![]() ![]() Engadget did a good post-mortem on the whole deal, detailing how a complete OS rewrite and a focus on higher prices did in the Kin. The Kin phones were ugly little things meant to be low-cost PCs aimed at the younger market, people who might not be able to afford a smartphone. Kin was barely born, as Microsoft killed the product literally weeks after launch. The software player is used in Xbox Live and Windows Phone 8. Microsoft introduced it in 2007 and killed it in 2011, but parts of Zune live on. With the Zune, Microsoft had a few interesting ideas, like sharing songs with other Zunes, but Zune had no chance against the iPod. ![]() It’s frequently late to market, and that hadn’t been a problem before. Normally, being late to market is not a hindrance for Microsoft. Zune was a me-too product from Microsoft that came way too late. But with the economic downturn in 2008, Microsoft started looking at its assets, and in early 2009, the games division took a big hit, with FlightSim being one of them. These folks were really upset when Microsoft just killed the game, rather than trying to find a buyer to keep it going. Microsoft Flight Simulator was one of the company’s oldest products, first hitting the market in 1978 from game publisher subLOGIC before Microsoft acquired the company in 1982.įlight Simulator had an extremely loyal fanbase and a huge mod/add-on market. This upset a lot of people because of how it was handled. Live Mail and Hotmail were folded into, Live Mesh was sunset in favor of SkyDrive, and Live Messenger was axed at the beginning of the year with existing accounts being transferred to Skype. Microsoft did a lot of consolidation this year, and its Live products got folded into a lot of other programs. Users are now being migrated to the MSDN network. People abused the system for years before Microsoft had enough. The company started TechNet in 1998 to sell IT professionals perpetual licenses to Windows client and server operating systems. Microsoft announced the end for TechNet due to rampant abuse and piracy. This was probably the biggest product to go to the graveyard in 2013. Here are some of the most notable Microsoft products that have met their demise. Even Microsoft, a company that is notoriously generous and patient with letting a product gain momentum, is willing to pull the plug when necessary. It is either replaced, upgraded or merged in with something else. If that isn’t your scene, why not read up on the history of lesser-known products like BufferBox or Google Moderator.Every product has its end. The site is open source, so if you want to help to memorialise Google in your own special way, you can pitch in on development. They have regularly launched experimental products, whether these are apps or straight up hardware, only to kill them off later if they haven’t worked out. However, rather than mourning for the apps and services that we’ve lost, Killed By Google is an unlikely reminder of how bold the company is. 149 different Google products have been killed off over the years, That’s 11 apps, 12 hardware products and 129 different services outside of that. Some of these are recognisable: Google Reader, the Nexus series of phones, and even Google Wave all have their little obituary on Killed By Google. One developer, Cody Ogden, has created a website that lists every Google product that’s been killed off by the 21-year-old Google. They’re not the first thing Google has taken the axe too, with apps like Google Goggles, Google Now, Google Code, and even my beloved Google Reader falling by the wayside as Google marches onwards. In just a few days, Google will be killing off social network Google+ and experimental email app Inbox.
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