Okay, so first off, we should probably clarify
that we can't possibly cover every product Google has ever killed off.
Even if we tried, we'd probably miss one, as they've axed around 200 products and services
over the years, and the name of the channel is Tech Quicky,
not Tech Lengthy. One of Google's earliest and most interesting offerings
to get kiboshed, though, was Google Answers. Launched all the way back in 2001,
the idea was actually to get curated answers to both tech and general knowledge questions
by Google staffers, instead of just any bozo with a keyboard and an internet connection.
There's lots of those. Although it was initially free, Google later started charging a small fee for the service,
which was then split between Google and the researchers themselves,
and users could even leave a tip for the staffer that answered their question.
Google Answers ended up gaining a cult following, and I think most of us would agree it was far better
than getting answers from some yahoo.
Get it? Unfortunately, the user base was just never all that big,
and while one of Google's public missions is to provide information,
they decided there were easier ways to do it than by employing a team of trivia experts.
They shut down Answers in 2006, though a second free iteration continued operating
until 2014 in countries whose websites weren't well-indexed by Google.
Moving on, did you know that YouTube wasn't Google's first foray into video hosting?
What? Back in 2005, Google launched the simply named Google Video,
which was originally designed to be a repository of searchable video that anyone could use,
especially useful as they offered unlimited length downloads
at a time when YouTube videos were limited to only 15 minutes.
They even started selling downloads of major motion pictures in 2009.
Now, by this point, Google had already acquired YouTube, and the company's other separate video hosting service
became largely redundant. Plus, Google Video had more of a reputation
for hosting academic and instructional videos rather than the wide variety of content YouTube was offering.
So Google Video's catalog was merged into YouTube and Google Video was shut down in 2012.
But now let's talk about some of Google's failed hardware offerings,
starting with the Nexus Q from 2012,
which was undoubtedly a cool looking piece of kit that bore a passing resemblance to an Echo spot,
just without a screen. It was a streaming media player that could send video from Google Play or YouTube
to a connected TV or play audio from Google Play
over speakers connected via a built-in amplifier.
Okay, so it was like an early smart TV dongle or NVIDIA Shield with super basic functionality.
Sounds pretty reasonable, right? Here was the catch, it was $300.
Many reviewers also realized quickly that the Nexus Q's companion app was quite buggy,
although it had some premium features like banana plug connectors and an amplifier
that sounded pretty darn good. The Nexus Q never actually went on sale to the public
and was later replaced by the much more sensibly priced Chromecast.
It was $35. Last up in today's episode is a gadget
that probably wasn't as good as the smartphone camera you've got in your pocket right now.
But it cost a pretty penny, Google Clips,
introduced in 2018. This was a miniature camera whose main appeal
was that it used Google built artificial intelligence
to know when something interesting happened in front of it.
The camera would then automatically start recording whatever goings on were in progress
and save them to a wirelessly connected phone. Of course, the immediately obvious problem here
is that the Clips camera didn't exactly have the same opinions as a human
on what qualified as interesting content.
Not to mention it was pretty limited in terms of recording capability.
It couldn't capture audio, it only recorded 15 frames per second
and the lens couldn't move around on its own. Plus, you had to put it a few feet
in front of a space where you already expected something interesting to happen.
And at $250, it was hard to see how this was better than just busting out a phone yourself and hitting record.
So it wasn't surprising when Google stopped selling the Clips camera in October 2019.
That was a month ago at the time of filming. So is there another obscure or not so obscure Google product
you want us to cover in a future episode? Let us know in the comments,
even if it's not quite dead yet. It could be only mostly dead.
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