When Google retires one of its services, it’s buried in a place known colloquially as the “Google Graveyard”. This sad locale did not exist in any real form… until now. Slate decided to throw an online version together so we can all pay our respects to the products the search giant has consigned to its digital dumpster.
The “graveyard” itself is just a series of tombstones with the names, dates and details of Google projects that are no longer with us. However, clicking on a tombstone will cause a flower to float down onto the grave, your contribution tracked via a counter beneath it. For performance reasons, only the last 3000 flowers are shown graphically.
At first glance, it may look like they’re ordered by most flowers to least, but that’s not the case. So, here are the top five most-loved Google products that now call a dusty cupboard home (at least, according to the internet):
- Google Reader, ~13,000
- iGoogle ~7400
- Google Labs ~6200
- Google Wave ~4300
- Google Video ~3500
[Slate]