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Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

358 points ofalkaed | 10 comments | 11 Oct 25 22:16 UTC | HN request time: 0.624s | source | bottom

Just curious and who knows, maybe someone will adopt it or develop something new based on its ideas.
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bxparks ◴[11 Oct 25 23:45 UTC] No.45553791[source]▶
A lot of things on https://killedbygoogle.com/ . I used to use 30-40 Google products and services. I'm down to 3-4.

Google Picasa: Everything local, so fast, so good. I'm never going to give my photos to G Photos.

Google Hangouts: Can't keep track of all the Google chat apps. I use Signal now.

Google G Suite Legacy: It was supposed to be free forever. They killed it, tried to make me pay. I migrated out of Google.

Google Play Music: I had uploaded thousands of MP3 files there. They killed it. I won't waste my time uploading again.

Google Finance: Tracked my stocks and funds there. Then they killed it. Won't trust them with my data again.

Google NFC Wallet: They killed it. Then Apple launched the same thing, and took over.

Google Chromecast Audio: It did one thing, which is all I needed. Sold mine as soon as they announced they were killing it.

Google Chromecast: Wait, they killed Chromecast? I did not know that until I started writing this..

replies(23): >>45554121 #>>45554642 #>>45554670 #>>45554729 #>>45554855 #>>45554893 #>>45554951 #>>45555090 #>>45555292 #>>45555527 #>>45555685 #>>45555801 #>>45555809 #>>45555904 #>>45556149 #>>45556298 #>>45556780 #>>45556997 #>>45557010 #>>45557377 #>>45558239 #>>45560343 #>>45563152 #
1. daxfohl ◴[12 Oct 25 02:47 UTC] No.45554729[source]▶
Google Search: Not officially dead yet, but....
replies(1): >>45554848 #
2. bdangubic ◴[12 Oct 25 03:13 UTC] No.45554848[source]▶
yup, losing 0.000087% year-over-year so in 865 billion years it’ll be dead :)
replies(3): >>45554908 #>>45557577 #>>45566772 #
3. bxparks ◴[12 Oct 25 03:21 UTC] No.45554908[source]▶
That was probably me, when I stopped using Google Search some years ago. :-) Got tired of the ads, the blog spam, and AI-generated content crap floating to the top of their results page.
replies(3): >>45555137 #>>45555389 #>>45558923 #
4. daxfohl ◴[12 Oct 25 04:09 UTC] No.45555137{3}[source]▶
That's more what I meant. Sure, lots of people still type stuff into the URL bar that takes them to www.google.com/search. But whatever you want to call that results page now, it's no longer Google Search in anything but name.
replies(1): >>45557563 #
5. marttt ◴[12 Oct 25 05:02 UTC] No.45555389{3}[source]▶
The https://udm14.com/ flavor of Google is quite usable, though, esp with notable operators like inurl:this-or-that. But, all in all, yeah, gimme back vanilla Google search from 2008-2010 or so. Back then it was definitely a tool (I worked in investigative journalism at the time), whereas currently "searching" stands for sitting fingers crossed and hoping for the better. But, oh well. </rant>
6. bdangubic ◴[12 Oct 25 11:59 UTC] No.45557563{4}[source]▶
same can be said if you compare www.google.com search from 2012 and 2022, times are changing… I am not defending google search here, I haven’t used it except by accident in long time now but to say google search is “dying” like you often hear (especially here on HN) is a serious detachment from reality
7. kirubakaran ◴[12 Oct 25 12:01 UTC] No.45557577[source]▶
How did you go bankrupt?

Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.

- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

replies(1): >>45557812 #
8. bdangubic ◴[12 Oct 25 12:39 UTC] No.45557812{3}[source]▶
I guess I’ve heard it all now… Google going bankrupt would not have made Top-1 Million list of likely things to read on Sunday morning…
9. vunuxodo ◴[12 Oct 25 15:30 UTC] No.45558923{3}[source]▶
Kagi has been a great replacement for me. Less blogspam I've found, plus it doesn't give me AI results unless I explicitly tell it I want AI results by adding a "?" to the end of my query.
10. easyThrowaway ◴[13 Oct 25 10:24 UTC] No.45566772[source]▶
I wouldn't be surprised if they're going to kill it with their own hands by implementing some half-assed AI feature that breaks the core functionality of the product.