Wise people learn from their mistakes.
Wiser people learn from others' mistakes.
In this post, we will try to know about some of Google's online/web/internet products that failed, and will also try to gauge why.
Google Lively
Second Life's clone.
Lasted for six months in 2008
Why did it fail?
Launched in late Jan 2005.
22 months later Google bought YouTube for $1.65B.
It was kept around for 10 months after the YouTube acquisition, and then discontinued.
It lasted 2 years.
Why did it fail?
Nobody needed another video player.
It was a nice to have.
It didn’t solve any problems.
Google Answers
Let users pay a researcher for an answer to a question they have.
Lasted 4 years and 8 months.
Why did it fail?
There were Free alternatives to it - Yahoo! Answers, Forums, Google search.
Google Notebook
A downgraded version of Yahoo! Notepad.
Had some good features - clipping of web pages with a browser extension, notes-sharing
Lasted 5 years and 4 months.
Launched in May 2006.
In Nov 2011, Google began exporting the contents of existing Notebooks to Google Docs, and made Google Notebooks read-only. As of Jul 2012, all Notebook data had been exported to Google Drive and Google Notebook was shut down.
In Mar 2013, Google launched its new note-taking application Google Keep.
Why did it fail?
Bad UX - difficult to use.
Notebook's user base was considered too small to be worthwhile for Google, and there was a perception that various other Google products (Wave, SearchWiki, Docs) would subsume the uses of Notebook.
Google Wave
It’s tough to explain in a sentence what Google Wave was.
Google explained it as “A wave is a live, shared space on the web where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.”
One of Wave’s developers said, “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today.”
Lasted 15 months.
Why did it fail?
Didn’t launch as an MVP.
Was filled with lots of features that Google assumed people wanted.
Was a complex product that required user’s time-investment just to understand how it works.
Google Buzz
Orkut
We've discussed Orkut's story in a separate post. Click the link below to read the post:
saurabhkautilyagupta.blogspot.com/2016/12/orkut-social-network-google-product-fail.html
Wiser people learn from others' mistakes.
In this post, we will try to know about some of Google's online/web/internet products that failed, and will also try to gauge why.
Google Lively
Second Life's clone.
Lasted for six months in 2008
Why did it fail?
UI/UX was complex.
Gamification was not done well (all items were available fro free from start - no incentive to explore).
Had many not-well-thought & not-well-done features & faulty-features (you would spend hours decorating your room, then left, then returned later to find strangers had put sofas on the ceiling, tipped over chairs and rearranged plants into a jumbled mess in your room - just because it was too easy to unknowingly allow others to edit your public room) & critical-features-missing (the most basic social web features such as a profile page was absent - nearly every successful online game or web community has a profile page or home screen, as the center of the social experience and to build your own virtual identity - be it for role playing or just making friends).
Google Latitude & Google Dodgeball
Dodgeball was a location-based social networking service for mobile devices where the users texted their location to the service, which then notified them of the crushes, friends, friends' friends and interesting venues nearby.
Dodgeball was founded in 2000 by NYU students Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert.
Dodgeball was acquired by Google in 2005.
In April 2007, Crowley and Rainert left Google to create a similar service Foursquare.
Dodgeball was shut down and succeeded in February 2009 by Google Latitude.
Google Latitude was a location-aware feature of Google Maps that allowed a mobile phone user to allow certain people to view their current location (Via their own Google Account, the user's cell phone location was mapped on Google Maps. The user could control the accuracy and details of what each of the other users can see - an exact location could be allowed, or it could be limited to identifying the city only. For privacy, it could also be turned off by the user, or a location could be manually entered. Users had to explicitly opt into Latitude, and were only able to see the location of those friends who had decided to share their location with them)
Latitude was discontinued in Aug 2013.
Why did it fail?
Latitude's idea was too prescient - the hardware (smart-phones) took too long to catch up to the idea.
