Google Services That Failed and Why

Google is known for introducing revolutionary services for its users which makes computing and smartphone usage fun for its users. But all the time you cannot expect it to get the same success. Sometimes some of its services have had to face negligence of users and it was not able to see the value. Here is the list of services by the tech giant Google that failed to create an impact and were thus discontinued.

1. Google Lively:

Lively was a virtual really platform similar to Second Life in which users can create avatar and can then decorate rooms as well. Company was not actually making money out of it so it was discontinued on 31^st Dec 2008 but surprisingly Second Life  still exists and has been remarkably successful.

2. Google SearchMash:

Google SearchMash was a utility service by Google which was supposed to allow its users to drag drop search results and to arrange them in the order they wanted. Some of the users liked it so much and made it their default search engine. But the problem was Google SearchMash was a separate website without ads and Google ultimately wanted to its users to stick to the default search engine with ads. This made Google SearchMash one of the Unsuccessful Google services.

3. Google Videos:

Here is another failed Google service. Logic stands in this case, when we have YouTube then where is the requirement for Google videos? Though Google still has the video search tab on its homepage, but Google videos was entirely different platform. As YouTube was already a well sorted platform to watch videos so users were least interested in searching for videos on another similar platform by Google.

4.  Google Glasses:

Google launched its glasses with a bang in 2012 but unfortunately it was not able to reach out to the masses. It failed because of the high price tag and potential software issues. Also, some users faced privacy issues and at the same time the design was also much weird. Google stopped selling it in 2015 to individuals and started working on the newer version. But reportedly it continued the supply to businesses and finally ended up as an unsuccessful Google Service.

5. Google Answers:

Google Answers was the project of initial stages of Google search engine which was initiated by Larry Page. Google worked on this project for more than four years and retired in 2006. If you will open the URL it shows “Google Answers is no longer accepting questions” The project has been retired by Google with full honor and a well-equipped search engine by Google replacing it completely.

6. Picasa:

Picasa was an image organizer from Google. It worked as a cross platform image sharing and editing application. In 2004 Google acquired Picasa from Lifescape and was offered as a freeware by Google. Name of the application was associated with its Spanish partner Pablo Picasso. In other way it can be defined as Pics of my casa where casa means house in Spanish. In Feb 2016 Google announced that it has stopped support for this application and in March they announced that cloud based photos services which is Google Photos. Picasa web Album services were closed on May 1, 2016.

7. Orkut:

Orkut was an older social networking platform. The purpose of Orkut was to allow you to connect with people around the world may be your old friends or the new people. The website was named after its creator Orkut Büyükkökten a Turkish software engineer. Orkut was most visited website in India and Brazil in 2008. Google decided that Orkut will fully be managed and operated from Brazil which encouraged Brazilian user base and there were lots of legal issues. Finally, in June 2014 the company announced that it would close Orkut and stooped account creation process from July 2014. On September 30, 2014 Orkut was finally closed. Currently, if you visit Orkut.com it takes you to the website , Hello.com. Orkut cannot be considered as completely failed Google service but up to some extent it was not able to cope up with the change.

So, these were some of the failed Google services or the services by Google which are now obsolete because of certain reasons. Everyday technology comes up with new innovations.