Google's biggest falst rumor: Google PC

Whats Google X and what features has Google Video lost?

my vote for: worst addition to a service
The junk at the side of Google Video pages

KEEP IT SIMPLE

> Whats Google X

I just added a link to it:
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2005-03-16-n89.html

> what features has Google Video lost?

Google Current, and searching captions. Maybe there were more... anyone?

Google Current is still in Google Video (and in his own page at current.tv of course)

Typo:

"Google’s most interestig Labs product that never graduated:
Google Sets"

The title should be better if it is called the Google Guinness.

Google set's algorithms etc may perhaps live on, such as what's used by google's tilde operator. plus they do some aliasing even without that

interesting post...btw, philipp, your spell checker didn't catch the word interesting.... :-)

>Google’s most interestig Labs product that never graduated:

<<Google's biggest falst rumor: Google PC>>

i think its:
Google Browser or Google Rooms

anyone agree?! :P

Google's most anticipated release: Google Calendar

Google Compute was a disappointment for me. The concept is great – partner with people like Stanford's Folding project to use spare CPU cycles to find cures for diseases and bundle it with the toolbar so super-duper easy to use. I got a fair number of friends/family using this, but Google stopped doing ANY type of updates years ago and dropped support with the latest toolbar:
   http://toolbar.google.com/dc/offerdc.html

A friend I was partnering with has his page here:
   http://www.powder2glass.com/Google_Toolbar_Compute/

Interesting labs product: Google Voice Search

Though I'm fairly sure it will resurface eventually...I can't wait to speak searches into my mobile phone :)

I think that Finance and Calendar are more useful / cooler than Trends.

For the weirdest release I would have to go for Gmail Contact Pictures. Their "integration" into the interface is most bewildering. How often do you hover over a users name for a view seconds in your inbox?

Least innovative... you say Blog Search I would say maybe Page Creator. That one was like going back in time.

I totally agree for Google Desktop. Searching your computers files with Google's Search technology is a great idea. But why is there a need for a sidebar, "gadgets" and everything else they keep adding.

Google's worst decision is probably the China thing. But I think they made a big mistake letting Yahoo grab Flickr and also not buying Riya. Google Photos is not even rumoured yet (much) but if they are collecting ALL the world's information then it has to be on the cards sometime. Riya particularly seemed really suited to Google's aims.

Most improved since launch is hardly the Google Blog. It is Gmail. Just check out the new features page. When Gmail launched (or when I first got it anyway) it didn't even save drafts. Now you have your calendar, your chat feature, rich text formatting, contact groups, viewing attachments as HTML (and thumbnails), virus scanning, autoforwarding, pop3, vacation response... yeah lots!

Google's best decision is also probably what you say. That really got them to be kings of search. But I think another key one was not to change their homepage to something like:

http://yahoo.com

> Google Current is still in Google Video (and in his
> own page at current.tv of course)

I think it was actually fully gone from Google Video for a while – I can see it's there now.

Fixed the typo...

Amazing post Philipp!

I can't believe Google Trends simply passed through me when it was released! I just figured it out now, and it's pretty great! You can compare popularity of tons of stuff, very very good feature.

Google Best Speaker
and the Oscar goes to

Marissa Mayer

Google Co-op looks so much like Squidoo.com...

The least updated/upgraded Google page:

Google Accounts
https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount

The most used Google product without realising it:

Typing stuff (search query) into the Firefox address bar and going directly to the site

i gotta disagree with you here, it should be:

Google’s best desktop product:
google earth

But not Google Earth for Mac :)

Yea, I'm kinda with jon. SketchUp isn't much useful... for me anyways

Best April Fool's "Product"

Toss between Google Moon Base and GoogleRomance.

