Google Graveyard: What Google has killed off in 2015

Six feet deep
Google is truly a company that has more technology and products than it can handle sometimes, and in 2015 the company with the recent name change shed a host of tools and products to enable it to focus on more pressing needs. Here’s a look back at what Google this year has offed or announced plans to off (To go back even further, check out 2014’s Google Graveyard.)

Google Code
Google in March said it would be axing its Google Code platform in January 2016, acknowledging increased adoption of alternatives like GitHub and Bitbucket. “As developers migrated away from Google Code, a growing share of the remaining projects were spam or abuse. Lately, the administrative load has consisted almost exclusively of abuse management,” wrote Google open-source director Chris DiBona. Google Code launched in 2006.

Chrome extensions
At the risk of making itself look controlling, Google has been taking steps for years to protect Google Chrome users of extensions that inject ads and malware. In May it really put the kibosh on such software coming from any Windows channel, specifying that all extensions now need to original in the Chrome Web Store. Extensions for Chrome for OS X got the same treatment in July. “Extending this protection is one more step to ensure that users of Chrome can enjoy all the web has to offer without the need to worry as they browse,” a Google product manager wrote in announcing the changes.

Pwnium hacking contest
Google’s big one-day hacking contest at the CanSecWest event, under which it doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars since 2012, has been shuttered in favor of year-long opportunities for hackers to snag bounties for uncovering flaws in its Chrome technology. Among other things, Google was concerned that hackers were hoarding bugs until the contest came around.

Bookmarks Manager
Technicaly, Google didn’t kill the Bookmarks Manager in June, but it did relent to widespread hatred of the free Chrome extension and revert to including the old bookmark tool with its browser. Those few who did cotton to the new UI are still able to access the Bookmarks Manager if they know where to look. Meanwhile, Google’s Sarah Dee blogged: “Our team will continue to explore other ways to improve the bookmarks experience. ”

PageSpeed
Google alerted users of its PageSpeed Service for making websites zippier that it would be killing off the tools as of Aug. 3. Google had pitched its 4.5-year-old hosted PageSpeed optimizing proxy as a way to improve website performance without having to know any code.

Google TV
Google kicked off 2015 by announcing it would ditch the Google TV brand that few probably knew existed and focus its living-room entertainment efforts instead on Android TV and Google Cast. The company said Google TV libraries would no longer be available, but Google TV devices would continue to work.

Google logo
Google nixed its colorful longtime serif typeface logo, around since 1999, in favor of a new sans serif colorful logo with a typeface dubbed Product Sans. With the emergence of the Alphabet parent company came a new look for its Google business.

GTalk
Google Talk had a good run, starting up in 2005, but it’s never good when Google pulls out the term “deprecated” as it did in February in reference to this chat service’s Windows App. Google said it was pulling the plug on GTalk in part to focus on Google Hangouts in a world where people have plenty of other ways to chat online. However, Google Talk does live on via third-party apps.

Maps Coordinate for mobile workforces
Google in January emailed users of its mobile enterprise workforce management offering, which debuted in 2012, that the service would be shutting down come January 2016. Google has been folding various mapping-related products into one another in recent years, and is putting focus on its mapping APIs in its Maps for Work project going forward.

Google Moderator
This tool, launched in 2008, was used to “create a meaningful conversation from many different people's questions, ideas, and suggestions.” The White House, among others, used it to organize feedback for online and offline events during the 2012 elections. But Google gave up on the tools in July due to its overall lack of use.

Helpouts
There’s no more helping Google Helpouts, which was discontinued in April. This online collaboration service was short-lived, launching in November 2013. While alive, it allowed users to share their expertise – for free or a fee -- through live video and provide real-time help from their computers or mobile devices. It exploited Google Hangouts technology, but was largely redundant with so many help videos found on Google’s very own YouTube.

Eclipse developer tools
Google informed developers over the summer that it was time for them to switch over to Android Studio, now firmed up at Version 1.0, as the company would be “ending development and official support for the Android Developer Tools (ADT) in Eclipse at the end of the year. This specifically includes the Eclipse ADT plugin and Android Ant build system.”

Flu Trends
Google in August said it was discontinuing its Flu and Dengue Trends, which were estimates of flu and Dengue fever based on search patterns. Flu Trends launched in 2008 as an early example of “nowcasting” and Google is now leaving the data publishing on diseases to health organizations that it will work with. Historical data remains available from Google.

Google+ ?
Google’s social networking technology has never had much life in the first place and isn’t “really most sincerely dead” like the Wicked Witch, but Google keeps messing around with it, such as extracting the Google Photos app from it, as announced at Google I/O this year, while adding a feature called Collections. Google also has stopped requiring people to have Google+ accounts to tap into other services, such as YouTube channel creation.

