Friday, June 13, 2008

Another Google product bites the dust. That's good.

This is probably the third or fourth Google app I've used that's been quietly discontinued or effectively abandoned.
Google Browser Sync To Be Discontinued

...Google Browser Sync is a Firefox extension that synchronizes your bookmarks, web history, browser sessions and passwords across multiple computers by temporarily saving them to Google's servers. Unfortunately, this was the project of a small team at Google and it's no longer maintained...
I was think yesterday that Google Browser Sync was due to be abandoned. I'm getting psychic.

I'm glad they're at least officially shutting it down.

Google has been great at starting things, lousy at finishing them. They need to cut way back on new initiatives until they decide what they're going to be serious about, then fund maintenance properly. They also have to start recruiting people who like doing software fit, finish, and maintenance, and layoff hiring inventive types for a year or two.

For example -- either fix Google Calendar Outlook sync or abandon it.

I think all Google customers have a long list of apps that need attention (BlogThis!?). One cheer for a sign that Google knows they have a problem.

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