Google is famous for launching new services only to kill them. There are community trackers like Killed By Google that are explicitly dedicated to cataloging the hundreds of projects Google has started up and eventually retired to the digital graveyard. Some of these high-profile experiments include Google Reader and Google+, but some of them were much more outlandish.
Here are some of my favorite oddball experiments that Google has created and run over the years.
Google Lively (2008)
A browser-based virtual world
Google Lively was a free, browser-based virtual world where you could create customizable avatars and hang out in themed chat rooms. It was positioned as a direct competitor to Second Life.
In theory, it was pitched as a way to socialize, but the response at the time was more confused than anything. Google? The search company selling virtual furniture and running avatar hangouts? People building their own rooms?
It was an interesting concept that, if it’d landed at a different time, might have gotten more traction, especially as a mobile game. However, it was discontinued in November as Google consolidated around its core—and more profitable—services during the 2008 financial crisis.
Nexus Q (2012)
A glowing black ball that didn’t have a niche
The Nexus Q was a spherical “social streaming media player” designed for Google Play content. Under the hood, it packed a 25-watt amplifier and an LED ring. It also had four speaker ports along the back that made the entire unit resemble a small bowling ball.
The design was met with a lukewarm response at best. It had no speakers of its own, which meant you needed to pair external speakers with it, and it could only stream from Google’s own services—a noteworthy limitation at the time.
It was discontinued about 6 months later in early 2013; those who had prepaid for it were given a refund and Google sent them the units for free.
The Nexus Q was a failure, but an interesting one. And, importantly, its cancellation made room for the Chromecast, which has been enduringly popular since its early release because of its simplicity and affordability.
Project Ara (2013-2016)
A smartphone you were supposed to build like Lego
Smartphones are notoriously hard to repair, and with a few exceedingly rare exceptions, completely impossible to upgrade. If your phone breaks, you replace the components with identical (more or less) components from the manufacturer or a third party. If your phone ages and becomes obsolete, it gets sent to the e-waste graveyard to spend the next 1,000 years decomposing with the rest of our e-waste.
Project Ara imagined a future where all of that was different. Rather than build a monolithic smartphone—where everything is soldered and glued in place, never to be removed—Ara aimed to create a modular smartphone. In many ways, it would be a bit like a desktop PC. If your phone’s CPU showed its age after two years, you could slide out the existing CPU and slot in a new one. The components that were fine could soldier on until it was their turn to be replaced.
In theory, it would have allowed most (or even all) phone components to be fully user replaceable. However, as time wore on, the ambition of the project was scaled back and fewer components remained hot swappable, and essential system components, like the storage or CPU, were firmly soldered in place, just like they are today.
Ultimately, the project was shuttered when design problems persisted and Google pivoted towards a more streamlined hardware approach. Their first generation Pixel was released the same year.
In the intervening decade, the modularity trend has almost moved in the other direction. Laptops are becoming less user-serviceable, especially as soldered RAM and SOCs become more prevalent over setups that favor discrete, replaceable components, and even desktop-class devices are showing signs of following the same trend.
Google Glass (2013-2023)
The original smart glasses
Today, smart glasses are relatively common. However, Google had early smart glasses prototypes way back in 2013.
Google Glass was a head-mounted display that contained a camera and a tiny prism screen that were controlled by a mixture of voice commands, head gestures, and a small touchpad on the frame, giving you a mostly hands-free experience.
However, the idea of a camera on your face—or in your face, if you’re on the other end of someone wearing Google Glass—elicited a pretty loud public backlash. The glasses were also very expensive—$1,500 on release—which was too much for all but the most devout tech enthusiasts. The program was slowly wound down over the years until it was finally canceled in 2023.
Despite the backlash, Google Glass was an important pathfinding technology for the sleeker, subtler smart glasses that we have today.
Makani energy kites (2013-2020)
Wind power generated by a giant kite on a string
Google is famous for its consumer software and hardware, but under its Google X Moonshot program, it funded a lot of unusual projects. One of my favorites was Makani, which used an autonomous tethered kite to generate electricity.
It was an experiment to see if a kite the size of a small plane could replace the conventional wind turbines we see today.
Their results were actually decent, and offshore tests produced enough electricity to power a few hundred homes. Ultimately, Google (by then Alphabet) dropped the project because there wasn’t a viable path forward commercially. To their credit, X made a non-assertion pledge on the patents, which effectively allows anyone to use them without opening themselves up to a lawsuit, and there have been amateur attempts to DIY the technology on a smaller scale using off-the-shelf components.
Weird experiments often fail, but they usually live on somehow
It is easy to cast these experiments as “failures,” and they are in a commercial sense. However, research and development and institutional knowledge aren’t things that just disappear when a product is pulled from the shelves or a service is discontinued. The information and technology often find new homes elsewhere where they are more successful.
Today, Google is valued at nearly 4.4 trillion dollars (given or take a few hundred billion), so plainly a hundred or failed experiments have been worth the effort.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
