The Google graveyard: all the products Google has shut down

Google is finally moving on from Google Assistant.

The company will be upgrading “more” users from Google Assistant to Gemini “over the coming months,” according to a blog post. The classic Google Assistant “will no longer be accessible on most mobile devices or available for new downloads on mobile app stores” at some point “later this year.” (9to5Google reports that phones running Android 9 or earlier and without at least 2GB of RAM will still be able to use the classic Assistant.)

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For years, Google has included an extra search box within some search results, encouraging you to dig further and look only within a specific website. But now that sitelinks search box is going away because “usage has dropped.”

Google:

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When I was still a starry-eyed 20-something living with my then-fiancée, the only way I could stream video on my TV was through its HDMI ports and my laptop. This had served me well for years — and still does, when I’m desperate — but dealing with the setup was cumbersome.

Then came the original Chromecast in 2013, and it was a revelation. Suddenly, I had this tiny black stick, shaped like an oversized key, that plugged right into my TV’s HDMI port and let me cast video through the air and onto my 55-inch screen in glorious high definition. And all it cost was $35? Incredible, especially in 2013.

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Google is done making Chromecasts. In a post on Tuesday, Google says it’s “ending production of Chromecast” after over a decade of selling the streaming dongles.

Even though Chromecast devices will now be available “while supplies last,” Google says it will continue to push software and security updates to its newer devices without specifying which ones. The most recent update to the lineup was the Chromecast with Google TV released in 2022.

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Google is ending a months-old experiment that let people attach colorful notes to search results, the company confirmed to 9to5Google.

Google announced the Notes experiment for Search Labs in November. If you had opted in to Notes, you could see and add annotations featuring text and images to links in search results in the Google app. (They were kind of a Google-y take on X’s Community Notes.) But given Tuesday’s announcement, it seems the test wasn’t popular enough to warrant a wider release.

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Stack, one of Google’s experimental Android apps, is due to disappear on September 24th.

A product of Google’s Area 120 incubator, Stack was one of those overlooked gems that was just, well, useful: it allowed you to create or import PDFs and store them in different categories that it called Stacks: tax, insurance, medical, etc. The app would pick up data from the PDF to suggest a title, add searchable details like the date of the document, the amount (if it was a receipt), or the organization that issued it, and there was also a field to add notes.

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I’ve been using Google Maps for years, and I never knew there was an option to message businesses in the app — that is until I saw this post from Search Engine Land, which says it’s going away.

The feature, called business profile chat, lets you message a business through the Google Maps and Search apps to ask questions, book an appointment, or request quotes. If a company has business profile chat enabled, you’ll see a “Chat” option next to the “Call” and “Directions” icons in Maps or Search. Tap on it, and you can start a conversation.

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Google is shutting down its VPN by Google One service, according to a vague customer email seen by Android Authority, less than four years after it was rolled out in October 2020. The email doesn’t specify when this will happen, only that the VPN service will be discontinued “later this year.”

Subscription prices for Google One’s VPN start at $1.99, with availability on Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows. The company told 9to5Google that it is killing the service because “people simply weren’t using it.” Perhaps its customers were simply spoilt for choice, given this is actually one of three VPN services provided by Google alongside the VPN offerings still available via Google Fi, and Pixel devices from the Pixel 7 on up.

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Google Wallet was the company’s first attempt at enabling money transfers on Android with the Nexus S 4G, and no matter how many apps Google launches, it will seemingly always be around. Google Pay tried to replace both Google Wallet and Android Pay a few years ago, but in a few months, Google Pay will be gone, with Google Wallet back on top.

Android Pay popped up in 2015 as a temporary tap-to-pay king, while Google Wallet was recast as a Cash App / Venmo rival, but even when Google changed its mind and combined them, it couldn’t keep itself from messing with the formula again and again.

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Google has removed links to page caches from its search results page, the company’s search liaison Danny Sullivan has confirmed. “It was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn’t depend on a page loading,” Sullivan wrote on X. “These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it.”

The cache feature historically let you view a webpage as Google sees it, which is useful for a variety of different reasons beyond just being able to see a page that’s struggling to load. SEO professionals could use it to debug their sites or even keep tabs on competitors, and it can also be an enormously helpful news gathering tool, giving reporters the ability to see exactly what information a company has added (or removed) from a website, and a way to see details that people or companies might be trying to scrub from the web. Or, if a site is blocked in your region, Google’s cache can work as a great alternative to a VPN.

