10 Google Projects That Didn't Make It

Google's reach is undeniable. Its dominance spans software, hardware, search results, location data, and even blog publishing. As quickly as the Internet grew, Google became a permanent fixture in our lives, connecting us to the web via smartphones and tablets. With Android becoming the standard in less than a decade, Google's innovative focus and smart acquisitions of promising startups have been key to its success.

Google excels at anticipating the future and delivering products that feel indispensable. However, not every project can succeed. Despite its focus on user experience, the 'throw everything at the wall' approach can't always win. With countless experimental products, Google often releases new ideas in beta, and while you may lose a product you loved, its features are likely to resurface in other forms.

In this article, we'll explore various Google projects that didn’t quite make it. Some of these are failed attempts at existing products, while others are reimagined pieces that pop up in new forms. Google’s journey of innovation and its willingness to treat mistakes as opportunities for reinvention offers valuable insights into the nature of online development and experimentation.

10: Google Lively

Google Lively stands as a prime example of "right idea, wrong execution," largely forgotten by most (it ran for only six months in 2008) [source: Schonfeld]. While virtual environments like 'Second Life' have since faded, Lively's approach to social networking offers a nostalgic glimpse into what online interaction could have been.

Users could create avatars and explore a 3D environment blending chat room dynamics with "Minecraft"-inspired architecture. Despite technical issues like server glitches and lag, the concept was solid. Online chat rooms, a long-standing method of connecting with others, have evolved, and new innovations like ChatRoulette and real-time video chatting continue pushing the boundaries of how we communicate online.

9: Google Answers

What we no longer do now that Google is universally accessible and immediately helpful is the 'answers' model. While platforms like Yahoo! Answers persist, they're primarily used for entertainment rather than reliable information. For factual answers, we turn to specialized websites or seek advice from trusted contacts on social media. This marks the shift from a universal Q&A system to a more personalized, real-world approach to problem-solving.

So what was Google Answers, really? It was part of a trend, with services like ChaCha and AskJeeves, designed for users to ask any question and get an answer. The concept essentially outsourced Google searches to others, a strategy that, while odd, also became a flawed business model. The platform tried to profit by paying freelancers to answer questions, using an auction model that just didn’t work.

It seems laughable now, considering how search engines like Google automatically provide results, but back between April 2002 and November 2006, Google Answers had its place [source: Fikes and Baugher].

8: Google Print Ads and Google Radio Ads

In an effort to expand beyond the internet, Google ventured into print and radio advertising, likely under pressure to generate more revenue. With its wealth of user data and purchasing metrics, Google sought to replicate its online success by bringing valuable consumer insights to offline advertisers.

Google’s core business is built on personal consumer data, and it’s likely to remain that way. In an era where human knowledge is becoming more accessible than ever, advertising continues to be the key driver of profits.

Using Google’s data-driven approach to target consumers in offline markets seemed promising. However, the methods that worked so well online didn’t translate effectively to the offline world. Tracking ad success proved challenging, and radio and print executives were hesitant to adopt Google’s approach [source: Vascellaro].

7: Dodgeball

Two key Google acquisitions in 2005 stand out: Android, which doesn’t belong in this discussion, and Dodgeball. While Android is irrelevant here, Dodgeball is more intriguing, as it represents Google's first acquisition and development of an idea that ultimately succeeded in another form, becoming a standard in its category.

Dodgeball, a location-based social networking platform, was acquired by Google in May 2005, along with cofounder Dennis Crowley [source: Seigler]. The idea was to merge the digital world with real-life experiences, using smartphones to connect users, showcase social moments, and share snapshots of meals—basically a perfect fit for Google’s vision at the time.

What went wrong? Well, nothing initially—at least for two years—until Crowley left Google in frustration to found Foursquare. The issue was that the concept was ahead of its time, and the hardware wasn’t ready, but it eventually caught up. Today, Google has Latitude, and Facebook Places is vying for the same check-in app popularity that Foursquare holds.

Neither Latitude nor Facebook Places quite captures what made Foursquare stand out—the gamification aspect. Foursquare rewarded users with badges and perks for demonstrating loyalty to specific businesses or locations. However, following the real-world parallel, it seems those extra features won’t hold as much value moving forward.

