Google, the search engine giant is known for out of the box products that always arouse curiosity. The company is one of the best wealth creators for investors who continue to believe in its dominance of the mobile and video advertising businesses. However, Google also had its own share of failures, with some products that seemed revolutionary, but were discontinued shortly after launch, as they lacked the potential to capture interest among the mass.
As compiled by Rediff, here is list of Google projects that failed.
#15 Google LivelyLaunched in 2008, this was one of Google’s social networking projects that barely lasted six months. Lively provided a three dimensional virtual social networking platform which allowed users to create and customize avatars and interact with others. Even though it was an innovative concept, it failed to live up to its expectations and the company decided to end the project and shift its focus to core search, ads and apps business.
#14 Google Answers
Google Answers was a second search engine introduced by Google. Users could use this portal to post bounties for well-researched answers to their queries. This search engine was not free and charged users from $2 to $200 for single queries and also suggested them to leave an optional tip of up to $100. For example, if someone wanted to know the manufacturers of LCD screens in South Africa. The person would post question with a bounty on it. Google retained 25 per cent of the researcher's reward and a 50 cent fee per question. The service was soon shut down as users preferred Google’s popular, free search engine to find all their answers.
Google Answers was a second search engine introduced by Google. Users could use this portal to post bounties for well-researched answers to their queries. This search engine was not free and charged users from $2 to $200 for single queries and also suggested them to leave an optional tip of up to $100. For example, if someone wanted to know the manufacturers of LCD screens in South Africa. The person would post question with a bounty on it. Google retained 25 per cent of the researcher's reward and a 50 cent fee per question. The service was soon shut down as users preferred Google’s popular, free search engine to find all their answers.
#13 Google Print Ads and Google Radio AdsGoogle ventured into traditional media by divulging in selling print and radio ads at a lower cost. It also struck a deal with Clear Channel Radio, to sell about 5 per cent of its advertising space. Even with its tech savvy expertise, Google’s print media project did not live up to its expectations as it did not give the company the required impact it was hoping for. Thus the services were discontinued in 2009.
#12 Google Buzz
Buzz was Google’s first attempt to rival Facebook in the social networking field. It was integrated into Gmail to serve as a social networking, micro blogging and messaging tool where users could share links, photos, videos, status messages and comments. But Buzz entered into the lives of Google users without any prior notice and left them confused about its use. There were also a lot of privacy issues as anybody who had the user’s mail ID in their contact list could see their activities on the Buzz platform. Thus the combination of a social networking platform inside a formal e-mailing account was indeed a bad idea and in October 2011, Google announced to shut down the platform completely.
Buzz was Google’s first attempt to rival Facebook in the social networking field. It was integrated into Gmail to serve as a social networking, micro blogging and messaging tool where users could share links, photos, videos, status messages and comments. But Buzz entered into the lives of Google users without any prior notice and left them confused about its use. There were also a lot of privacy issues as anybody who had the user’s mail ID in their contact list could see their activities on the Buzz platform. Thus the combination of a social networking platform inside a formal e-mailing account was indeed a bad idea and in October 2011, Google announced to shut down the platform completely.
#11 Google JaikuJaiku was a social networking, micro-blogging and life-streaming service and Google’s yet another attempt to outshine its second rival, Twitter. It was founded by Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen and bought by Google in October, 2007. But the service failed to become a trend among people and even though Google did not give a reason for discontinuing the service, some claim that it was shut down as the company wanted to focus on Google+. In October 2011, Google Bradley Horowitz wrote on his official blog: “Jaiku, a product we acquired in 2007 that let users send updates to friends, will shut down on January 15, 2012”.
#10 Google WaveWave was described by Google as “an equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more”. It received a lot of positive appreciation on its launch as was touted as the next big thing in social networking sphere. Unfortunately, its sophisticated functionality catered well only to the corporate masses and bored the everyday users and led them to dislike it. Thus the announcement to discontinue came on August 04, 2010 and the service was available until Google Docs was capable of accessing saved waves.
