Official reason
Service shutting down.
Google · Social
Google Moderator
RIP
2008–2015 · 7 years in market
Crowd-ranked questions for town halls and keynotes. Quietly useful, quietly killed.
Launched
Jan 1, 2008
Discontinued
Jun 30, 2015
Cause of death
Low usage
What actually happened
A feature in search of a surface. Slides and YouTube did not need a separate app.
Lesson
Internal tools that leak as products need distribution. A White House demo is not retention.
Related autopsies
RIP
Google Offers
2011–2013 · 2 yrs
Google’s Groupon clone, launched at the peak of daily-deal mania and gone with the bubble.
Commerce/Too early / too late+40
X (Twitter)
RIP
Legacy verification
2009–2022 · 13 yrs
The blue check as a signal of identity, not payment. Retired when checks went on sale.
Social/Strategic refocus+39
RIP
Google Reader
2005–2013 · 8 yrs
The RSS reader a generation of journalists and power users treated as a daily driver. Killed as RSS faded and Google chased social.
Media & Publishing/Low usage+39
RIP
Google Glass (Explorer)
2013–2015 · 2 yrs
A face-mounted computer that made civilians into ‘Glassholes.’ Privacy panic killed the consumer edition; enterprise limped on.
Wearables/Privacy backlash+37