I know Google has a terrible reputation for killing their projects but this one is just an experiment from Area 120 so it’s not surprising or terrible that they’re killing it or weren’t advertising it.
I’ve literally never heard of Keen until this article.
No surprise. Nobody talks about new Google projects any more, since the assumption is they’ll be gone in a year.
Yup. Even if Google came out with a really cool service tomorrow that I found far better than alternatives, I still wouldn’t use it, because unless I’m very lucky, it’ll be axed at some point. And Google has only themselves to blame.
I’ll happily shout from the rooftops about my dislike of Apple (their philosophy, faux environmentalism, price-gouging, anti-competitive, anti-repair BS, I could go on for a while), but when was the last time they did this? The fucking Newton? Sure the iPod was axed, but I think it’s fairer to say the market axed MP3 players, rather than Apple axed the iPod.
If Apple announces something, you can be almost certain it’ll still be around in a decade.
Look at Apple Maps. It was an absolute joke when it came out and people mocked and memed it relentlessly.
If Google were in that position, they’d have just scrapped it and moved on to their next project that’d probably be scrapped too.
Fuck Google’s dumb businesses practices, and fuck them for making me say something to Apple’s credit. Makes me feel dirty.
The iPod was axed after what, 15 years?
My understanding is that Google “rates” its leaders by the number and types of projects they develop. Ergo there are a lot of people working on disparate items that often overlap, because it’s “their” project. Once the project completes, they get their credit, stop caring, and move on to the next. It is said this is why google creates then kills so much. It’s by design, essentially. The products they keep are the ones that make the most ad revenue.
At least they didnt intigrate it with Gmail or some other insane bloat they like to do.
My ass is still a little chapped from Google Plus integration with Youtube.
Cursed with multiple accounts to this day for a stupid service they could barely force me to use.
I’d have appreciated them integrating Google reader with Gmail instead of killing it off
The traditional way to learn about Google services is from the shutdown announcement.
The only Keen I know of (and acknowledge) is the Commander:
I know they make shoes.
Read about it and more in this month’s riveting issue of
.Norm!
This was one of my favorite bits that he did. I use it all the time!
“The decision to shut down Keen is in line with Google’s shift away from social media and follows a trend of
Area 120 projects closing due to company restructuring and layoffs in 2023them killing everything they build.”So experimental I didn’t even know Google had a Pinterest-like social media platform.
Throwing together a service, telling no one, then promptly cancelling it (often because no one used it) is truly the Googlest thing.
why do they even do that when it’s just gonna waste their resources?
They invest in a project thinking they can make money off it but forgot to advertise that it exists
What’s keen?
Literally never heard of it, which is probably the reason and kinda makes it a good call?
In this case, probably. I don’t think the world was asking for a Pinterest clone.
But the problem is, Google does this with everything.
Stadia had an incredibly successful moment with the Cyberpunk launch. Yet Google failed to hype it up, and then announced about two months later that they were laying off a bunch of devs.
At the same time, they restructured the monetization and improved the client, making it a really compelling service. And all the news was “Stadia is dead”. And then it was.
It’s just self-fulfilling prophecy at this point. No one trust Google to keep anything around for more than a couple years so they don’t use it. Then it gets scrapped as a failure and everyone is proven correct.
yep. I don’t go near Google products anymore because I know I’m gonna have to migrate a short while later. I don’t understand how they’re not seeing this
Never heard of it, ever.
No way!
I also never heard of this product, so the first thing I thought of was Keen Software House (makes of the game Space Engineers).
Or Keen Games, the makers of Enshrouded (and as far as I know, unrelated to Keen Software House)
I thought they made shoes
Commander Keen for me
Billy Blaze!
Grandson of Billy Blascowitz!
Oh man, please tell me that’s cannon and I just missed it all these years.
Edit: It is!!
How is Google the top advertiser and yet nobody knows about their other products??
I have seen dead social media or social media approaching its dead, but I ve never seen this. Keen looks like it had zero activity for a long, long time.
Yet another Google platform I never heard of that is shutting down
Another one bites the dust