I find Google Reader also ranking high on innovation.
And a good tool as google Notepad is also overlooked here

Which one you think is more anticipated?
1. Google Pics(a photo-sharing site)
2. Google Music(on the lines of google video)
3. Google OS
4. A full office suite on web. It has started with writely
5. Any or a lot of google games(collabrative ones)
6. Google Game Scores

<<The most used Google product without realising it:

Typing stuff (search query) into the FireFox address bar and going directly to the site>>

now, if it is soooo popular, why can they not get it working with search history?!?! you know how many searches I lose to that?!

and the big thing that Google video lost to me was the ability to search anything that was broadcast recently, including caption searching. I watched a number of old shows that the whole thing was online, and found shows I never knew I was missing. If I remember correctly, they had the commercials and all. I thought if Google was doing it, it must be legal... right? (whoops)

Hi,

Could you please give me more details about "Google’s worst product launch measured by number of sites it took down:Google Analytics"? Any online references demonstrating this statement?

Thanks a lot,
Vittorio

One of the worst & almost useless features from google is google sitemaps, in my personal opinion. I was so excited about it: I generated the sitemaps for my sites (stilxxi.ro and util21.ro), even worked on them for more than 3 hrs per each, uploaded them....and...my pages are not yet fully indexed, even after a month of google's "sitemap downloaded"! So ... can we propose the google sitemaps to be the ... less useful & most dissapointing product of google?

Stefan Misaras

> Any online references demonstrating this statement?

Well, in the beginning Google Analytics asked webmasters to include the Urchin tracker script in the head of the pages. I trusted Google to scale well even during launch days, and after all Urchin was an existing product, but I was proven wrong. Almost all of my sites were dragged down with Google Analytics, and I saw this happen on quite a few other sites too. I immediately removed the tracker code from my sites, only tried it one time again later (on which Urchin still failed me) and won't be using it again anytime soon. Google Analytics in the beginning also quickly closed down the feature to add new sites, showing there were scaling problems.

Here's one older post which showed the problem – I'm sure you'll find more sources by googling for [google analytics down] or [urchin stalls] and such.
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2005-11-14-n64.html

> So ... can we propose the google sitemaps to be the
> ... less useful & most dissapointing product of google?

I don't really know what to use Google Sitemaps for – my sites get indexed fine already – so it's useless for me...

Google's Worst Implementation of a Good Idea: Google Accounts

A centralized page to manage everything you do with google is great! Except each settings link just redirects you to the service's own settings link. And not all the services are listed. It is a not particularly useful link dump. Furthermore, the page is ugly – Very very ugly in a Web 1.0 beta of 1997 way.

I should have a nifty "Google Central" page where I can tweak every Google service I use without having to leave or be redirected, delete or add services quickly, click "OK" and it's done. Throw in "Undo" in case I make a mistake. I figure this could work everywhere but the IGoogle personalized homepage (because it requires the visual layout tools) and their actual software (Talk, Picasa, Earth, Sketchup, Desktop, etc.).

Google's most popular neglected products: Froogle and Blogger

Google's most redundant, yet clever product: Hello – the photo instant messaging service that lets you chat, share pictures, and integrates with Blogger. Could they PLEASE put this into Google Talk?

Also, while Sketchup is neat and fun, Google Earth should get the Oscar, I think.

--JM

Agreed that Froogle is a bit neglected, but Blogger...? There are so many BlogSpot blogs out there that use this product...

Philipp said:

> I don't really know what to use Google Sitemaps for
> – my sites get indexed fine already – so it's useless for me...

There is more to Sitemaps that just getting your site indexed though.

"Query stats" can be quite interesting as they also show queries for which your site is returned in the results but not clicked – also (supposedly) showing your average ranking.

Also, the "Your page with the highest PageRank" is interesting as are the other statistics – i.e. Query stats, Crawl stats and Page analysis.

(Note: interesting!= useful)

I *think* J. McNair means neglected by Google. As in look at the development of Blogger since it was acquired. They had a makeover. Then what?

It is miles behind WordPress / TypePad.

> Google's most redundant, yet clever product: Hello
I used to use this to send photo's to my blog. I uninstalled it, then decided i wanted it and couldn't find the link. In the end I found it but the site dosn't seem to have been updated since last year.

