[jedc]

That article is only about the lead-generation part of Project Sunroof being shut down. Which makes a ton of sense - it was likely not generating much revenue, but managing a program like that can suck up a ton of time in managing those relationships. It's just easier to kill it and let everyone compete in search results instead.

You're correct in that the design hasn't been updated in years, but... so? From poking around in my city, everything still seems to work the same. (Though I wonder if the estimates are now out of date...)

[coder543]

> You're correct in that the design hasn't been updated in years, but... so?

I checked a house that was built about 4 years ago in a major metro area, and Project Sunroof just showed an empty field and "sorry, we haven't reached that address yet".

I'm fairly sure nothing about this site is being updated. That also means that any structural changes to houses (including additions, remodeling of the roof, or just complete bulldoze-and-rebuild) or the surrounding property (tree growth, trees being cut down, etc) are not reflected in the estimates.

> Though I wonder if the estimates are now out of date

By all appearances, they are. Massively. The older this data gets, the less useful it becomes. It's not really a "so what?" situation if the data isn't being kept up to date.

[jedc]

Ah, interesting. So it sounds like they haven't updated the data in ages, either.

What I always loved about this site is that Google made it SUPER-easy to visualize just how good (or not) any given roof was for solar. At the time it launched, you had to get deep into the sales process with a solar vendor to get that kind of data/understanding.

I just tried a couple of big current-day providers and it looks like that's largely still true. Pick My Solar was the only one who would even try to give an estimate of solar potential without requiring an email address or full-on lead gen.

So at least for the people whose homes haven't changed in the past 5 years, some of the core visualizations will still be useful.

[ehnto]

Probably that they were being out-classed by everyone else in the solar lead-gen industry on their own platform. The money involved probably wouldn't move a needle for Google though. I am glad they didn't pull a move and squash the competition by de-ranking competitor sites. Kind of a shifty industry in general, lead-gen, I am surprised Google was playing in it at all.