Google Graveyard Revisited: Shutdowns Since 2015

We know them for Search, Gmail, Android… the giants. But Google’s also famous for something else: trying out tons of ideas. Seriously, hundreds of them! This ‘throw it at the wall and see what sticks’ approach means innovation, but it also means… well, a lot doesn’t stick.

Over the years, Google has become notorious for shutting down services, sometimes leaving us users scrambling for alternatives, other times making us go, ‘Wait, that was a thing?’. This post is a trip down memory lane, revisiting the Google ‘graveyard’ starting from 2015.

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Google TV

(Discontinued on: Jan 6, 2015)

Announced in May of 2010, Google Video seemed like a smart idea for giving viewers an enhanced TV experience with an interactive overlay over online video sites.

The problem, despite various Android updates, was that it was more about computerizing your television than offering an awesome viewing experience.

With the launch of Android Lollipop and Android TV, the company planned to phase Google TV out and switch to Android TV.

“By extending Android to the TV form factor, living room developers get the benefits, features and the same APIs available for Android phone and tablet development,” said the Google and Android TV teams in a shared Google+ post.

Nonetheless, only some Google TV devices will be updated to Android TV since certain devices can’t work with the new system.

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Google Code

(Discontinued on: Jan 25, 2015)

Announced in March 2005, Google Code is a service (which started a year after, in 2006) to host scalable, open source projects reliably.

Google Code went read-only in August 2015, and will shut down on January 25 2016 for version control clients. Public project data will get archived and be accessible via Google Code Archive for years to come.

“…we’ve seen a wide variety of better project hosting services such as GitHub and Bitbucket bloom. Many projects moved away from Google Code to those. … After profiling non-abusive activity on Google Code, it has become clear to us that the service simply isn’t needed anymore“, stated Chris DiBona (Director of Open Source) on Google’s Open Source Blog on March 12, 2015.

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Google Talk

(Discontinued on: Feb 23, 2015)

Google Talk app for Windows was officially launched on August 24, 2005 – “a small program that lets you call and IM other Google Talk friends over the Internet for free.“

It was based on the XMPP protocol, and so various XMPP clients such as GAIM, Trillian, etc. were supported.

Mayur Kamat, Product Manager at Google Voice and Hangouts, posted on February 14, 2015 that “… Google Talk app for Windows will be deprecated on February 23, 2015. This will allow us to focus on bringing you the most robust and expressive communications experience with Google Hangouts.“

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ClientLogin protocol

(Discontinued on: Apr 20, 2015)

A password-only authentication protocol, ClientLogin, offered API for third-party applications to access one’s Google account data through validation of the account’s username and password.

It was widely used by various apps and websites for getting authorized, but this API was less secure then OAuth 2.0.

Officially deprecated since April 20, 2012, Google finally shut ClientLogin API down 3 years later on April 20, 2015.

“Password-only authentication has several well known shortcomings and we are actively working to move away from it,” wrote Ryan Troll (Technical Lead, Identity and Authentication) on the Google Developers blog as a reason for its shutdown.

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Google Helpouts

(Discontinued on: Apr 20, 2015)

The online collaboration and tutorial service, Google Helpouts, was launched in November 2013.

A kind of freelance market, its main objective was to help people find real-time assistance through live, streaming videos with the aim of bringing together solution experts and learners or help seekers.

It lets users talk face-to-face online and avail expert collaboration to sort out problems.

Although considered helpful for masses, yet Google shut Helpouts down on April 20, 2015.

Slow growth was given as the reason behind its termination: “… unfortunately, it hasn’t grown at the pace we had expected. Sadly, we’ve made the tough decision to shut down the product.“

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Google+ Photos

(Discontinued on: Aug 1, 2015)

A photo hosting and management solution integrated in Google+, Google+ Photos lets you create, edit, and manage your own private albums online.

It also had cool features like Stories, which would automatically repackage your pictures into a fun timeline or scrapbook.

Google+ announced to start shutting Google+ Photos down beginning August 1, 2015, beginning with the Android version of the app, and then the Web and iOS versions.

To clarify few doubts, Google+ still supports photo and video sharing.

As for why they folded on it, Anil Sabarwal (Lead Product Manager at Google Photos) said, “… it is confusing to users why we have two offerings that virtually do the same thing, and it means our team needs to divide its focus rather than working on building a single, great user experience.“

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PageSpeed Service

(Discontinued on: Aug 3, 2015)

Launched on July 28, 2011, Page Speed was an online service, which automatically sped up web page loading and gave 25% to 60% speed improvements on several websites.