#9 Google ReaderGoogle Reader, an RSS/Atom feed aggregator was developed by Chris Wetherell, a Google engineer and was launched through Google Labs. It was launched in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. Initially this project had a loyal number of users but slowly the usage declined and thus was inevitably closed in July 2013.
#8 Google Fast Flip
Google Fast Flip was an online news aggregator designed as a combination of elements of print and online articles. It has tie ups with many media houses to present the content and it appeared like a print magazine and let users browse sequentially through bundles of recent news, headlines and popular topics, as well as feeds from individual top publishers. The announcement to discontinue the service came in September 2011 and though Google did not specify the reason, it stated this on its official blog: “For the past two years, in collaboration with publishers, the Fast Flip experiment has fuelled a new approach to faster, richer content display on the web. This approach will live on in our other display and delivery tools”.
Google Fast Flip was an online news aggregator designed as a combination of elements of print and online articles. It has tie ups with many media houses to present the content and it appeared like a print magazine and let users browse sequentially through bundles of recent news, headlines and popular topics, as well as feeds from individual top publishers. The announcement to discontinue the service came in September 2011 and though Google did not specify the reason, it stated this on its official blog: “For the past two years, in collaboration with publishers, the Fast Flip experiment has fuelled a new approach to faster, richer content display on the web. This approach will live on in our other display and delivery tools”.
#7 PicnikPicnik was an online photo editing service acquired by in 2010. For several months, it was integrated as a part of Picasa web albums to provide users more options in adding photo effects while editing images through Picasa platform. Although this was a really good service in January 2012, Picnik announced that it would be closing on April 19, 2012. Google has currently added similar tools and functionalities to Google+ and is called as the Creative Kit.
#6 iGoogleiGoogle was a personalized homepage where a user could customize the Google homepage with ‘Gadgets’ such as new feed, Google Chat, countdown timer, daily literary quote, and games. The Company felt that the need for a customizable homepage is no longer required. “With modern apps that run on platforms like Chrome and Android, the need for something like iGoogle has eroded over time,” announced the company. iGoogle will retire on November 1, 2013.
#5 Google NotebookGoogle Notebook was an application that allowed user to browse, clip, and organize information anywhere from the web on to a single online location that can be accessible from any computer. This browser-based tool allowed users to share information with others for collaboration and could also make the notebook public. Google started shifting the notebook data to Google docs in November 2011 and by July 2012 Notebook was shut down. On its website Google stated, “We loved working on Notebook but with recent innovations and improvements to Google Docs, we think it’s a great replacement for Notebook".
#4 DodgeballDodgeball was a location-based social networking service that allowed users to communicate and broadcast their location to other users via text message. In January 2009 Google executive Vic Gundotra announced in Google Code Blog that the company would 'discontinue Dodgeball.com in the next couple of months, after which this service will no longer be available'. This service was replaced by Google Latitude.
#3 Google WalletGoogle Wallet was an innovative technology that clubbed online money transactions via credit cards with the user’s Smartphone. Here the Smartphone played the role of being a wallet. This was a really cool idea and was on the verge of trendsetting the future but unfortunately was implemented too soon for the masses to grasp, and the fear of its wrong implications led to people shunning it and the idea was soon dropped by Google.
#2 Google HealthGoogle health service allowed users to keep their health records in a centralized location - either manually or by logging into their accounts at partnered health services providers. The company wanted ‘to create a service that would give people access to their personal health and wellness information’. But the service was shut down in early 2013 and Google stated this on its official website: “Now, with a few years of experience, we’ve observed that Google Health is not having the broad impact that we hoped it would. There has been adoption among certain groups of users like tech-savvy patients and their caregivers, and more recently fitness and wellness enthusiasts”.
#1 KnolKnols were authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. It was built to encourage experts to contribute their knowledge online and make it accessible to everyone. But many saw knol as Google’s attempt to compete with Wikipedia and it was soon phased out in favour of Annotum. All the content was deleted by October 2012.
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