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Google's latest Penguin update lets you squeal on spammy websites -- as well as anyone else

Penguin 2.0 makes large-scale algorithm changes, affecting 2.3% of U.S.-English results

The latest version of Google's sophisticated anti-spam algorithm, dubbed Penguin 2.0, was announced yesterday in an official blog post from the company's well-known webspam czar, Mike Cutts.

The 2.0 label was applied, according to Cutts, because the update is a major one -- it includes changes to the underlying algorithms used to evaluate whether a website is spammy or not, not just the dataset Google uses. About 2.3% of queries in U.S. English will be visibly affected by the changes.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Felipe Micaroni Lalli

Cutts also posted a link to a webspam report page, where anyone can flag sites they consider spam for the attentions of Google's engineers. The form doesn't ask for any identification by the reporting party, requiring only a copy/pasted URL.

While this appears to present a golden opportunity for abuse -- as several Twitter responses to the announcement noted -- Cutts noted on Twitter that Google has always had an extensive array of options in place to report spammy sites, and that "we'll listen to feedback and look for ways to improve results."

Search Engine Land Editor Barry Schwartz wrote that this is actually the fourth major generation of Google's current anti-spam algorithm. However, its effects have been wider-ranging than all but the initial release of Penguin, which reached 3.1% of queries.

Cutts didn't discuss the algorithm changes in detail, so as not to provide too much information to black hat search engine optimization practitioners, but laid out some broad goals that Google is working toward in a video released earlier this month.

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Why aren't Microsoft's competitors joining in on the Windows 8 jokes?

As bloggers and analysts have shown, Windows 8 is pretty easy to make fun of. But Microsoft's competitors aren't putting out any "I'm a Mac" ads this time around.

Motley Fool made a great point late last week: Where are the Windows 8 attack ads? They have their suspicions, and I have mine.

Windows Vista was a stinker and everyone knew it, and along came the "I'm a Mac" ads. These ads were devastating in some ways, but as other, cooler heads noted, they also backfired. "PC" came off as a sympathetic character (played so brilliantly by John Hodgman) while "Mac" came off as a dislikable prick.

The ads disappeared in 2009 when Windows 7 hit and all of Apple's arguments were shot down in flames. By that point, there had been rumors of the end of the ads anyway because "Mac" (played by actor Justin Long) had become more of a liability than anything else.

So Fool contributor Rick Munarriz was right to wonder aloud about the lack of attack ads. If anything, Microsoft is on the offense with absolute comedy gold, the wedding-turned-riot as Apple and Samsung fanatics get into a brawl. I don't know how many Lumias that commercial will sell, but it is genius in its own right.

So where are the attacks? Google, Samsung and Apple should be all over this; instead, they are MIA. Windows 8 is being kicked while its down by an entire soccer team, except the team is almost entirely the press and a few analysts.

For starters, Apple can't say too much because its MacBook sales are down along with PC sales. So it's rather difficult to blame Windows 8 for MacBook sales. Second, "I'm a Mac" wouldn't work anyway, because those ads backfired to begin with.

Google has been strangely quiet, even as Microsoft pounds on it from multiple fronts. There's the Scroogled ads, the Bing It On ads, and now a new ad campaign lambasting Google Docs.

Munarriz didn't speculate as to why, but I will.

In the case of Google, the ads aren't working. Google's lead in search remains untouchable and Bing is settling for scraps. Samsung isn't ready to go to war with Microsoft, although it has taken a jab. Thus far, that's as much as they will do, and that's good.

As for Apple, I suspect it may have written off Microsoft, and perhaps the PC business. The "I'm a Mac" ads were in the pre-iPad days. Tablets have changed things forever, now that Apple has validated the concept.

The Mac is 15% of Apple's revenue. I don't think Apple will ever abandon the Mac, but it could likely fade into the same secondary status as the Mac Classic with the click wheel and Apple TV. So long as it pays for itself, Apple will keep it, but the Mac won't be its emphasis, perhaps ever. It has a solid niche, enjoys great success within the creative community, and perhaps that's all Apple wants.

But beware declarations of a technology's death. The mainframe has been declared dead more often than Kenny from "South Park," and IBM still makes a nice chunk of income from them. It may not be a lot, but it’s still relevant.

People may be looking to ditch PCs for tablets now, but we'll see how it goes. I would not be surprised at all if there is a bit of a backlash against tablets in about two or three years when the batteries start dying and people are left high and dry. Those people will remember how they could pop in a new battery on their laptop and they won't be amused at the inaccessibility of a tablet.

All I can say is if Apple or anyone else is ignoring the obvious vulnerability of Windows 8 because they think Microsoft has become irrelevant, they are going to be very sorry when Microsoft gets back up.

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