Knock on wood, I have not used them in quite a while.
I bet someone has made a list.
googles
Yup.
The first item on the field is a search field. The “all” category has 288 entries.
That website shows how much Google buys up and then shuts down, centralising it’s power even more.
Nah, because there are definitely projects Google started on there. The one OP mentioned is on there, and I remember Google Zeitgeist from back when.
EDIT: Not saying that this is comprehensive, but only five entries reference being acquired from elsewhere in their description.
I didn’t mean that every single Google product is a acquisition, just a LOT of them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Alphabet
I mean, scrolling down that list, those all make sense. I guess if Google just did what all the other companies do and silently let go of these things instead of announcing that they are ending them so that developers and users know ahead of time not to expect long term stable and support that would be one thing. Google’s development process isn’t the same as everyone else’s though and their current method of developing tandem products and then gauging success of each and then folding the best features of the less successful one into the main one is obviously not a bad methodology as we have seen. As well it’s kind of important to a company to not waste resources on projects that customers both don’t find interesting and consume more resources than they generate while at the same time serve no greater benefit to anyone as a whole. Like, what do you want them to do? Nobody needs a web browser toolbar anymore, it’s 2023. Everyone screamed at and hated the entire concept of stadia, so they ended it. GPM was a financial failure with very few users that was due for a massive code overhaul. Like damn people, chill out.
I mean, scrolling down that list, those all make sense.
I’m not arguing that Google should have kept them going.
But I think that it might be fair to say that Google did start a number of projects and then cancel them – even if sensibly – and that for people who start to rely on them, that’s frustrating.
In some cases, like with Google Labs stuff, it was very explicit that anything there was experimental and not something that Google was committing to. If one relied on it, well, that’s kind of their fault.
Well that’s kind of the thing, that’s why Google announces they are ending those things. Most companies just end development silently and let those things differ l drift off without support or intention to solve issues which becomes incredibly telling for anyone who comes along and decides to integrate that software into their systems or daily life which later just becomes a massive problem down the line.
Announcing the end of something, and even coming up with a solution for it like domains switching to square space, GPM transferring user songs into YouTube music, and SketchUp selling to Trimble are low or even zero hassle solutions that result in longer term support for their users without throwing a “sorry it’s all broken now, go fuck yourself” methodology