It was a free CDN service that fetches content from the site’s servers, applies web performance best practices to the pages, and serves them to the users from Google’s worldwide servers.

Google announced that the PageSpeed service will cease on August 3, 2015.

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Google Catalogs

(Discontinued on: Aug 4, 2015)

Launched on August 16, 2011, Google Catalogs app, originally available on Android tablets, offered people the chance to discover trending products from digital catalogs.

Catalogs lets you access and share information about products and their availability and create collages using the favorite catalogs.

Having alerted registered Catalogs users through an email, Google announced that it was going to break off support and services for Catalogs, and the company would trash the Catalogs app on August 4, 2015.

The Google Catalogs team didn’t provide any reason for its shutdown with the alert.

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Autocomplete API

(Discontinued on: Aug 10, 2015)

The popular Autocomplete API was a text prediction service that used integrated resources to predict a query before a user finished typing search keywords.

Before the unauthorized access to non-published API was shut down on August 10, 2015, this was a widely available unofficial, non-published tool, which could be incorporated into applications without any restrictions, working independently of Google Search.

Google blocked unauthorized access and various online tools (for example, keyword tools) using this service need to re-invent themselves.

Peter Chiu (on behalf of Autocomplete team) wrote on Google’s Webmaster Central blog, “… uses for an autocomplete data … outside of the context of a web search don’t provide a meaningful user benefit. We want to ensure that users experience autocomplete as it was designed to be used – as a service closely tied to Search.“

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Google Moderator

(Discontinued on: Aug 15, 2015)

On September 24, 2008, Google Moderator was released for public use by its developer Taliver Heath, a Platform Engineer at Google.

The Moderator tool allowed crowd-sourcing questions within limited time using Google’s groups by using consensus to elevate questions that were pertinent or useful.

Before making it freely available, it was used inside Google at tech talks to vote if a question should be asked.

Google announced that August 15, 2015 is Moderator’s last day, after which the site will be taken down.

Its data was made available via Takeout so that people can download their Moderator’s data starting from 30^th March 2015.

To explain why the decision was made to close down the project, it was posted, “… has not had the usage we had hoped, so we’ve made the difficult decision to close down the product.“

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Google Flu Trends

(Discontinued on: Aug 20, 2015)

Announced in November 2008, Flu Trends was a service by Google.org as a way to track Influenza outbreaks by sourcing and analyzing search trends.

It was a search prediction model used for “nowcasting” estimates of Flu and Dengue fevers based on search trends.

Google stopped posting public data about these estimates on its website (starting from August 2015), and has decided to provide signal data to its partner health organizations.

“Instead of maintaining our own website going forward, we’re now going to empower institutions who specialize in infectious disease research to use the data to build their own models,” says The Flu Trends Team on Google Research blog.

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Google Hotel Finder

(Discontinued on: Sep 22, 2015)

Launched on July 28, 2011 as an experimental hotel search and inventory tool, Hotel Finder lets travellers find hotel information and book accommodations.

Its features include tourist spotlights for any neighborhood, and short-list results to keep track of them.

At the end of September 2015, Hotel Finder got replaced by Hotel Ads, an advertising service that allows direct bookings from Google Search results.

According to the official announcement on Google’s Inside Adwords blog, Google retired the dedicated Hotel Finder website because “… users are now able to access the hotel information they need right from Google search.“

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ADT for Eclipse

(Discontinued on: Dec 31, 2015)

ADT, Android Developer Tools, a plugin for Eclipse provided an Android application development environment for Eclipse users.

Its 0.9.4 version released in October 2009, ADT was a part of Android’s SDK and helped people develop Android applications easily.

After releasing Android Studio as the official IDE for Android app development, Google announced in June 2015 that support for ADT plugin for Eclipse would end by December 2015.

“To that end and to focus all of our efforts on making Android Studio better and faster, we are ending development and official support for the Android Developer Tools (ADT) in Eclipse,” said Jama Eason, Product Manager at Android.

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Google Allo

(Discontinued on: Mar 12, 2019)

Launched in September 2016, Google Allo was a smart messaging app that integrated Google Assistant directly into conversations. It offered features like smart replies, stickers, and the ability to whisper or shout messages by adjusting text size.

Despite its innovative features, Google announced in December 2018 that Allo would be discontinued in March 2019. The company encouraged users to switch to Messages for SMS and Duo for video calls.

“We’ve learned a lot from Allo, particularly what’s possible when you incorporate machine learning features, like the Google Assistant, into messaging. We’re bringing the best of Allo into Messages, including Smart Reply, GIFs and desktop support,” said Google in their announcement.

