Google is a large company. Mainly thriving on the web as a search engine, the tech giant has evolved to include more services and products.
But not every product made by Google is successful. Google+ for example, was once meant to be a competitor of Facebook, but eventually failed deliberately. The smart chat app Allo is another example, as it never gained the “traction” Google was hoping for.
Those are only two of Google products that failed Google's big ambition.
As Google has had many products it previously killed, a developer created a "digital graveyard" to list every products the company has discontinued.
The open source website was created by front-end developer Cody Ogden. There, he initially lists 149 dead Google products in total, which include 126 services, 11 apps, and 12 hardware products.
Google is notorious for creating apps to see which perform well.
Probably developing more products than any developers on Earth capable of creating during the same period of time, Google is also known for its strategy of launching products as experiments and killing them off later if they underperform.
Even though these products often don’t cost much for the company's ongoing operations, they can pose a serious legal liability for the company.
This is why after killing a product, Google usually hopes to never hear from it again, considering it as something that never existed, expecting that the people won't dig into its past proving that the giant do fail from time to time.
And here, 'Killed By Google' is meant to memorialize all of Google's failures in one place.
Browsing the website is like a nostalgic trip down the memory lane.
The site features a tombstone and epitaph to honor each and every dead product the company has killed since it originated. And also for each dead product, Ogden links it with either the product's designated website/page, or its Wikipedia article.
From products like Orkut, to the Nexus phone series, Google Talk, Google Wave, Google Health, Google Goggles and Google Reader, they are all detailed along with their date of expiry.
"This project was born as an act of criticism toward a culture of software product churn. It was ignited by the announcement that Google would be killing Inbox by Gmail," said Ogden.
"I’ve come to call it ‘a place of reverence.’ Like a graveyard, Killed by Google is a place to show respect for what used to exist, and to provide an opportunity for introspection about what one’s digital future holds."
Not every product Google made or touches, is made of gold. Google encourages experimentation, and that leads to both success and failure.
Many people believe that the best innovations are the ones that everybody thinks are doomed to fail. Google also shares the same thought, so it makes sense that Google has its fair share of failures over the years.
Related: Startup Graveyard Wants To Memorialize Fallen Tech Companies, Destigmatizing Their Failure