Killed by Google

Were you ever curious about all the projects Google started or purchased over the years that ended up being killed?

I firmly believe the question is worth exploring. Doing so can help provide us a better understanding of product, service and device lifecycles, feature sets, marketing and much more.

At the crossroads of this question, there is yet another. Do too many companies heavily depend on Google or other companies as key parts of their eco-system or client solutions?

As much as we preach the iterative nature of UX and design to clients, do we take our own medicine? Thankfully, I have seen in some product communities questions such as: “how long are you guys planning to be around”, “Are there things we the community can do to help with product milestones and goals?”

If we’re not asking these questions of entrepreneurs and devs, well, maybe we should be?

One could argue that things break or nothing is perfect, and they would be correct in that argument. However, what if a company has a well-documented track record or history of discontinuing projects? Are we then looking at a matter of when not if X will happen?

Are there patterns to what will or may be discontinued?

I had been thinking about all of this for a while and then found Killed by Google last night while checking my burner mail inboxes. This is good stuff and it’s open source.