Google's Graveyard: A Look Back at 20 Discontinued Projects

Google's 28-year history is marked by numerous groundbreaking projects that have significantly impacted the internet. However, not all of its experiments were successful. In fact, the company has discontinued over 20 products and projects that failed to gain traction or eventually became obsolete.

The list includes Google Glass, a wearable computer that introduced the concept of augmented reality but ultimately failed due to concerns about privacy and usability. Another notable example is Orkut, a social networking platform launched in 2004 that gained popularity in Brazil and India before being shut down in 2014.

Google's foray into gaming with Stadia also met an untimely end in 2023, just four years after its launch. The service aimed to bring high-end gaming to the cloud, but it failed to attract a large user base.

Project Ara, a modular smartphone concept that allowed users to upgrade individual components, was another ambitious project that never saw commercial success. Google Reader, an RSS feed aggregator launched in 2005, also fell victim to the company's shift towards algorithm-driven services like Google News.