back to article Google does a mean spring clean

Google has taken the broom to ten of its experimental services as part a self described “fail fall spring-clean". “Technology improves, people’s needs change, some bets pay off and others don’t. Over the next few months we’ll be shutting down a number of products and merging others into existing products as features,” the …

COMMENTS

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  1. Sam Liddicott

    why?

    Aardvark never hurt anyone!

  2. wobbly1
    Facepalm

    Sadly discontinued Aplication Inventor development in house

    Some of the services that duplicate or impinge on their other products i can understand. Ai for android did not. It is(was) shaping up to be a decent way for unskilled and semi-skilled programmers to produce usable code. I hope it survives the transition OT Open Source. I think that move is going to skew its development towards education though :(

  3. Version 1.0 Silver badge
    Devil

    Circle Jerk?

    Why is it that so many of these Google projects remind me of amateur pron movies? There's a sort of mutual satisfaction generated by the participants who all run around congratulating each other and slapping themselves on the back telling us that it's the greatest new thing since coco-puffs - but that THIS TIME it really works and never gets soggy.

    And it never does meet up to the promise on the cover.

    1. Russ.T.Starfish
      Joke

      Not my liking

      I can see mutual satisfaction generated by the participants as a parallel with the amateur movies you describe, but if they are slapping it on each others backs, thats some weird shit you're watching there.

      Soggy is not a word I've seen used to describe that industry either.

  4. Craigness

    Why?

    I found something on Google's sites last week which did something like the description of Ardvark here. But it wasn't called Ardvark. I can't remember what it was called, but I couldn't see the point in it.

    Notebook, on the other hand, was awesome. Instead of getting rid they should open it up fully and let Android notepad developers sync with it. Docs is not a good notbook replacement and anyone wanting to sync with it will need to allow their app to cope with formatted text etc.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    "it wasn't called Aardvark"

    So, why the long face?

  6. Argh

    Google products that should have their position made more clear

    Google Bookmarks is another product that has always seemed strange to me. When Chrome came out, they totally ignored that they already had an online bookmarks service (Google Bookmarks) and went with storing bookmarks in Google Docs instead, which isn't really comparable.

    I assumed that they had therefore completely ditched Google Bookmarks, but a bookmark is auto-added to Google Bookmarks each time you star a place on Google Maps, for example. Currently I'm just using Google Bookmarks extensions in FF/Chrome and also a widget on iGoogle.

    1. Chris Evans
      Meh

      Google Bookmarks

      "Google Bookmarks is another product that has always seemed strange to me." I use it every day it alows me to access my bookmarks on my Work PC, Home PC and laptop!

      I hope it doesn't get the chop.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Not sad to see them go.

    I can't say I've heard of most of those and it doesn't sound like I'm missing much from those descriptions. The one I had heard of and tried was mostly pointless and just sucked up perfectly good real estate on the page.

    So, good job Google for saving us from at least a little bit of web 2.0 hell. Even if it was of your own making.

  8. Ale

    Notebook is awesome

    I never really understood why Google discontinued it. Can anyone suggest a viable alternative?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    WTF......

    Wha.....Google Desktop? Hang on, i was USING that!!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      And therein lies the fundamental flaw...

      ...in all this software as a service cobblers. Apart from the fact that you need the internet and remote service to be working. It's all down to somebody else's whim. Local processing is still the way to go for anything vaguely important.

      1. Nights_are_Long
        Thumb Up

        Reply to..

        Yep I am 100% with you SAS and Cloud is prity much a way of passing mission critical to a 3rd party with little or no control over it by the end user commercial or domestic.

        And eventually when the bean counter who pushed hard for another outsourceing budget get's called in he can shrug his shoulders and say "Wasn't my fault" when the application goes down.

  10. Eddy Ito

    No Google Pack?

    And still they don't put a simple link to the alternate all users Chrome installer on the download page. No, I don't think many people will click the business link to get the msi. I think most people will load it up on each account on the family pc.

    Then again, I suppose the days of the family pc are over as it seems everyone has a set of computing devices from pods and tabs to mobes and lappys. Ah, the good old days when it was one family pc with only one account, "Ma! What happened to my homework? There's only porn and drink recipes on here!"

  11. Jonathan 27

    Good Riddance Google Desktop

    I'm sick of removing Google Desktop from idiot's Windows terminal servers. Running the entire engine per user is horrible programming and kills terminal servers. And it does nothing but duplicating internal Windows features (gadgets, search indexing).

    Trust me, you haven't seen slow until you use a terminal server with 20 users where each is running Google desktop and each copy is updating it's indexes constantly. It feels like you installed Windows server on a DVD player.

  12. Myopic Aardvark
    Unhappy

    They killed the Aardvark

    *whimpers*

  13. Wintermute
    Unhappy

    Farewell Google Desktop, we'll miss you

    Nothing, absolutely nothing searches Outlook mail quicker and easier than Google Desktop Search.

    The workflow is:

    1. CTRL CTRL

    2. type in your search terms

    3. hit ENTER

    I read the blog announcement on Friday, and immediately downloaded one last no-longer-to-be-revised copy of Google Desktop.

    Such an excellent piece of software. It will be sad to see it go.

  14. Cam 2
    Thumb Up

    A move away from Microsoft?

    I will miss Pack - I used to delight in replacing the shovelware on a typical new laptop/PC with the lesser evil pack equivalent. The updater was a joy to use compared to alternatives.

    I have used Desktop before and it was OK...

    I am slightly surprised Picasa wasn't on the list... given the step away from products tied to Microsoft OSs... it lives on, but for how long? :)

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    All hail the cloud! Cloud computing is going to be our wonderful future...

    ...until the company hosting your cloud suddenly decides to shoot it out of the sky! Ooops! :)

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