As 2012 entered its final quarter, several tech companies
are on a killing spree. Many of the products, technologies and even
some companies died off this year, some mercifully. While tech giants
including Google, Apple and Microsoft had contributed many products to
the tech graveyard, they also have introduced an array of new products
full of life.
#12 Windows Live
If you believe it or not, Microsoft’s famous Windows Live is dead. The collective brand name of services and products was officially killed by the company with services like Windows Live search disintegrating into Bing and Windows Live hotmail into Hotmail.
“Windows Live services and apps were built on versions of Windows that were simply not designed to be connected to a cloud service for anything other than updates, and as a result, they felt 'bolted on' to the experience." This created some amount of customer confusion, which is noted in several reviews and editorials. The names added to that complexity. We used 'Windows Live' to refer to software for your PC, a suite of web-based services (Hotmail, SkyDrive, and Messenger), your account relationship with Microsoft (Windows Live ID), and a host of other offers," said the company during its mercy killing.
This might be one of the most noted killings of this year. The site, which once enjoyed the privilege of numerous file sharing and views, was shut down by the U.S. justice department. Megaupload had 180 million registered users, when its owner Kim Dotcom was accused of allegedly running the piracy operation, costing the entertainment industry $500 million. Its shut down lead to series of attacks against the government websites. Kim Dotcom now lives in New Zealand, denying the charges and fighting the attempt to hand over him to the United States.
Microsoft and National Broadcasting Corporation jointly started this news venture 16 years ago, which turned out to be one of the heavily trafficked websites ever. But the companies officially ended their online partnership in July 2012, with Microsoft selling its 50 percent stake to NBC universal. NBC rebranded the site as NBCNews.com, while Microsoft plans to launch its lone, multibillion dollar news venture, shortly after the release of Windows 8.
Motorola unveiled its Webtop technology in 2011, which is hailed to be the future of computing technology. The technology allowed users to use their Smartphones as a PC by docking it with a laptop-like accessory. But the devices failed to catch on with users and some of its “revolutionary” features according to Motorola, began to come up in other technologies including Android OS. The company finally decided to stop investing money into this technology and instead killed the product.
#8 Google Postini
Postini is Google’s famous email and web security service, which assists cloud computing services for filtering spam and malware before it is delivered to client’s mail server. The service also offered email archiving. Google had given 2013 as the deadline for Postini users when Google Apps for Business and Apps Vault will replace the same.
“Postini customers can receive similar email security and archiving features, but on a more robust platform,” said Google on killing the service.
Oink was a revolutionary app, born from the head of Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, the famous social news website. The product which rated individual items in various places-like a particular dish in a restaurant- initially created a wave in the market. Around 100,000 download occurred in the first two weeks, later which the company said it is shutting down the service. Later, Kevin Ross’s lab milk, which produced Oink was acquired by Google, along with him. Google then killed the entire service to use his expertise for its social network Google +.
#6 Adobe Flash for Android
The software, which provided millions of users the ability to view multimedia contents and rich internet applications on their mobile phones had announced in July that it won’t be supporting the Android versions beyond 4.0. The announcement came as a part of company’s plans to focus more on native apps and HTML5. The company had announced in the blog post: “There will be no certified implementations of Flash Player for Android 4.1,” and also recommended “uninstalling Flash Player on devices which have been upgraded to Android 4.1.”
Apple had a long list of mercy killings this year. Among that, these three stand out. MobileMe was Apple’s first big foray in to cloud computing, a paid service, used to synchronize email, calendars, address books and more. But with people failing to receive email and the service suffering long outages, Apple decided to kill it, favoring iCloud.
Ping, Apple’s social networking service for music, was also killed this year due to its lac of integration with social networking sites.
iWork, the office suite of desktop applications from Apple was also killed in July 2012, forcing the users to embrace iCloud.
#4 Google Picnik
Picnik was an online photo editing service owned by Google. The shutting down of this service invited even petitions from people to stop it, but failed. The service offered users to import pictures from anywhere including Facebook, Flickr, Picasa albums, Yahoo image search and edit them. Many of the tools were offered free. However, the company in January 2012 had announced that they are closing down and some of their tools will be moved to Google+.
The site provided a refund to all premium members and offered some options to get some of their recent images as 'Picnik Takeout.' Picnik stopped allowing downloads of saved content and fully shutdown on April 19.
Cisco had killed its Android based business tablet, Cius, less than a year after it started shipping. The no-use tablet from company failed to attract consumers and according to the company, “fell victim to the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend, when even employees at the company itself opt for better consumer oriented tablets such as Apple iPad.
#2 SOPA
The Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) bill, which was introduced to control the websites in the name of protecting copyrighted materials, was stopped in 2012, due to major oppositions from all over the world. All the major websites including Wikipedia protested against the law which contradictory to the proponents’ arguments, will limit free speech, invade privacy, and limit creativity.
#1 Amazon Kindle DX
Amazon’s Kindle DX was introduced in 2009, which spotted a larger screen and supported simple PDF files. The device, which targeted the academic market was failed to catch on. The company had silently killed off the device recently with the introduction of its bigger screened Kindle Fire HD.
