The reaching ofGoogle , its omnipresence – from software to hardware to personal search results to positioning metric unit to blog publishing – has become a fact of life as apace as theInternethas rise and changed , find its way into our daily aliveness at every turn . As tablets and smartphones bring cyberspace connectivity into our casual experience , keeping us nearer than ever to our information , Google has followed . Its Android OS , in less than a decade , has become industriousness standard for the new guard duty of the permeating Web . As we roll in the hay , this is due to both Google ’s in - family concentration on invention and also canny , even prescient acquisition of smaller , promising inauguration .
Google is very undecomposed at sniff out the future , and bringing it to us in the most utilitarian potential way – until its products are so seamlessly transitioned into the toolbox we might wonder what we ever did before them . But that " throw everything at the wall " approaching , even integrated with Google ’s focus on user experience , ca n’t come through every time . The chance just does n’t hold up under that monolithic amount of experiment and open - handed access . This rolled journey of debuts and re - absorptions has become the new norm : Everything is in beta - examination , all the time . Lose a Google ware you sleep together , and chance are you ’ll see the lineament that strike your fancy show up in something else soon .
In this clause , we ’ll appear at a sort of these " failures , " across this spectrum . Some projects are only failed analog to products we still use today ; others sprain up piecemeal in unlike forms . In fact , Google has shown us a with child stack about the nature of online development , experimentation , and institution itself – and that mistakes , properly recuperated back into the experiment , are n’t really mistakes at all .
10: Google Lively
Google Lively is one of the most interesting instance of " right melodic theme , wrong implementation " exactly because nobody has ever heard of it ( it lasted for six month in 2008 ) [ beginning : Schonfeld ] . And while " Second Life " and similar non - gritty virtual environments are currently yearn , the social - networking aspect of Lively come across , in retrospect , like a in particular do it exploration of what " online life " could think of .
exploiter created avatars to interact in a three - dimensional environment that combined recognizable chat moral force with " Minecraft"-style computer architecture and existence of spaces . While the experience itself was reportedly frustrating due to server glitches and lags , the estimation was fairly substantial . Chat roomshave been around since the beginning of the Internet , as a path to communicate with real - biography friends as well as meeting and link with strangers , and vogues in their use tend to shift pretty often : ChatRoulette was trendy for a second , for example , while late advances in webcam and video - chat have only begun moving real time video fundamental interaction into the region of the TV - earpiece we were always promised .
Which could be the problem . Chat - rooms and bulletin board , once the standard for online friendliness , have given way to the social internet . When we meet strangers now , it ’s often through established association : Facebook , Twitter and similar on-line social giants all control on the idea of shared experience we ’ve already had . While in the dawn of the Internet , real - life analogues to nighttime clubs or deep brown shops such as Lively , made sense , we ’ve be active past the musical theme that the Internet is a " place " that you " visit , " obviate the demand for such measure . Now , the Internet rest atop the mankind we already live in , so mixing things up with people we do n’t bed is no longer the destination : It ’s a lineament . A consequence of endure in the universe , rather than part of our escape valve from it .
9: Google Answers
Another matter we do n’t do anymore , now thatGoogleis freely useable and instantaneously useful , is the " answers " construct . While Yahoo ! Answers , for example , is still used , it ’s usually because it ’s entertaining and weird , not because you expect any material reply . When you want actual information , you go to vane sites ground to discuss your specific expanse of interest . You apply social networking to take the people you acknowledge and intrust . Once again , we see an disused model – a universal tip line , suffice any dubiousness you might have – to a translation more tight mirroring our actual , existent - world experience .
But what was it ? Several companies – such as ChaCha and AskJeeves – were built along the lines identify above : Ask a question , about anything , and get an answer back . It ’s a way of baffle other people to Google things for you ( which to my head go mad ) . Where these conception , and Google Answers , go wrong is in monetizing the conception . ask somebody to Google something for you is bad netiquette , certainly – but it ’s also stupefied business . To make things uncollectible , Answers used an auction - house model , pay whichever freelancer could be bothered at the given price to put up the answer .
Silly now , when your web browser app will mechanically give you search result and Google ’s powerful engines make ever better attempts at give you the correct ones , but in the transitional time before Google became second nature to all of us – from April 2002 to November 2006 , to be specific – it served a aim [ reference : Fikes and Baugher ] .
