At Bulb we use Google Hangouts a lot. It’s a video conferencing service that connects seamlessly with Gmail and Google Calendar.
Given many companies rely on the Google Suite of applications, I was surprised this week to learn that Hangouts is headed to the Google Graveyard in late 2020, meaning the product and its services will be discontinued.
However, this is just part of Google’s circle of life: to cull applications that have little user uptake or monetisation potential.
In reading about Hangout’s demise, I came across an interesting resource called “Killed by Google”. It’s a detailed list of Google products that have been, or will be, discontinued.
It’s fascinating to look through this list and reflect on the innovative and fun products that have been scrapped over the years. I still hear people complain about the axing of Inbox by Gmail, which was a simplified inbox that aggregated emails from different senders. Google’s URL shortener was really useful, so I was sad to see that one go. And Wordlens’ live translation of foreign language images and text was an impressive piece of technology back in 2010.
This list of discontinued products also gives us interesting insight into Google’s fierce commitment to experimentation, and equally fierce disposition towards removing the deadwood. They’ve made an important cultural decision to avoid becoming bloated by systematically removing underperforming products and redeploying their people to higher yield ones.
There’s a few thought starters here for how we can apply this thinking to the products and services we work on.