Shockingly, the products are Search, Gmail, YouTube, Android, News, Google+, and Maps.
No, not really. It’s a bunch of stuff you’ve never heard of and/or never used in the first place. Google’s thinning the herd by eliminating the weak and the sick, most notably Google Wave, which will mark its final useless confusing crash to the shore in April.
Also biting the dust, according to Bloomberg:
– Google Bookmarks List – a service which allowed users to share bookmarks with friends
– Google Friends Connect – allowed webmasters to add social features to their sites by embedding a snippet of code
– Google Gears – much-hyped effort to maintain web browser functionality when working offline
– Google Search Timeline – a graph of historical query results
– Knol – a Wikipedia-style project, which aimed to improve web content
– Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal – a project which aimed to find ways to improve solar power
As we’ve talked about before here in this memo, Google’s big products bring in mountains of cash, especially search ads. Then Google hires turbo smart people who like to build new things, which then get launched. Still, I have to wonder after the failure of Buzz and Wave and what I’m going to go ahead and call a slow launch of Google+ if they’re going to be more careful about what they make public and what they don’t. Or maybe it’s like a TV network. Some shows are American Idol but others are more like Joey.
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