What the hell is Orkut anyway?

>What the hell is Orkut anyway?

it's a friend network, you have to know someone who is a member to join though. I'm not exactaly sore what you can do once you join.

That sentence was improperly constructed. Sam Davyson is correct: Froogle and blogger are popular for USERS, but are neglected by Google. There have been few significant improvements to them in some time.

--JM

Tony writes
> There is more to Sitemaps that just getting your site indexed though.

Those features sure sound more interesting than what sitemaps are supposed to be good for. So basically I'm buying my way in to see advanced stats of my site?
If any Sitemaps expert is around, please email me for a guest blog post on the subject of bonus features of Sitemaps :)

Anyone remember the Google Search by phone?

You call a free number and tell the query and after a little the SERP appears on the monitor.

I met a guy at the Googleplex during Google Dance 2004 and he told me that it was less then a beta, it was a weird experiment with a little server under the desk of a collegue of him and it was stopped after few time.

I don't think that it has gone away.

They have infact kept adding mobile services to that search facility.

More info: http://www.google.com/mobile/index.html

Anyone use Google Base regularly since launch?

> Anyone use Google Base regularly since launch?

Not me. I wonder if Google Base suffers the "everything and nothing" syndrome. Sure, I can upload my blog posts there, my images, my products, all my data. But when I think of "dating site" I don't think of Google Base, and when I think of "shopping site" I don't think of Google Base, and it's also certainly not for blogging, so... I don't really know what's Google's strategies with it are. It's probably a good "free advertisement" platform at the moment, especially when it will be more regularly integrated into the main web search results.

hmmm.. i thought it might have been just me – i havent used it since launch either.

its still a very cool idea – but its an idea looking for a problem. if you are au fait with databases, you just use something like MySQL. and google base is too complicated for the average non-technical user, so its kind of fallen through the gaps so to speak.

then again, one can imagine Google Base as being just one part of the Google OS – its a component. Writely would be another. Google Notes yet anoter.

the next step for Google would be to find a way to integrate all these services in a seamless and ridiculously easy way. right now , they are producing the components.

Sam Davyson
Hello Sam, I explained myself not so well, sorry, but it was something totally different with actually mobile search.

You were able to call from a normal home phone (not a mobile one) to a special number, wait for the tone and then say the query at the phone.

At that point, after a little, the SERP with your query were visible on a inner page of Google.

The funny thing was that there were no digital connection between the phone call from an analogic telephone and the SERP displayed on the browser, infact sometimes I was able to see my query displayed after 30" and sometimes after a little more.

Actually, I have read only now all the answers in that post and I am happy to find that Niraj Sanghvi also remember Google Voice Search better then me ;-)

I didn't remember the name but now, thanks to Niraj, I found the link
http://labs1.google.com/gvs.html!!!

The first post on google.public.labs.voice-search newsgroup is dated may 20, 2002 and the link to the first thread is that
http://groups.google.com/group/google.public.labs.voice-search/browse_frm/thread/890c246e34430151/8f9ac522d8fcc521?tvc=1#8f9ac522d8fcc521.

May I vote Google Voice Search as the most unknown Google Beta?

Google product that breaks the Golden Rule (and irritates me the most): Google Images
When someone clicks on a thumbnail in Google Images, he should be taken straight to the page on which that image is published. Then if he wants to return to his image search results on Google he san simply use the Back button. Google should not contnue to own the session while displaying a page from another site.

Whats wrong with the bloggers comments? :-/

> Whats wrong with the bloggers comments?

Hard captcha; you switch from blog design to Blogger design; you can't easily get back to the blog post; when you don't enter anything and click back, you're asked if you want to lose your comment.

I totally agree with you.

There's a little workaround: show comments in a pop-up. I think it's much better: after you post the comment, just close the pop-up and you're back to the post. I hate captchas too, but they are a necessary evil (at least, for now).