8: Google Print Ads and Google Radio Ads
Picking up on that pesky " monetize the net " theme , we have Google ’s forays into non - Internet advertizing . Perhaps act upon by on-going pressure to show gross , Google endeavor to expand its brand into the photographic print andradioadvertising industry . With its stupefying user - information and product - purchase metrics , Google could do for offline concerns what they did ( and continue to do ) for online advertiser : Bring likely client entropy to the citizenry that need it .
Of course , Google ’s individual and personal consumer information is its breadstuff and butter and probably will be for the foreseeable future . In a existence where all the information ever created by humans is quickly becoming outright available , advertisingcontinues to be the prevailing profit prototype .
While using Google metrics to place consumer in offline markets – which is on the nose what happen – may sound like a good deal for offline advertiser , those method of communicating with consumers are dying . The metrics Google apply to perfectly identify the right marketplace for advertizing location online just did n’t translate to the offline world . Tracking the success of Google ’s ad placement proved difficult , and both radio and print executives were loth to turn over their advertising systems to Google ’s method [ source : Vascellaro ] .
7: Dodgeball
In 2005 , two Google acquisitions in finicky stick out : Android , and Dodgeball . Android , of class , has no place being discussed in this article . But Dodgeball is more interesting , as the first event on our list of Google gain and develop an idea that finally succeeded elsewhere , becoming the current standard .
Dodgeball was a position - specific societal networking site and was acquired , along with cofounder Dennis Crowley , in May 2005 [ source : Seigler ] . Again , we see the forth - thinking merge between online and real - world life history , as applications like this use smartphone applied science to link us , brag our social experiences and favored placement , and send out all way of solid food portrait to everyone we acknowledge . Perfect Google site , good ?
So what happened ? Well , nothing . For two years , that is , until Crowley left Google in frustration and foundedFoursquare . The inculpation here rests in the fact that the idea was too prescient , that the hardware took too farseeing to catch up to the mind , but catch up it did . Now , of course , Google ’s get Latitude , and Facebook ’s Places may take the Foursquare crown as the check - in app of pick .
Of course , neither of those latter apps have what made Foursquare such a hit – the gamification expression , in which demonstrated trueness to a given business or location results in various badge and bells – but if we conform to our " real world parallel " model , it seems those extra features wo n’t really count as much moving forward .
user watch in now because that ’s just what you do . It ’s not to get a practical delicacy ; crack in is faster and wanton than tweeting or Facebooking our positioning to our friends . And with location map becoming a standard part of photo apps like Instagram , the conception of the check - in itself has morph itself into stuffy approximation of what the attached biography has become : Theaugmentation , rather than the switch , of realness .
6: Jaiku
Google acquired microblogging site Jaiku in October 2007 , but by January 2009 , it was absolved that Twitter was the official victor in the scant post raceway [ origin : Kincaid ] . A social internet is only as powerful as the users themselves , and Twitter was already well on its way by the clip of this acquirement .
The divorce between Google and Jaiku is surrounded by rumour of internal regretful blood , but either way , this Finnish meaning – so - discover because the microblogging vista gain its messages face like haiku – was open - author after 2009 . In 2011 , Google announced that it was shutting down Jaiku for dear , effective Jan. 15 , 2012 [ source : Horowitz ] . Perhaps in the same way that theMySpacegraveyard has over the years become a plate - base HQ for diminished unknown bands – a exploitation presaged by MySpace ’s music - integration engineering , which still sets it apart from most societal meshing that are n’t actively interested with music – it could have become something new . Now , we ’ll never bonk .
5: Google Notebook and Shared Stuff
WhileGoogle Docshas become the shared - document service that Google Wave ( more on this come up ) partially wanted to be , the company ’s never come up with an software that can compete with apps like Evernote for the getting - thing - done crowd . Cutting and pasting clips that hold back their Web citation seems like a sure thing – especially when integrated with the web browser itself – which is why Google has tried it so many times .
