[vsnf]

I'm of two minds on Google's MO on products.

On one hand, I appreciate that they try all sorts of things and seem to have almost no hesitation with launching some things which are quirky or of niche usefulness.

On the other hand, the only things that have ever survived are Docs, GCP, and tenuously, Voice. I don't mind them launching and shutting down a lot of products, but it's really stunning just how few things actually make it.

[buro9]

> it's really stunning just how few things actually make it

which echoes my experience in the music industry, and what I've seen of VCs in tech, and small businesses in my town.

very, very, few things are successful, and even fewer of those are successful at the kind of scale that Google needs to ensure that they don't become a sprawling mess of millions of employees. they need very high margin high value products at high scale, supported by the fewest possible engineers (even if that number is still thousands or tens of thousands of engineers)... and the truth is, for that business model, very few things are possible, and that the understanding of what those things are is going to be the result of trial and error.

I'm almost completely de-Googled now, so these announcements affect me less and less as time passes, but I do understand why they do this, and it does make business sense

[Lutger]

Right, a great number of companies would absolutely fly on the userbase of most of the apps on killedbygoogle. Some of these had hundreds of millions of users when google turned off the lights.

[robertlagrant]

Maps, Android, Earth, Translate, I guess?

What's odd about One is it seems such a small thing for them to do given all the things they already do. They already have a global network, so VPN makes sense. They already have a lot of cloud storage, and know how to run cloudy things. They already have the phones to put it on.

[vsnf]

> Maps, Android, Earth, Translate, I guess?

This is fair, I shouldn't have omitted them. They do level the ratio of launches to shutdowns a bit. They slipped my mind because I personally never use of think of them, but they're definitely there.

[ulfw]

Half of those were bought, not built

[johnnyanmac]

I don't really see the difference. Youtube without Google's backing would have certainly died, wheras Google buying and mismanaging it may still have killed it. But it didn't.

There can be legal distinctions with LLC's and whatnot, but for the most part these are all google products.

[robertlagrant]

Docs was also bought. I don't think that's relevant to this list.

[FartinMowler]

For me, it's not so much the shutdown as it is the extremely short notice of the shutdown. At a BigCo I worked at, this would have missed the regular project funding cycle for 2024 and so would have to be done as an unplanned emergency project. Senior execs don't like emergencies ... and remember who caused them. Shutdowns should be given 2+ years notice!