’s widget-based pages, but they’ll never match the beauty of the original.

The social networking features on iGoogle would be removed on January15,2012, and the mobile version of iGoogle would be discontinued on July31,2012, according to a post on Google’s official blog on October14, 2011.

Google Talk

We had Google Talk, the company’s first and arguably best messaging app, before Hangouts, Allo, Messages, and Duo. We had Google Talk, the company’s first and arguably best messaging app, before Hangouts, Allo, Messages, and Duo. Google Talk apps were also available for Android, Windows, and Blackberry mobile devices. Even better, you could utilize Talk to make a live video call to a Google Voice account that has paid for it. However, times have changed, and Google’s (futile) desire to integrate everything through Google Plus has put an end to Talk. It was gradually phased out for Hangouts, which later developed into a pair of G Suite apps with a business-focused focus. Not to worry. Google offers an excessive number of additional calling and messaging apps and services.

Google Now

Google Now was a Search feature with developing voice support that pounded Google app and Android users with predictive information cards. It was a necessary evil to get us to the promised land of Google Assistant. All of Now’s more cluttered UI features would eventually be streamlined by Assistant’s better AI, and Now’s stiff, one-way discussions would be replaced by something a little more natural. However, it was still far superior to Siri.

As expected Google shut down Google now to focus on its voice assistant which attained worldwide reputation for its smoothness.

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