Here is a list of products and technologies that got killed in 2012, compiled by Infoworld.
#12 Windows Live
If you believe it or not, Microsoft’s famous Windows Live is dead. The collective brand name of services and products was officially killed by the company with services like Windows Live search disintegrating into Bing and Windows Live hotmail into Hotmail.
“Windows Live services and apps were built on versions of Windows that were simply not designed to be connected to a cloud service for anything other than updates, and as a result, they felt 'bolted on' to the experience." This created some amount of customer confusion, which is noted in several reviews and editorials. The names added to that complexity. We used 'Windows Live' to refer to software for your PC, a suite of web-based services (Hotmail, SkyDrive, and Messenger), your account relationship with Microsoft (Windows Live ID), and a host of other offers," said the company during its mercy killing.
#11 Megaupload
This might be one of the most noted killings of this year. The site, which once enjoyed the privilege of numerous file sharing and views, was shut down by the U.S. justice department. Megaupload had 180 million registered users, when its owner Kim Dotcom was accused of allegedly running the piracy operation, costing the entertainment industry $500 million. Its shut down lead to series of attacks against the government websites. Kim Dotcom now lives in New Zealand, denying the charges and fighting the attempt to hand over him to the United States.
#10 MSNBC
Microsoft and National Broadcasting Corporation jointly started this news venture 16 years ago, which turned out to be one of the heavily trafficked websites ever. But the companies officially ended their online partnership in July 2012, with Microsoft selling its 50 percent stake to NBC universal. NBC rebranded the site as NBCNews.com, while Microsoft plans to launch its lone, multibillion dollar news venture, shortly after the release of Windows 8.
#9 Motorola Webtop
Motorola unveiled its Webtop technology in 2011, which is hailed to be the future of computing technology. The technology allowed users to use their Smartphones as a PC by docking it with a laptop-like accessory. But the devices failed to catch on with users and some of its “revolutionary” features according to Motorola, began to come up in other technologies including Android OS. The company finally decided to stop investing money into this technology and instead killed the product.
#8 Google Postini
Postini is Google’s famous email and web security service, which assists cloud computing services for filtering spam and malware before it is delivered to client’s mail server. The service also offered email archiving. Google had given 2013 as the deadline for Postini users when Google Apps for Business and Apps Vault will replace the same.
“Postini customers can receive similar email security and archiving features, but on a more robust platform,” said Google on killing the service.
#7 Oink
Oink was a revolutionary app, born from the head of Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, the famous social news website. The product which rated individual items in various places-like a particular dish in a restaurant- initially created a wave in the market. Around 100,000 download occurred in the first two weeks, later which the company said it is shutting down the service. Later, Kevin Ross’s lab milk, which produced Oink was acquired by Google, along with him. Google then killed the entire service to use his expertise for its social network Google +.
#6 Adobe Flash for Android
The software, which provided millions of users the ability to view multimedia contents and rich internet applications on their mobile phones had announced in July that it won’t be supporting the Android versions beyond 4.0. The announcement came as a part of company’s plans to focus more on native apps and HTML5. The company had announced in the blog post: “There will be no certified implementations of Flash Player for Android 4.1,” and also recommended “uninstalling Flash Player on devices which have been upgraded to Android 4.1.”
#5 Apple Ping, MobileMe and iWork
Apple had a long list of mercy killings this year. Among that, these three stand out. MobileMe was Apple’s first big foray in to cloud computing, a paid service, used to synchronize email, calendars, address books and more. But with people failing to receive email and the service suffering long outages, Apple decided to kill it, favoring iCloud.
Ping, Apple’s social networking service for music, was also killed this year due to its lac of integration with social networking sites.
iWork, the office suite of desktop applications from Apple was also killed in July 2012, forcing the users to embrace iCloud.
#4 Google Picnik
Picnik was an online photo editing service owned by Google. The shutting down of this service invited even petitions from people to stop it, but failed. The service offered users to import pictures from anywhere including Facebook, Flickr, Picasa albums, Yahoo image search and edit them. Many of the tools were offered free. However, the company in January 2012 had announced that they are closing down and some of their tools will be moved to Google+.
The site provided a refund to all premium members and offered some options to get some of their recent images as 'Picnik Takeout.' Picnik stopped allowing downloads of saved content and fully shutdown on April 19.
#3 Cisco Cius Enterprise Tablet
Cisco had killed its Android based business tablet, Cius, less than a year after it started shipping. The no-use tablet from company failed to attract consumers and according to the company, “fell victim to the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend, when even employees at the company itself opt for better consumer oriented tablets such as Apple iPad.
#2 SOPA
The Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) bill, which was introduced to control the websites in the name of protecting copyrighted materials, was stopped in 2012, due to major oppositions from all over the world. All the major websites including Wikipedia protested against the law which contradictory to the proponents’ arguments, will limit free speech, invade privacy, and limit creativity.
#1 Amazon Kindle DX
Amazon’s Kindle DX was introduced in 2009, which spotted a larger screen and supported simple PDF files. The device, which targeted the academic market was failed to catch on. The company had silently killed off the device recently with the introduction of its bigger screened Kindle Fire HD.
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