Checking in has become second nature for most users. It's not about earning virtual rewards; it’s just faster and simpler than sharing our whereabouts on Twitter or Facebook. As location mapping becomes a common feature in apps like Instagram, the act of checking in has evolved into a more accurate representation of our connected lives: enhancing, not replacing, reality.

6: Jaiku

The fallout between Google and Jaiku has been clouded by rumors of internal conflict, but regardless, this Finnish-born service—named for its haiku-like microblogging style—became open-source in 2009. Google officially shut Jaiku down in 2011, with the service closing on January 15, 2012 [source: Horowitz]. Much like how MySpace eventually became a refuge for emerging bands, Jaiku may have found a new purpose. We’ll never know what might have been.

5: Google Notebook and Shared Stuff

While Google Docs has emerged as the go-to shared document service that Google Wave (more on that soon) partially intended to be, the company has yet to develop an app that can rival the likes of Evernote for those seeking productivity tools. Copy-pasting clips that preserve their Web citation seems like a solid idea, especially when embedded directly into the browser—hence Google’s repeated attempts.

Despite all these attempts, at the end of the day, either the learning curve was too steep, or the interface too clumsy. The realm of stored facts and quotes remains firmly in the hands of app developers who focus on the simplest, most streamlined features. Now that everything is in the cloud, the ability to transfer notes, tasks, and links between devices is no longer a unique selling point. (This ties back to the recurring theme of seamless integration, until it becomes invisible.)

Similarly, the oddly named Shared Stuff tried to combine elements of Google Docs and Google Notebook, offering clips and notes to a broader audience [source: Pash]. However, the service encountered issues—being dubbed buggy and never truly meshing with Google’s ecosystem—but it resulted in a less engaging version of social bookmarking sites like Delicio.us. Social bookmarking is just what it sounds like, whether through Delicio.us, Reddit, or BuzzFeed. What matters is not just what you share, but how you and your friends engage with it. (These are the features from Notebook and Shared Stuff that later made their way into Google Reader.)

4: Google Buzz

The primary mistake made by Google Buzz was its stealthy introduction. In February 2010, it was automatically integrated into Gmail as an opt-out feature, subtly appearing as a folder in the familiar Inbox without any prior notice.

So, what exactly was hidden in that eerie new folder? Essentially, it was Google Reader. This was a fantastic experience during its peak, before RSS as a Web standard began to fade in favor of personalized tablet readers (such as Google Currents) and other app-based methods for tracking our preferred websites. This shift was already in motion when Buzz launched, making Google’s initiative seem like just another folder filled with an ever-growing “Unread” count, bringing with it the same subconscious stress.

Perhaps if Google Buzz had offered some sort of incentive for plowing through those once-pleasing updates from our favorite sites, it might have fared better. Regardless, the tablet revolution has come full circle: Now, we read magazines on devices designed like magazines, rather than blog posts on devices designed like our email. In late 2011, Google bid farewell to Buzz [source: Wasserman].

3: Wikipedia Alternatives

Though memories may blur, many of us recall the period just before Wikipedia's rise, when the concept of 'wiki' was already widely recognized. Television fanbases and other information-dense groups continue to host wikis full of user-generated and verified information about their beloved topics. What sets Wikipedia apart is its vast, loyal community; despite what your high school English teacher might argue, the ability for 'anyone' to edit Wikipedia doesn’t automatically undermine its accuracy. As the saying goes, all accepted knowledge is created by committee.

So, what does all this have to do with Google? It's about SearchWiki, Knol, and SideWiki. A series of Wikipedia-inspired tools developed by Google starting in 2008. Google couldn’t outdo them (Knol, a collection of user-created articles), couldn’t join them (SearchWiki, which allowed users to organize and annotate search results), and ultimately gave up (SideWiki, a browser extension for annotating Web pages).

Any attempt to create a 'Wikipedia competitor' – even one led by the beloved Google – was never going to match Wikipedia's crowdsourced power. Knol was shut down in May 2012 [source: Albanesius]. Perhaps if there had been any glaring issues with Wikipedia's interface, Knol might have had a chance, but in reality, Wikipedia is quite robust, offering value to users of all levels – from beginners to experts in the field they’re reading about – providing a space for everyone to both search and contribute to the information being sought, often simultaneously.

