Google's Projecide

Google is planning to kill off a bunch of its products, some of which really don't deserve to die. Here's what's currently on the platter:

Code Search
Not many people might have used it, but it was a good idea! Maybe instead of killing it, they should've expanded it to search GitHub and SourceForge?

Google Buzz
Well, they starved it to death, so might as well put it out of its misery. But at least integrate it into the Google+ Stream instead of just smacking it into a separate tab on Profile, which no one will ever see.

Buzz was also a good idea, but it was a knee-jerk response to Twitter, one that never answered the question: “Why would anyone use this instead of Twitter?” To make things worse, they buried it in the GMail app, so it was promptly forgotten.

Jaiku
Whatever, who cares.

iGoogle Social Features
See Jaiku.

University Research Program for Google Search
Sounds cool, but based on their description, it was only available to “a small number of approved academic researchers,” so since it was never available to me, I'm going to go ahead and put it into the Jaiku pile.

Google Labs
This is the real mockingbird of the flock. Why shut down something that lets you field test new features? Many of Google's flagship products graduated from Google Labs, including Google Maps and Google Desktop. This makes no sense at all.

According to the same post from their official blog, Google has “learned a lot from products like Buzz, and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google+.” I guess the lesson they learned is to release a product and do nothing to improve it, silently watching it wither and die. Because that's exactly what they're doing to Google+.

Facebook's new Timeline.

Just released into field trial is Facebook's new “Timeline” feature. Instead of just seeing one long list of messages and status updates on your profile page, you can now see them on a neat timeline. You can select the year and month that you want, and it will immediately scroll into view. No loger will you be pressing the “Load more...” button a thousand times to find the status update you were looking for.

This is great news for obsessive-compulsive types like me, who like to review their own history in detail. Others will rebel and blame Facebook for exposing their private information. Before you go batshit on Mark Zuckerberg, let me pause you: Facebook had already stored all of this information. Now they're just making it easier to use and more visible to you.

Timeline is not released to the general public yet. If you want to try it out for yourself, you can follow these instructions.

Update: Apparently you can also view other people's timelines, if they chose to publish them.