Google Jaiku
Social networking, micro-blogging, life-streaming service (same as Twitter)
Launched; before Twitter; on Jul 2006 by Jyri Engeström, Petteri Koponen
Purchased by Google in Oct 2007.
Shutdown by Google in Jan 2012.
Why did it fail?
The founders were put in charge of some other projects at Google - As a result, Jaiku became stagnant and therefore died.
Google VideoGoogle Latitude & Google Dodgeball
Dodgeball was a location-based social networking service for mobile devices where the users texted their location to the service, which then notified them of the crushes, friends, friends' friends and interesting venues nearby.
Dodgeball was founded in 2000 by NYU students Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert.
Dodgeball was acquired by Google in 2005.
In April 2007, Crowley and Rainert left Google to create a similar service Foursquare.
Dodgeball was shut down and succeeded in February 2009 by Google Latitude.
Google Latitude was a location-aware feature of Google Maps that allowed a mobile phone user to allow certain people to view their current location (Via their own Google Account, the user's cell phone location was mapped on Google Maps. The user could control the accuracy and details of what each of the other users can see - an exact location could be allowed, or it could be limited to identifying the city only. For privacy, it could also be turned off by the user, or a location could be manually entered. Users had to explicitly opt into Latitude, and were only able to see the location of those friends who had decided to share their location with them)
Latitude was discontinued in Aug 2013.
Why did it fail?
Latitude's idea was too prescient - the hardware (smart-phones) took too long to catch up to the idea.
Google Jaiku
Social networking, micro-blogging, life-streaming service (same as Twitter)
Launched; before Twitter; on Jul 2006 by Jyri Engeström, Petteri Koponen
Purchased by Google in Oct 2007.
Shutdown by Google in Jan 2012.
Why did it fail?
The founders were put in charge of some other projects at Google - As a result, Jaiku became stagnant and therefore died.
Launched in late Jan 2005.
22 months later Google bought YouTube for $1.65B.
It was kept around for 10 months after the YouTube acquisition, and then discontinued.
It lasted 2 years.
Why did it fail?
Nobody needed another video player.
It was a nice to have.
It didn’t solve any problems.
Google Answers
Let users pay a researcher for an answer to a question they have.
Lasted 4 years and 8 months.
Why did it fail?
There were Free alternatives to it - Yahoo! Answers, Forums, Google search.
Google Notebook
A downgraded version of Yahoo! Notepad.
Had some good features - clipping of web pages with a browser extension, notes-sharing
Lasted 5 years and 4 months.
Launched in May 2006.
In Nov 2011, Google began exporting the contents of existing Notebooks to Google Docs, and made Google Notebooks read-only. As of Jul 2012, all Notebook data had been exported to Google Drive and Google Notebook was shut down.
In Mar 2013, Google launched its new note-taking application Google Keep.
Why did it fail?
Bad UX - difficult to use.
Notebook's user base was considered too small to be worthwhile for Google, and there was a perception that various other Google products (Wave, SearchWiki, Docs) would subsume the uses of Notebook.
Google Wave
It’s tough to explain in a sentence what Google Wave was.
Google explained it as “A wave is a live, shared space on the web where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.”
One of Wave’s developers said, “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today.”
Lasted 15 months.
Why did it fail?
Didn’t launch as an MVP.
Was filled with lots of features that Google assumed people wanted.
Was a complex product that required user’s time-investment just to understand how it works.
Google Buzz
We've discussed Buzz in a separate post. Click the link below to read the post:
saurabhkautilyagupta.blogspot.com/2016/12/buzz-micro-blogging-google-product-fail.htmlOrkut
We've discussed Orkut's story in a separate post. Click the link below to read the post:
saurabhkautilyagupta.blogspot.com/2016/12/orkut-social-network-google-product-fail.html
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/
https://www.quora.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/
https://www.quora.com/
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/google-products-that-failed/
http://freetoplay.biz/2008/11/26/a-lively-failure-5-other-reasons-lively-flopped/
http://freetoplay.biz/2008/11/26/a-lively-failure-5-other-reasons-lively-flopped/
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