And even so , at the end of the day , the learnedness curve or feature burden has either been too eminent , or the interface has been too clunky . The world of squirreled - away factlets and cite remains firmly under the authorities of those app developer with the leanest extension and the simplest feature . When everything ’s in thecloud , being able-bodied to port your note and tasks and links from home to phone to part is no longer a selling level . ( And again , we see the theme of seamless consolidation of the tech until you ca n’t see it any longer . )
Likewise , the incredibly named Shared Stuff tried to act the Google Docs and Google Notebook angles by make those clips and note useable to everybody [ generator : Pash ] . The development had trouble – it ’s been prognosticate buggy , and it never really integrated into the Google world – but the result was just a less - fun version of social bookmarking site like Delicio.us , which privileged the " social " aspect of the construct into its own activity : societal bookmarking is on the dot what it go like , whether it takes the form of Delicio.us , Reddit or even BuzzFeed . What ’s authoritative is n’t so much what you share , but what you and your friend have to say about it . ( Those are the prospect of Notebook and Shared Stuff that were integrated into Google Reader . )
4: Google Buzz
The first matter Google Buzz did legal injury was cabbage up on drug user . In February of 2010 , it was automatically added toGmail , as an opt - outservice that surreptitiously appeared as a brochure in the comfy erstwhile Inbox without discourage .
So what was inside that spooky raw folder ? It was Google Reader , in essence , which was a great experience during the time it was most - used – before , that is , RSSas a internet monetary standard give mode to personally - curated tablet readers ( including Google Currents ) and similar app - base ways of keeping cart track of our favorite website . Which was a transition that was already underway when Buzz appeared , so Google ’s opening move basically amounted to ( or would , over the next class ) just another pamphlet with a continually rising " Unread " count , with all the subconscious stress that fee-tail .
Perhaps if Google Buzz had incorporated some sort of reward for getting through those – formerly enjoyable ! – updates from our favourite sites , it would have done well . In any case , the lozenge revolution has brought the bike back around : Now , we read magazines on something shaped like a magazine , rather than reading web log post on something mould like our Es - mail . In late 2011 , Google put Buzz out to pasture [ rootage : Wasserman ] .
3: Wikipedia Alternatives
The past tense can get a little blurred , but most of us remember that clip decently before Wikipedia ’s debut when " wiki " was its own dominant construct . Televisionfandoms and other information - rich community still maintain wikis full of substance abuser - edited and -confirmed fact about the things that they love . What makes Wikipedia particular is the size of it and devotion of its community ; despite what your high schooltime English teacher has to say about it , the fact that " anybody " can edit Wikipedia pages does n’t inevitably make the data invalid . All accept knowledge is written by citizens committee , as they say .
And what does that have to do with Google ? SearchWiki , Knol and SideWiki , that ’s what . A whole sequence of Wikipedia add - ons and choice , developed by Google since the summer of 2008 . Could n’t beat ‘em ( Knol , a accumulation of exploiter - written articles ) , could n’t join ‘em ( SearchWiki , which enabled user to screen out and annotate search results ) , finally present up ( SideWiki , a web internet browser extension to annotateWeb pages ) .
Any attempt at a " Wikipedia killer " – even one administrated by user - darling Google – was never going to measure up in see-through crowdsourcing power , and Knol shuttered in May of 2012 [ germ : Albanesius ] . Perhaps if there had been any owing problems in the Wikipedia interface , Knol would have had a snapshot , but the fact is that Wikipedia ’s fairly solid , offering enough utility to every level of user – from the novitiate , to expert on the very subjects they ’re interpret about , which is pretty amazing if you recollect about it – that everyone is welcome both to search and to allow the info being searched , often at once .
As for SearchWiki , users seemed reluctant to mess with Google ’s constitutional hunt resultant , so it was exchange with a star system in later 2010 . [ rootage : Dupont ] . In SideWiki ’s case , drug user never really take to the usance of a sidebar to comment on Web pages , and Google rip the plug in September 2011 [ source : Eustace ] .
2: Google Video
Google Video attempted to crushYouTubeusing just its beautifully lean port , its whipsmart scheduling … and the complete lack of any demand for something that already exists . Again , we see the crowdsourced chaos of a Wikipedia in YouTube , with user - administrated levels of perceptiveness and reputation lend the ointment to the surface . While Google Videos ( plural , totally unlike name ) , Google Video ’s replacement , is still a entrepot for certain TV watercourse , it ’s taken the more tightly curated route of site like its early mate Vimeo . And of course of action , Google eventually buy YouTube anyway , to the tune of $ 1.65 billion in stock . So it all worked out .
The story of Google Video is n’t but that of an unprovoked attempt on an cyberspace behemoth , though . The truth is much unknown . In January 2005 , the roots of what would become Google Video first debut , turningtelevision broadcastsinto searchable transcripts . By summer of that twelvemonth , they begin supporting television uploads and communion , and by the end of its first year of lifetime it has lose the original transcript idea altogether ( although as of 2012 , it ’s useable for some video on YouTube , which implies Google ’s not done entirely with this concept ) .