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Google+

(Discontinued on: Apr 2, 2019)

Launched in June 2011 as Google’s answer to Facebook, Google+ was the company’s fourth attempt at creating a social network. It introduced innovative features like Circles for organizing contacts and Hangouts for video chat.

After a data breach affecting 52.5 million users was discovered in December 2018, Google announced it would shut down Google+ for consumers in April 2019. The enterprise version, Google+ for G Suite, continued until April 2020.

“While our engineering teams have put a lot of effort and dedication into building Google+ over the years, it has not achieved broad consumer or developer adoption, and has seen limited user interaction with apps,” stated Google in their blog post.

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Google Inbox

(Discontinued on: Apr 2, 2019)

Introduced in October 2014, Google Inbox was an experimental email client that aimed to revolutionize email management. It featured smart grouping of emails, reminders, and a clean, modern interface.

Google announced in September 2018 that Inbox would be discontinued in March 2019 (later extended to April 2019). Many of its features were integrated into the main Gmail app.

“We’ve taken popular Inbox features and added them into Gmail to help more people benefit from them,” said Google in their announcement.

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Google Daydream

(Discontinued on: Oct 15, 2019)

Announced in May 2016, Google Daydream was Google’s mobile virtual reality platform. It included a VR headset and controller, along with a platform for VR apps and games.

Google announced in October 2019 that it would discontinue Daydream, citing limited adoption and the challenges of mobile VR. The Daydream View headset was discontinued, and the Daydream app was removed from the Google Play Store.

“We saw that the smartphone-based VR experience wasn’t as compelling as we had hoped, and that there were limitations to the technology that made it difficult to develop high-quality VR experiences,” explained Google in their statement.

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Google Play Music

(Discontinued on: Dec 2020)

Launched in November 2011, Google Play Music was Google’s music streaming service that allowed users to upload and stream their music library, as well as access a catalog of songs through a subscription service.

Google announced in August 2020 that it would shut down Google Play Music by December 2020, transitioning users to YouTube Music. The company provided tools to transfer playlists, uploads, and preferences to the new service.

“We’re committed to making this transition as easy as possible, and we’re working to bring over your music library, personalized recommendations, and playlists,” said Google in their announcement.

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Google Cloud Print

(Discontinued on: Dec 31, 2020)

Introduced in April 2010, Google Cloud Print allowed users to print from any device to any printer connected to the service. It was particularly useful for printing from mobile devices and Chromebooks.

Google announced in November 2019 that Cloud Print would be discontinued by the end of 2020, citing the availability of native printing solutions in modern operating systems.

“With the evolution of printing technology and the growing number of ways to print from mobile devices, we’ve seen a steady decline in the usage of Google Cloud Print,” explained Google in their support page.

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Google Hangouts

(Discontinued on: Nov 1, 2022)

Launched in May 2013, Google Hangouts was a unified messaging platform that combined features from Google Talk, Google+ Messenger, and Google+ Hangouts. It offered text, voice, and video chat capabilities.

Google announced in October 2020 that Hangouts would be discontinued in favor of Google Chat and Google Meet. The transition was completed in November 2022.

“We’re committed to making this transition as smooth as possible, and we’ll help guide you through the process of moving your conversations from Hangouts to Chat,” said Google in their announcement.

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Google Stadia

(Discontinued on: Jan 18, 2023)

Launched in November 2019, Google Stadia was a cloud gaming service that allowed users to play high-quality games on various devices without needing a console or powerful PC.

Google announced in September 2022 that Stadia would be shut down in January 2023, citing low adoption rates and the challenges of building a successful gaming platform.

“While Stadia’s approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected,” explained Google in their blog post.

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Google Domains

(Discontinued on: Sep 7, 2023)

Launched in January 2015, Google Domains was a domain registration service that offered a simple interface, transparent pricing, and integration with other Google services.

Google announced in June 2023 that it would sell Google Domains to Squarespace, with the transition completed by September 2023. Existing customers were migrated to Squarespace’s platform.

“We’re committed to making this transition as smooth as possible for our customers, and we’ll work closely with Squarespace to ensure a seamless transfer of domains,” said Google in their announcement.

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Google Podcasts

(Discontinued on: 2024)

Launched in June 2018, Google Podcasts was a dedicated podcast app that offered personalized recommendations, automatic downloads, and cross-device syncing.

Google announced in September 2023 that it would discontinue Google Podcasts in 2024, encouraging users to migrate to YouTube Music for their podcast listening needs.

“We’re committed to making this transition as smooth as possible, and we’ll help guide you through the process of moving your podcast subscriptions and listening history to YouTube Music,” said Google in their announcement.