What surprising technologies did Google kill off in 2015?

In today's article, we will take a look at 15 technological achievements that Google has already or announced it will abandon this year.

Buried deep under the loess

Google is indeed a company with a lot of technology and products, but its technology assets sometimes even exceed its actual management capabilities. In 2015, the technology giant continued to adjust its own tools and products to ensure that it can focus on more urgent market needs. Without further ado, let's take a look at the various technological achievements that Google has or has announced that it will abandon this year.

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Google Code

Google said in March that it would phase out its Google Code platform in January 2016, and would further increase the adoption of alternatives such as GitHub and Bitbucket. "As more and more developers abandon Google Code, the remaining parts of the project are abused by spam and other negative means. Recently, administrative costs have been almost entirely devoted to managing project abuse," said Chris DiBona, director of open source affairs at Google. By the way, the Google Code project was officially launched in 2006.

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Chrome browser extension

In order to maintain as much control as possible, Google has taken a series of measures over the past few years to protect users of Google Chrome browser extensions from the threat of injected ads and malware. In May of this year, Google began to use a heavyweight solution, which is to block browser extensions from random Windows software channels-in other words, only allow users to choose extension options provided by the Chrome Web Store. In July of this year, the same evolution also took place in the Chrome for OS X version. "This increase in protection means that we want to further ensure that Chrome browser users can enjoy everything that the online world has to offer, but at the same time do not have to worry about security issues during browsing," said a Google product manager when announcing the above changes.

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Pwnium Hacking Contest

Google has been hosting this hacker competition at its CanSecWest conference since 2012, and has given out hundreds of thousands of dollars so far. However, the event has been silent for a year, which means that Google has abandoned this activity that uses hackers to find technical flaws in the Chrome browser. The main reason for abandoning it is that Google is worried that hackers will hoard the vulnerabilities they find in their daily lives in order to participate in the competition and then bring them to the event.

Bookmark Manager

Technically, Google didn’t completely abandon the Bookmark Manager feature in June this year, but it did directly disable the free Chrome extension and the old bookmark tool in the browser. In the new UI interface, few users can accurately find where the Bookmark Manager is. At the same time, Sarah Dee of Google pointed out in a blog post: "Our team will continue to explore more ways to improve the experience of using the Bookmark feature."

PageSpeed

Google announced on August 3rd a shocking news to users of its PageSpeed ​​service: it is shutting down its related tools completely. Google has been managing its PageSpeed ​​optimization proxy function for the past four and a half years, aiming to help users without programming knowledge improve website performance. This move is indeed beyond the expectations of many people.

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Google TV

Google announced in 2015 that it would abandon the Google TV brand, which was not well-known or even known to exist. Google will focus on entertainment projects in the future, replacing Android TV and Google Cast. Google pointed out that the Google TV library will no longer be available to users, but Google TV devices will continue to work.

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Google logo

Google has replaced its colorful logo, which has been in use since 1999, with a new colorful font called Product Sans, as the company's operations come under the control of parent company Alphabet.

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GTalk

Google Talk has been doing well since its debut in 2005, but it has never met Google's expectations, so in February this year, Google announced that the Windows App for the chat service was "outdated." Google said that part of the reason for abandoning the GTalk service is that it wants to focus on promoting Google Hangouts around the world, so as to help users enjoy online chat functions in another way. However, Google Talk can still be used through third-party applications.

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Coordinate Maps for Mobile Workforce

Google sent a notification email to users of this mobile enterprise employee management product in January this year, stating that the service, which was launched in 2012, will be discontinued in January 2016. Google has been working to integrate multiple map-related products into a single solution in recent years, and hopes to focus on creating more API options for its Maps for Work project in the future.

Google Moderator

This tool, which was created in 2008, is used to "create a conversation with multiple different users, including asking questions, sharing opinions, and describing suggestions." Among many users, the White House also used it to organize online and offline meetings in 2012. However, Google announced in July this year that the relevant tool will be completely abandoned due to limited overall usage.

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Helpouts

Nothing can save Google Helpouts, which was phased out in April. The online collaboration service was short-lived, launching in November 2013. During its brief run, it allowed users to share their expertise via live video — both for free and for a fee — and provide real-time help to each other using their computers or mobile devices. The service used Google Hangouts technology, but users found that many of the help videos overlapped greatly in usefulness with those on Google's own YouTube platform.

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Eclipse Developer Tools

Google notified developers this summer to move to Android Studio (now updated to version 1.0) because it was "ending development and official support for the Android Developer Tools (ADT) in Eclipse at the end of this year. This includes the Eclipse Android Developer Tools plugin and the Android Ant build system."

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Flu Trends

Google said in August that it would discontinue its Flu and Dengue Trends service, which was used to identify trends in flu and dengue fever based on search patterns. Flu Trends was created in 2008 as an early "forecast" program for diseases, and Google has now turned over disease-related data to partner health agencies. You can still find historical data from the service on Google.

Google+ ?

Google's social networking technology has never been able to rejuvenate enough vitality, but it has not been "completely ignored" like Wicked Witch. However, Google has never completely abandoned it. The Google Photos application, which was extracted from Google+ and will be operated independently, announced at this year's Google I/O conference, is the most typical example. In addition, Google+ recently welcomed a new feature called Collections. On the other hand, Google has asked users to stop using Google+ accounts to log in to other services under its umbrella, such as creating YouTube channels.

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