Google is certainly the world’s greatest tech giant, with products such as YouTube, Gmail, Chrome, and Google Search synonymous with the internet. But this does not mean the company is immune to failure. Following is a look at just a few of the company’s many failed products. Google PlusGoogle Plus is one of the company’s more high-profile failures. The social media platform emerged at a time when Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tumblr were already rather popular. Nevertheless, the platform saw 90 million users within a year of launch.
Visual Overview
Key Components
Google Plus
Google Plus is one of the company’s more high-profile failures. The social media platform emerged at a time when Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tumblr were already rather popular.
Google Web Accelerator
Google Web Accelerator was launched in 2005 to speed up page load times on a user’s computer.
Google Video
Before Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006 , the company released its own video platform called Google Video.
Google Answers
Google Answers allowed users to pay a researcher to answer a question they had, with Google taking a percentage of the fee.
Knol
Knol, an arbitrary term denoting a “unit of knowledge”, was Google’s response to Wikipedia.
Google Plus is one of the company’s more high-profile failures. The social media platform emerged at a time when Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tumblr were already rather popular. Nevertheless, the platform saw 90 million users within a year of launch.
Before Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006 , the company released its own video platform called Google Video.
Key Insight
While Google recognized the importance of creating an accessible knowledge repository, it did not understand the community aspect that made Wikipedia a success. Contributors to Knol who wanted to make edits were at the mercy of the so-called "expert" who wrote the article. This resulted in users uploading duplicate articles instead of trying to improve existing pieces – a fundamental strength of Wikipedia.
Exec Package + Claude OS Master Skill | Business Engineer Founding Plan
FourWeekMBA x Business Engineer | Updated 2026
Google is certainly the world’s greatest tech giant, with products such as YouTube, Gmail, Chrome, and Google Search synonymous with the internet. But this does not mean the company is immune to failure. Following is a look at just a few of the company’s many failed products.
Product/Service
Reason for Discontinuation
Lessons Learned
Google Reader
Declining usage and competition
Importance of maintaining user engagement
Google Wave
Low user adoption and unclear positioning
Need for clear product positioning
Google Buzz
Privacy concerns and limited adoption
Prioritizing user privacy and security
Google Glass (Consumer)
Limited market appeal and high cost
Understanding target audience and cost control
Google+
Data breach and low user engagement
Importance of data security and engagement
Google Allo
Focus on other platforms and low usage
Concentrating resources on core products
Google Hangouts (Consumer)
Fragmented services and competition
Simplifying product offerings and user experience
Google Play Music
Merging with YouTube Music
Streamlining product portfolio and user experience
Google Spaces
Low usage and limited value proposition
Identifying viable use cases and value delivery
Google Inbox
Consolidation into Gmail and user feedback
Avoiding product redundancy and listening to users
Google Plus
Google Plus is one of the company’s more high-profile failures. The social media platform emerged at a time when Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tumblr were already rather popular. Nevertheless, the platform saw 90 million users within a year of launch.
So, what went wrong?
For one, the circle system used by Google Plus was complex and far from user-friendly. The process of creating separate circles for family and friends did not appeal to most users who wanted a simpler solution.
Google also had to deal with the fallout from security flaws, discovering in late 2018 that the personal data from 52.5 million user accounts had been leaking for at least three years. A Google Plus app was also ignored for the most part, with the company only developing an app after it became clear that Facebook and Twitter were using mobile to their advantage.
By that stage, it was too late. Google Plus was finally shut down in April 2019.
Google Web Accelerator
Google Web Accelerator was launched in 2005 to speed up page load times on a user’s computer.
The software was riddled with bugs from the outset, preventing YouTube videos from playing and embedding sensitive personal information in page requests. Google Web Accelerator also tended to retrieve unwanted webpage content and killed webmail sessions as soon as the user logged in.
Google ceased providing support for the software in January 2008.
Ultimately, Google Video was unable to attract users from YouTube which was starting to gather momentum during the mid-2000s. What’s more, Google Video was a very basic video player that didn’t solve a user problem.
For a large company with significant resources, it was simply easier for Google to acquire YouTube and shut down its own platform.
Google Answers
Google Answers allowed users to pay a researcher to answer a question they had, with Google taking a percentage of the fee.
Though the fee was typically around $2.50, platforms such as Yahoo! Answers and Quora meant users could find the information for free elsewhere. Interestingly, Google Answers was also competing against Google‘s own free search engine.
The service was closed down after approximately 4.5 years.
Knol
Knol, an arbitrary term denoting a “unit of knowledge”, was Google’s response to Wikipedia.
Knol was supposed to feature user-generated articles on a variety of topics and even used the same font as Wikipedia. However, the platform failed to gain traction and was shut down in 2012.
While Google recognized the importance of creating an accessible knowledge repository, it did not understand the community aspect that made Wikipedia a success. Contributors to Knol who wanted to make edits were at the mercy of the so-called “expert” who wrote the article. This resulted in users uploading duplicate articles instead of trying to improve existing pieces – a fundamental strength of Wikipedia.
Google also allowed article submitters to earn money through their content through advertising. Inevitably, this attracted users with nefarious intentions to the platform.
Key takeaways:
Google’s most successful products are synonymous with the internet. But the company has certainly had its fair share of failures. The social media networkGoogle Plus is perhaps the most significant.
Google Video was another failure because it did not solve an identified user problem. Google Answers was shut down because it competed with free question-answer services such as Yahoo! Answers and Google’s own search engine.
Knol was a Wikipedia-esque knowledge site that also failed to gain traction. In developing Knol, Google did not understand the community aspect of Wikipedia that made it so successful.
