Brief History Of Google’s Killing Off Interesting Projects

Google is well-known for kicking off a project and forgetting it. There have tons of such platforms that emerged from the stable of the search engine giant and later killed off. Below are some of the popular those:

Google Answers

In 2006 the search engine giant kicked off with full enthusiasm the Google Answers, something similar to Yahoo Answers then and the current rivals like Quora and Stack Exchange, but the service is now killed even after the effort of offering cash payments to the user whose answers were best. Bounty between $2 and $200 was added to urge people pay out and also add a tip on it.

Before Google Answers came into existence, it had Google Questions and Answers service where a question was mailed to its staff and answers were delivered at the cost of $3. However, Quora became the best replacement later by offering something similar service with no money involved. Services like Fiverr and Amazon Mechanical Turk carry similar approach with small payment to someone who does the research work.

Picasa

The Google’s desktop photo library tool Picasa was a good photo management service and was favorite to may, but the service has been discontinued now. However, most of the features of the platform have been integrated into Google Photos, which though lacks desktop management tools but is a robust as a replacement to online version.

Google Buzz

Introduced in 2010, the Google Buzz had a short life and was discontinued in 2011. It was nothing but a Facebook clone and integrated with email too. However, it was not very clear what Google wanted to do with it or what users need to do. To come with an improved version of it Google later launched Google+, but even this platform failed to lure social media users.

Picnik

It was nothing but a free online photo editing tool and was easy to make some minor adjustments to photos like adjusting color, brightness and more. Picnik was discontinued in 2012 and was replaced with Google+ Photos, which is much better and is highly easy on Android and iPhone.

Google Helpouts

The service was to connect with live experts for video chats. After two years the search engine giant killed it too. In fact the tool was a video version of Quora. Some of the channels in it cost money and this is the reason it failed. A similar version Clarity.fm is there if you want to ask an expert about home repair or Photoshop.