As for SearchWiki, users were hesitant to alter Google's natural search results, so it was replaced by a star system in late 2010. [source: Dupont]. With SideWiki, users never really took to the sidebar feature for commenting on web pages, leading Google to shut it down in September 2011 [source: Eustace].

2: Google Video

Google Video tried to take on YouTube with nothing more than its sleek interface, clever programming, and a total disregard for something that already existed. Once again, we see the chaos of crowdsourcing on YouTube, with user-managed levels of reputation and appreciation bringing the best to the forefront. While Google Videos (a different name entirely) still serves as a repository for certain video streams, it has taken a more selective approach, much like its former partner Vimeo. In the end, Google ended up buying YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock, so it all worked out.

The tale of Google Video isn't just about an unprovoked attack on an Internet giant. The real story is much stranger. Google Video's roots first appeared in January 2005, turning television broadcasts into searchable transcripts. By summer, they began supporting video uploads and sharing. However, by the end of its first year, the transcript feature was entirely abandoned (though it reappeared in 2012 for some YouTube videos, suggesting Google's not completely done with this idea).

Any chance Google Video had was lost when it chose a different path: introducing its own proprietary file type and player, adding complexity to the process of both creating and enjoying content on the site. Sometimes this works—after all, all media players and file extensions began somewhere—but it wasn't a winning strategy when up against YouTube, which was already popular and standardized. And it certainly wasn’t the right approach when cross-device compatibility had become the new gold standard for successful apps.

After Google acquired YouTube and failed to successfully rebrand it, Google Video underwent yet another transformation. This time, it became a video rental service, once again competing against the already established Netflix. Today, it has returned to being a YouTube counterpart, which is great news for anyone who already has content stored there. Now that uploading is disabled, it stands as a static collection of videos—a reminder of the brief period when Google Video served a purpose, all for over a billion dollars. That is, until it inevitably merges back into YouTube, as expected.

1: Google Wave

Wave might go down in history as Google’s most famous and arguably biggest failure. A confusing mishmash of unnecessary features, Google Wave attempted to be a jack-of-all-trades in content sharing, much like Google+ is trying to dominate the social space today. While it’s still unclear whether Google+ will flop, the time for mourning Wave has long passed.

Need to send an email? You’ve got Gmail for that. But if, for some reason, you want to send an email to a hard-to-follow list of people through a convoluted process, Wave might be your answer. Want to transform that email into a song, video, or a discussion about songs and videos that itself is made up of those things? How about juggling people who join and leave the conversation, unsure who’s involved or whether they’ve been paying attention all along? Fancy having ongoing sidebar chats alongside the main conversation, creating a sense of paranoia that everyone’s talking behind your back? Wave combined all the awkwardness of chat rooms, collaborative documents, online flame wars, and strange social gatherings into one app that nobody could figure out how to use.

It wasn't as bad as it might seem. What often gets overlooked in stories like this is that, much like with most Apple products or even most presidents, the hype surrounding a product release can sometimes outshine its actual value. If we've invested enough money and received a decent level of usefulness from a somewhat underwhelming project, we'll convince ourselves that it’s the best thing around. But if the product is free or doesn’t meet our expectations, we’re quick to label it the worst thing to ever happen.

Google Wave was no different. It launched with the trendy "invite" system in 2009, a technique made famous by Google Voice, and like Voice, it spread through the culture by those most likely to celebrate its release day with enthusiasm. These people were also the ones who would talk about it nonstop for a couple of weeks. It was a bold approach for a project that had limited utility and would take much longer than two weeks to fully understand, even for the most diehard Google fan. It almost felt like performance art, or perhaps even a joke.

Even experienced programmers struggle to explain why Wave was so unpopular. A lot of it had to do with the complexity of the coding language and its inability to integrate with other Google tools and services, but those technical details aren't the focus here. A major factor – likely the biggest – was the anticipation-backlash phenomenon. Maybe the timing was just off, too. Whatever elements people appreciated in Wave will likely resurface in some future project or acquisition. The discarded parts of failed products in Google’s 'Island of Misfit Toys' can always be reworked, repurposed, and integrated into something new.