I had a conversation with a friend of mine last week, and while we spoke about how to bring some ideas to life, I asked him, without warning, “How many ideas have died under your watch?” In reply, he told me, “A lot.” “A lot from me too,” I replied.
We usually have great ideas we would love to see become a reality, yet, as much as we try, some or most of them don’t. At times, we feel as though we are to blame. That particular feeling could be so depressing since many consider their ideas as children — “brain-children”, they are called — and just as it is depressing for a parent to lose their child, so it is with a person whose ideas dies.
While many think the major reason many ideas don’t come to fruition is because of a lack of finance to fund the project, the Google graveyard proves the contrary; it shows that economic capital isn’t the only determining factor in the life and development of an idea.
If you haven’t heard of it before, then allow me to introduce you to the Google graveyard. The Google graveyard — or Google cemetery — is a website where the tech giant, Google, archives its failed and discontinued projects. You can easily find it by going to their most successful project, the Google Search Engine, and typing in these keywords in the search box, “Google Graveyard”, and behold, you will find a link that takes you straight to this cemetery.
Buried within the grounds of this vast cemetery are about three hundred projects that had been conceived by this tech giant, but over time had to be shut down for a number of reasons. Among their many unsuccessful projects are Google Portfolios, Google Talk, Glass OS, Picasa, Hangouts on Air, Google Code, Google Health etc.
I’d like to now focus on two of their projects and give you some of the reasons why Google had to suspend them.
The first project I want to discuss is the Google Compare project, a comparison-shopping site. According to the Google digital graveyard, ‘Google said, “the service didn’t meet its expectations and that the company will now focus on AdWords and future innovations. Google Compare allowed shoppers to view multiple offers from auto insurers, mortgage lenders and credit card companies.”‘
Another one is Orkut, a social networking site, and again, the Google Cemetery stated that “over the past decade, growth of Facebook, YouTube, Blogger and Google+ have outpaced Orkut’s. Google decided to bid Orkut farewell and shut it down.”
The google graveyard, for me, serves as proof that to fail is human. If, despite having such great team of experienced experts, google still have so many dead projects, then, we all shouldn’t feel too bad when we fail. We should rather be charged to try again.