Page’s last mass killing of products was in September, when the company killed off eight products and began phasing out two developer interfaces. Since assuming CEO duties in April of 2011, Page has worked diligently to bring more focus to Google.
But the company retains an almost comically broad set of initiatives, ranging from self-driving cars to high-tech glasses to (multiple) social networks to mobile handsets and (multiple) operating systems – and everything in between. If Google sees a beloved, impactful, but less-than-blockbuster product like Reader as something to prune then there’s plenty more brush to clear.
Here are five obvious candidates. I’d hate to see some of these products go, but they seem at risk given Google’s current priorities:
Google TV: Google’s television platform, designed to bring YouTube, Google Play, and web surfing to your living room, was originally forecast to produce $3 billion in annual revenue. Google has not disclosed how far short of expectations Google TV has fallen, but it’s clearly not a success. Reviews were generally poor. After horrific sales of its Google TV gear, then acting CEO of Logitech Guerrino De Luca told analysts that developing a set-top box for Google TV was “a mistake of … a gigantic nature.”
Google Groups: Google’s hub for online discussion groups is widely regarded as superior to the competing and once dominant offering from Yahoo, but that’s not saying much. Google Groups has the stink of neglect about it. Serious online groups tend to move off the platform and into custom-coded websites, vertical community platforms like StackOverflow, or adaptable open source solutions like Discourse and phpBB.
Once upon a time, Google Groups’ archive of old Usenet postings was a boon to the company’s flagship search engine. But those days are long gone. Advertisers aren’t particularly interested in the content of Google Groups, so it’s hard to see why Google will keep it around.
Blogger: When created by Evan Williams in 1999, seven years before Williams co-founded Twitter, Blogger was bar none the easiest way to create and maintain a blog. But the world has moved on.
Rival network Tumblr has social features that vastly outmatch Blogger’s, while WordPress is much easier to customize and has a robust development and design community supporting it. As with Google Groups, the only reason Google may want to keep Blogger around is to preserve the old content and avoid a PR backlash. But Google could easily put a freeze on new blogs and posts.
Google Offers: Google launched this Groupon copy in 2011 after Groupon turned down an acquisition offer. Since then, both Groupon and its rival Living Social have struggled badly, but Google’s knockoff hasn’t been able to capitalize on their woes.
Google Apps: Bear with me. Yes, Google Apps brings in a reported $1 billion in annual revenue. The collection of server-based productivity apps is also at the vanguard of Google’s efforts to woo corporate IT departments into cloud-based computing.
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