Angular: v1 is "dead", but is still receiving major version updates https://angular.io/guide/updating-to-version-10
Hangouts: meet.google.com
Password Checkup: integrated into Chrome, Firefox has its own thing as well.
Google Photos Print: it's just no longer a subscription service that automatically selects photos (who would want something to pick a photo book's photos for you??). https://www.google.com/photos/printing/
Shoelace: Kind of disingenuous to include Area 120 projects, which are experiments by design.
Google Chrome Apps: Sunset in favor of PWAs which don't rely on Chrome Web Store? sign me up!
Dragonfly: Was never public so I don't see this as 'killed'.
I think these different announcement types should be noted or properly filtered, maybe by noting the app that replaces the app, eg "alternative: google meet".
Angular: I agree that angular is not dead, people can still use v1 if they want to. This does not count.
Hangouts: the new version has different pricing, different features, different name, different URL, different apps... this absolutely counts (and is one of the most egregious examples)
Password checkup: the extension worked fine, but they intentionally disabled it. Any references to it on the web now have to be updated to refer to password checkup in the browser. Anyone who knows how to use the extension has to relearn how to use it in the browser. This counts.
Google Photos Print: yes the original was stupid, but it was still a product and is now gone. This counts.
Shoelace: yeah this never really launched in the first place. This doesn't count.
Google Chrome Apps: I mean really? Anything that requires rewriting parts of an app to make it work counts!
Dragonfly: this was never released, it doesn't count. But it is important that people know about this, it is an example of Google quite blatantly being evil.
This is a dishonest website. Many of the products or technologies that have been "killed" were replaced by other compelling products in the space — either by Google itself or by third parties — or could not be monetized. Google is not a public utility and there is little incentive — nay, it would be strictly harmful — for them to continue building products that are non-competitive in the marketplace.
Killing products is beneficial and non-monopolistic as it allows other developers to build products as opposed to Google offering them for free ad-infinitum. By contrast, this is in direct opposition to Amazon's strategy, which is to offer an incredible number of products and services at a loss, thereby depriving other players from competing. One day, people will realize that Amazon's actions unquestionably drove down the quality of products (they already have, one need not look far — just consider the quality of Whole Foods goods post-acquisition or the myriad scam products listed as real on Amazon's website).
Side-note: should Google have continued to maintain Angular when other solutions are clearly better? What would be the point? Google did the right thing, letting Angular die a dignified death and letting superior technologies like React take the reins.
EDIT: if you are down-voting me, would you care to explain why instead of merely doing that?
EDIT 2: this is a great comment which further clarifies the part of the point https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24694575
Yes, Google is not a public utility... but users' willingness to adopt new services is not a free, renewable resource, either. Some of us get tired of embracing new tools only for them to be ripped out of our hands by their maker, after we've made them an integral part of our workflow. I've become more of a laggard due to Google's and other companies' actions in this area.
There are better frameworks out there now for new projects, but there is a massive install base, particularly in the enterprise, that has no need or desire to shift to a new framework. There is no path forward for those applications in Googles model- it is pretty much a rewrite or nothing.
Now, I’m sure there will be some fork of angularJS that goes on to provide even longer term support and/or paid patching, but this still wasn’t managed as well as it could be in my opinion.
Like the rest of the OP site, it’s another indicator that Google doesn’t care to support long lived systems, and you should be cautious of taking dependencies on them if you do.
CEOs may find a sense of caution about adopting a new, non-core Google product, or they may feel emboldened to make a decision to cut a large product in order to focus on something else. Entrepreneurs may find inspiration for a brand new product, or inspiration to build a similar-but-better product. Academics and journalists may use it to track the history of products. Users? Users will go, scroll down the list, find a product they haven't thought about in years, and have fond memories of all the cool stuff they did with it.
As far as rebrands and cherry-picked feature migrations? An organ donor whose heart is harvested and placed in another person's body doesn't keep living. From a user's perspective, the difference in emotional connection to Nexus vs Pixel can be HUGE. Why shouldn't they have a place to mourn that?
Finally, you link to a comment that attempts to provide reason for why things are killed, but that information is really proprietary. Google's usual move is a vague excuse like "focusing our resources" which is PR speak for not enough users...or maybe it means we couldn't monetize it...or maybe it means that the market didn't respond as we expected...or maybe it means...there was some internal politics afloat. --- I feel that speculating--even incorrectly--would be more dishonest than not speculating on the reasoning at all.
So, I don't feel the site is dishonest. Providing enough context in that "these things before you are dead products" is its entire point, and the user's perspective and takeaway is left up to them to discover.
That said, /r/stadia seems to be panicking; a lot of people are convinced that the new Chromecast launched this week with no Stadia support (not until "mid 2021") is yet more proof that Google has given up on the service.
(24 years old, according to Wikipedia!)
That being said, I’m sure creating a fork of AngularJS and providing paid support and consultancy will be a minor gold mine for some organization shortly.
It is open source and they are actively developing new versions, we will have it for at least a few more years.
It would be fun if Google published this list officially using the domain killedby.google.
Google, if you're listening, please acquire me. hah.
The two things I really miss that are on this list are Inbox and Field Trip. I used to just browse Field Trip while I was riding the buses or trains. Was really enjoyable. I don't know why this page says 2015. Field Trip survived the spinoff of Niantic and was only recently shut down.
