Google does a mean spring clean Google has taken the broom to ten of its experimental services as part a self described “fail fall spring-clean". “Technology improves, people’s needs change, some bets pay off and others don’t. Over the next few months we’ll be shutting down a number of products and merging others into existing products as features,” the …
Some of the services that duplicate or impinge on their other products i can understand. Ai for android did not. It is(was) shaping up to be a decent way for unskilled and semi-skilled programmers to produce usable code. I hope it survives the transition OT Open Source. I think that move is going to skew its development towards education though :(
Why is it that so many of these Google projects remind me of amateur pron movies? There's a sort of mutual satisfaction generated by the participants who all run around congratulating each other and slapping themselves on the back telling us that it's the greatest new thing since coco-puffs - but that THIS TIME it really works and never gets soggy.
And it never does meet up to the promise on the cover.
I found something on Google's sites last week which did something like the description of Ardvark here. But it wasn't called Ardvark. I can't remember what it was called, but I couldn't see the point in it.
Notebook, on the other hand, was awesome. Instead of getting rid they should open it up fully and let Android notepad developers sync with it. Docs is not a good notbook replacement and anyone wanting to sync with it will need to allow their app to cope with formatted text etc.
Google Bookmarks is another product that has always seemed strange to me. When Chrome came out, they totally ignored that they already had an online bookmarks service (Google Bookmarks) and went with storing bookmarks in Google Docs instead, which isn't really comparable.
I assumed that they had therefore completely ditched Google Bookmarks, but a bookmark is auto-added to Google Bookmarks each time you star a place on Google Maps, for example. Currently I'm just using Google Bookmarks extensions in FF/Chrome and also a widget on iGoogle.
I can't say I've heard of most of those and it doesn't sound like I'm missing much from those descriptions. The one I had heard of and tried was mostly pointless and just sucked up perfectly good real estate on the page.
So, good job Google for saving us from at least a little bit of web 2.0 hell. Even if it was of your own making.
Yep I am 100% with you SAS and Cloud is prity much a way of passing mission critical to a 3rd party with little or no control over it by the end user commercial or domestic.
And eventually when the bean counter who pushed hard for another outsourceing budget get's called in he can shrug his shoulders and say "Wasn't my fault" when the application goes down.
And still they don't put a simple link to the alternate all users Chrome installer on the download page. No, I don't think many people will click the business link to get the msi. I think most people will load it up on each account on the family pc.
Then again, I suppose the days of the family pc are over as it seems everyone has a set of computing devices from pods and tabs to mobes and lappys. Ah, the good old days when it was one family pc with only one account, "Ma! What happened to my homework? There's only porn and drink recipes on here!"
I'm sick of removing Google Desktop from idiot's Windows terminal servers. Running the entire engine per user is horrible programming and kills terminal servers. And it does nothing but duplicating internal Windows features (gadgets, search indexing).
Trust me, you haven't seen slow until you use a terminal server with 20 users where each is running Google desktop and each copy is updating it's indexes constantly. It feels like you installed Windows server on a DVD player.
Nothing, absolutely nothing searches Outlook mail quicker and easier than Google Desktop Search.
The workflow is:
1. CTRL CTRL
2. type in your search terms
3. hit ENTER
I read the blog announcement on Friday, and immediately downloaded one last no-longer-to-be-revised copy of Google Desktop.
Such an excellent piece of software. It will be sad to see it go.
I will miss Pack - I used to delight in replacing the shovelware on a typical new laptop/PC with the lesser evil pack equivalent. The updater was a joy to use compared to alternatives.
I have used Desktop before and it was OK...
I am slightly surprised Picasa wasn't on the list... given the step away from products tied to Microsoft OSs... it lives on, but for how long? :)
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