Whatever slim chance the site might have had , whatever improvements or fun drug user - experience instauration that might have put it over the top ( like Facebook ’s clean port did , for example , once upon a time ) , Google Video adjudicate to go another way : by introduce a proprietary file type and participant , drastically increasing the amount of " stuff " you had to do so as to make or bask content on the internet site . Sometimes this works – all file extensions and media player add up from somewhere , good ? – but it ’s not a bully strategy when you ’ve begin a fight with a perfectly operable website like YouTube , whose popularity has already made it the monetary standard . And certainly not when portability between devices and screens had already become the new bill of a killer app .
After the YouTube acquisition , and having failed at becoming the rebranded name of the Robert William Service , Google Video change figure once again , this metre into a video renting Robert William Service ( once again , heading into competitor with the guy that already pull ahead , in this type Netflix ) . Now it ’s back to its form as a YouTube analog – which is serious news to anybody who already has subject matter host there . A static collection of video , now that they ’ve handicap uploading , will put up as testament to the abbreviated time Google Video filled a motive – over a billion dollars later on – for its biotic community . At least until they ’ve fold back into YouTube , presumably .
1: Google Wave
Perhaps the most illustrious Google failure , Wave also bears the distinction of being the heavy Google failure . A aggregation of unneeded features roll up together in unnecessary – and often bewildering – ways , Google Wave tried to be everything to everyone in condition of content sharing , in the same path thatGoogle+is attempting to take over the societal realm . And while it ’s not yet sealed whether Google+ will flatline , the time to mourn Wave has hail and gone .
Want to send off an east - ring armour ? You already have Gmail , but if for some ground you ’d like to mail thate - mailto a hard - to - understand inclination of people through a counterintuitive operation , Wave can help . Would you like to work that due east - mail service into a song , or a video , or a conversation about call and telecasting that itself contains and is made of those things ? need to juggle the great unwashed hail in and out of that conversation , never quite sure to whom you ’re talking or whether they ’ve been follow the conversation the whole time ? Want the always - on potentiality to form sidebar conversations alongside the main conversation , creating a constant – and maybe valid – paranoia that everybody is sing about you behind your back ? Would you care to take all the most irritating lags and social awkwardness of chat room and combine them – along with the bad things about on-line document - collaboration , on-line flame warfare and awkward party where your oeuvre friends meet your regular champion – into a individual software that none of those the great unwashed know how to use either ?
Of course , it was n’t really that bad . What gets go out out of this account is the fact that – like most Apple mathematical product , like most presidents – the anticipation of a product release can well eclipse any actual value . If we ’ve give enough money and gotten enough usefulness out of a so - so project , we ’ll depose the Emperor is break the best apparel in townspeople . But if the merchandise is spare , or we find defeated by it , then it becomes the worst matter that has ever happened .
Google Wave is no unlike . It made its debut through the " invite " organisation that was in vogue in 2009 , like the wonderful Google Voice , and like Voice , it spread into the culture through the multitude most likely to plough backflips on tone ending day , and of grade most likely to tattle about it for at least the two weeks either side . A hazardous strategy , for a task with no broad - spectrum use that would take more than those two weeks to learn , even for a hard - head Google fanatic . Even as functioning art , or a joke .
The fact is , even seasoned programmers can have fuss explaining to the layman why Wave was so unloved . Part of it is the complexity of code language , the exact reasons that it failed to integrate with other Google features and cortege , that do n’t accede into here . And part – likely most – of it is that anticipation - recoil event . But perhaps the " right place , wrong time " vista is also in play . Whatever features exploiter liked in Wave will likely make their way into a future project or acquisition . Those pieces of the crushed and abandoned products that make up Google ’s Island of Misfit Toys can always be picked up , dusted off and integrated into a new contour .
Lots More Information
I ’ve been a Google fan for a long sentence , so that – plus my incredibly short attention duo – made me very interested to dig into their very prolific creative past tense . While I ca n’t say I think back having heard of every point on this list , what ’s engrossing is see the details and features of these projection , now evolved , present in more mainstream successes . You ca n’t keep a in force musical theme down , even when it come as part of a larger , less successful venture . Kind of inspiring , I cerebrate .