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Every time another Google app or feature bites the dust — even a small, relatively inconsequential one — I get annoyed. Really annoyed.

Here’s the thing: there are Google Assistant-equipped devices in three rooms of my relatively small house: living room, bedroom, and office. Which means, unfortunately, that when I say “Hey, Google” out loud to my phone, I am just as likely to get a reaction from one — or more — of those three devices. (Yes, I know that’s not supposed to happen and no, we haven’t been able to fix it yet.) And they sometimes offer different answers simultaneously, which makes things even more confusing.

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Several “underutilized” Google Assistant features will soon be joining the infamous Google graveyard — such as the ability to use your voice to send an email, video, or audio messages — as the search giant introduces changes it says will make the feature easier to use. The company is also changing how the microphone works in the Google app and Pixel Search bar.

Starting January 26th, users who activate any of the 17 Assistant features being removed will be notified that it’s being discontinued, with most features departing for good on February 26th, according to 9to5Google. This news comes less than a day after Google announced it was laying off around a thousand employees, some of whom worked on Google Assistant.

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Google’s hardware division just took a body blow. The company has confirmed it’s laying off hundreds of hardware workers, especially in its augmented reality division — and 9to5Google is reporting that Fitbit co-founders James Park, Eric Friedman, and other Fitbit leaders are leaving the company entirely.

Update, 1:42AM ET: It’s not just Fitbit and AR. Around a thousand Google layoffs were just confirmed, and there may be more.

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Google is about to fully move on from the Google Play Movies & TV. It had already moved Android and iOS users to the Google TV app, removed the app from every Roku and most smart TVs, and pulled the app from Android TV in October. In a recently published support document, however, Google detailed the ways you’ll be able to watch the shows and movies you’ve bought through Google Play Movies & TV once the brand is gone for good in January.

If you have a TV or streaming device powered by Android TV, you can watch things you’ve purchased or things you want to rent from the Shop tab starting January 17th, according to Google. If you have a cable box or a set-top box that runs Android TV, you’ll watch / rent from the YouTube app starting that same day. And on a browser, YouTube is the place to go, too.

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It’s never a dull day at the Google graveyard — the company has blogged a Workspace update today announcing the end of its collaborative Jamboard whiteboarding software. Google plans to wind down the app in late 2024 and is introducing the “next phase” of whiteboarding solutions: pointing users toward third-party apps that work with Workspace services like Google Meet, Drive, and Calendar.

Google says it will offer support to help transition customers to use other whiteboard tools, including FigJam, Lucidspark, and Miro. According to the blog post, Workspace customer feedback indicated the third-party solutions worked better for them thanks to feature offerings like an infinite canvas size, use case templates, voting, and more. So instead of further developing Jamboard, Google’s digging its hole and will focus on core collaboration services on Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

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Google Podcasts is going away. Starting next year, Google will focus on offering podcast access within YouTube Music instead.

This change doesn’t come as a complete surprise. In April, Google launched the ability for users in the US to listen to podcasts in YouTube Music without a paid membership. It also lets users listen to podcasts offline and in the background while also switching between the audio and video versions on YouTube Music. As part of its podcasts push, YouTube also announced it will make podcasts available within YouTube Music globally before the end of 2023.

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Google will send Gmail’s basic HTML view sailing into the great beyond starting in January 2024, after which time everyone who uses it will be switched to the service’s far more modern “Standard” view. The change appears to have been announced around September 19th in a Google support article.

Though the vast majority of people use the Standard view on their PCs without question, the HTML version of Gmail has its perks. The stripped-down Gmail experience loads quickly, and users can access it even on very outdated machines or with much slower connections. Its leaner nature makes it useful in situations where the best you can muster is a 3G connection (3G died last year in the US, but still).

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In October 2021, Google launched a new Pixel Pass subscription program alongside the Pixel 6 series of phones that promised three things for one monthly payment ($45 for a Pixel 6 or $55 for a 6 Pro): “Google’s best mobile services, device protection, and regular device upgrades.”

However, on Tuesday, Google emailed Pixel Pass customers to say: “We are writing to you to inform you that starting today, we are no longer offering new Pixel Pass subscriptions or renewals.”

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