For decades, Google has practically dominated the Internet. The Mountain View-based tech giant has worked on thousands of products and services, revolutionizing and inspiring other companies to innovate. It has several key products with billions of users. But that doesn’t mean that every product created at Google turns out to be a success. And with Google ending its Stadia cloud gaming service just three years after launch, here we’ll take a look at some of the most popular products and services that Google has shut down in recent years.
Google+
Launched in 2011, the tech giant launched a new social media network called Google+ to compete with other social networks at the time, namely Facebook. Google+ was invite-only at first and had this complexity of circles, communities, etc. And while it was successful in gaining users – since everyone with a Gmail account ended up with a Google Plus profile – the social network never became the challenger to Facebook that Google had hoped for.
Although Google deeply integrated it into other products and offered several useful features, it was discontinued in 2019 due to low user engagement and concerns about security risks. Yes, there was a massive data breach that compromised over 500,000 accounts.
Google+ was feature-rich but suffered from low user engagement and security issues (Image credit: Google)
Google Buzz
Google Plus was not the only social network created by the company. If you grew up in the 2000s and had access to the Internet before, you must be familiar with Google’s vision of integrating social media with messaging and a microblogging platform known as Google Buzz. . Introduced in 2010, Google Buzz was discontinued in just over a year in December 2011 due to privacy concerns. What’s interesting is that Google+ took over from the short-lived service.
orkut
Introduced in 2004, Orkut was one of the most popular social media networks at the time. Owned and operated by Google, the majority of people using orkut were from Brazil or India. But ten years later, in 2014, Google announced that it would shut down Orkut in favor of Google+. Although it was impossible to register for the service, users could download their information from Google Takeout.
Google Wave
Developed by the Apache Software Foundation in conjunction with Google, Wave was software that allowed users to merge key features of various communication technologies such as instant messaging, email, and social networking. The cool part of Google Wave was that while you were chatting with your friend, they could see you typing in real time. Wave was supposed to help with real-time collaboration.
In 2009, the initial release of Google Wave reached over 100,000 users. But fast-forwarding to 2010, the tech giant announced that it would suspend development and turn it over to the Apache Software Foundation. Google Wave, now rebranded as Apache Wave, never saw the light of day and was discontinued in 2018.
Additionally, Wave took over from Google Buzz.
Google Wave combined technologies such as instant messaging, social networks and email. (Image source: Google/YouTube)
iGoogle
Launched in 2005 when dial-up connections were real, iGoogle was a personalized Google search homepage that users could customize according to their preferences.
In 2008, iGoogle grew in popularity, with over 20% of Google search users opting to visit iGoogle instead of the simple Google search page we all know now. The custom homepage was removed in 2012 due to “the unforeseen evolution of web and mobile applications and the erosion of the need for the site”.
Google Drive
Developed by the team working at Google Labs, Google Reader was an RSS feed aggregator loved by millions of people around the world. Since its launch in 2005, Google Reader has been one of the best ways to deliver the latest news and information to everyone around the world. But like some other Google products, the company shut it down in 2013, saying only a few people were using the service.
Inbox by Gmail
Available on the web, Android, and iOS, Inbox by Gmail was one of, if not the best, email apps ever. Launched in late 2014, the email service lets users focus on productivity by grouping emails with similar topics in a neat way.
Inbox by Gmail automatically organizes emails into different categories (Image source: Google)
While far from perfect, Google discovered that in 2016, more than 10% of total replies on Gmail came from Inbox by Gmail’s smart reply feature. Despite positive reviews, Google shut down Inbox by Gmail in 2019.
Picasa
Introduced in 2002, Picasa was hands down one of the most comprehensive image organizers, editing tools, and photo sharing platforms. Over the years, Google developers have added several new features to the platform. But in 2016, the tech giant announced it would retire the decade-old service and instead focus on the cloud-based image organizing and editing service we now know as Google Photos.
Google Hangouts
What started as a feature offered by Google+, Hangouts became a standalone product in 2013. Google developers then started integrating features from other products like Google Voice and Google+ Messenger.
Google Hangouts will be replaced by Google Chats in November this year. (Image source: Google)
Four years later, the tech giant began working on new products known as Google Meet and Google Chat for its productivity suite. Since then, Google has been migrating Hangouts users to other services and announced that it will officially shut down Hangouts in November this year.
Google Spaces
Originally introduced as a competitor to productivity-focused platform Slack, Google Spaces was a mobile app that helped users engage in group chats. Similar to Twitter spaces, people would create spaces where they would invite other people. Google even integrated Spaces with other apps in the Google ecosystem like search, YouTube, Chrome, file sharing, and others that were accessible from within the app.
It was first introduced in 2016, but within a year Google discontinued the service and said users will only be able to upload and view their existing Spaces and cannot create new ones.