Google is primarily owned by its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who have more than 51% voting power. Other individual shareholders comprise John Doerr (1.5%), a venture capitalist and early investor in Google, and CEO, Sundar Pichai. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has 4.2% voting power. The most prominent institutional shareholders are mutual funds BlackRock and The Vanguard Group, with 2.7% and 3.1%, respectively.
Google (now Alphabet) primarily makes money through advertising. The Google search engine, while free, is monetized with paid advertising. In 2023, Alphabet generated over $175B from Google search, $31.51B billion from the Network members (Adsense and AdMob), $31.31B billion from YouTube Ads, $33B from Google Cloud, and $34.69B billion from other sources (Google Play, Hardware devices, and other services). And $1.53B from its other bets.
Google is an attention merchant that – in 2022 – generated over $224 billion (almost 80% of revenues) from ads (Google Search, YouTube Ads, and Network sites), followed by Google Play, Pixel phones, YouTube Premium (a $29 billion segment), and Google Cloud ($26.2 billion).
Of Google’s (Alphabet) over $307.39 billion in revenue for 2023, Google also generated for the first time, well over 1.5 billion dollars in revenue from its bets, which Google considers potential moonshots (companies that might open up new industries). Google’s bets also generated a loss for the company of over $4 billion in the same year. In short, Google is using the money generated by search and betting it on other innovative industries, which are ramping up in 2023.
In 2023, Alphabet’s (Google) Cloud Business generated over $33 billion within Alphabet’s Google overall businessmodel, and it was also profitable, with over $1.7 billion in profits. Google Cloud is instrumental to Google’s AI strategy.
Google is an attention merchant that – in 2023 – generated $237.85 billion (over 77% of its total revenues) from ads (Google Search, YouTube Ads, and Network sites), followed by Google Play, Pixel phones, YouTube Premium (a $31.5 billion segment), and Google Cloud (over $33 billion).
The traffic acquisition cost represents the expenses incurred by an internet company, like Google, to gain qualified traffic – on its pages – for monetization. Over the years, Google has been able to reduce its traffic acquisition costs and, in any case, to keep it stable. In 2023 Google spent 21.39% ($50.9 billion) of its total advertising revenues ($237.8 billion) to guarantee its traffic on several desktop and mobile devices across the web.
YouTube was acquired for almost $1.7 billion in 2006 by Google. It makes money through advertising and subscription revenues. YouTube advertising network is part of Google Ads, and it reported more than $31B in revenues by 2023. YouTube also makes money with its paid memberships and premium content.
In 2023, Google’s search advertising machine, generated over 175 billion dollars. Whereas Microsoft’s Bing generated 12.2 billion dollars. Thus, as of 2023, Google’s search advertising machine is over 14x larger than Microsoft’s search advertising machine.
Google makes most of its money from advertising. Indeed total advertising revenue represented nearly 78% of Google’s (Alphabet) overall revenues for 2023. Google Search represented nearly 57% of Google’s total revenues. Google generated $307.39B in revenues in 2022, and $73.79B billion in net profits.
In 2023, Google generated $307.39 billion, comprising $175B in Google Search, $31.51B in YouTube ads, and $31.31B in Google network revenue. $34.69B in other revenue, $33B in Google cloud, $1.53B in other bets.
In 2023, Google generated 237.85B in revenue in advertising, which represented over 77% of its total revenues of $ 307.39 B. In 2022, Google generated $224.47B in revenues from advertising, which represented almost 80% of the total revenues, compared to $282.83B in total revenues. Therefore, most of the revenues from Alphabet, the mother company of Google, come from advertising.
At the end of December 2022, Google had over 190,000 employees. On January 20, Google announced the layoff of 12,000 employees within the company, thus bringing the number of total employees by December 2023 to 182,502 full-time employees.
Google generated $1,684,332 per employee in 2023, compared to $1,486,779 per employee in 2022. As of January 2023, as the company announced a mass layoff, it brought back its revenue per employee at $1,586,880, still behind the peak in 2021, for $1,840,330.
Google Web Accelerator was launched in 2005 to speed up page load times on a user’s computer.
What are the google answers?
Google Answers allowed users to pay a researcher to answer a question they had, with Google taking a percentage of the fee.
What is Knol?
Knol, an arbitrary term denoting a “unit of knowledge”, was Google’s response to Wikipedia.
What is Google Web Accelerator?
Google Web Accelerator was launched in 2005 to speed up page load times on a user’s computer.
What are the google answers?
Google Answers allowed users to pay a researcher to answer a question they had, with Google taking a percentage of the fee.
What is Knol?
Knol, an arbitrary term denoting a “unit of knowledge”, was Google’s response to Wikipedia.
What is Google Web Accelerator?
Google Web Accelerator was launched in 2005 to speed up page load times on a user’s computer.
What are the google answers?
Google Answers allowed users to pay a researcher to answer a question they had, with Google taking a percentage of the fee.
What is Knol?
Knol, an arbitrary term denoting a “unit of knowledge”, was Google’s response to Wikipedia.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Google Graveyard: The Top Google Failed Products?
Google is certainly the world’s greatest tech giant, with products such as YouTube, Gmail, Chrome, and Google Search synonymous with the internet. But this does not mean the company is immune to failure. Following is a look at just a few of the company’s many failed products. Google Plus Google Plus is one of the company’s more high-profile failures.
What is Google Web Accelerator?
Google Web Accelerator was launched in 2005 to speed up page load times on a user’s computer.
What are the google answers?
Google Answers allowed users to pay a researcher to answer a question they had, with Google taking a percentage of the fee.
What is Knol?
Knol, an arbitrary term denoting a “unit of knowledge”, was Google’s response to Wikipedia.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
Scroll to Top
Discover more from FourWeekMBA
Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.
