A mathematical look at the approximate expiration date for Google stuff.
Posted 03.26.2013 at 9:00 am
6 Comments
Google TV
With Google's recent announcement that it would be discontinuing the cultishly beloved Google Reader, some people are understandably wary about other Google products. How long until it's decided they're "underperforming" and need to be cut? Does this stuff have an expiration date?
Well, kinda. It's at least possible to crunch the numbers and approximate the shelf-life of a service. The Guardian took a look at the lifespans of 39 services that didn't survive, then plotted them to determine a mean. The magic number? 1,459 days. So Google Keep, a service released just last week, would be terminated on March 18, 2017.
This isn't an exact time of death for any products, of course: it still has a standard deviation, in this case 689 days, although all of the services studied except iGoogle fall within two standard deviations of the mean. But that does still mean there's a 68 percent chance Google Keep will be put out to pasture between April 2015 and February 2019.
Of course, all of this works under the assumption that Google's actually going to stop supporting a product. After all, there's still a lot of stuff it created and stuck with. (Ever heard of something called Gmail?) But you never can tell, so it might be nice to at least have a guess about how many days of use you're getting out of something.
Check out more over at The Guardian.
6 Comments
To comment, please Login.
Popular Tags
Technology
140 years of Popular Science at your fingertips.
Popular Science+ For iPad
Each issue has been completely reimagined for your iPad. See our amazing new vision for magazines that goes far beyond the printed page
Download Our App
Stay up to date on the latest news of the future of science and technology from your iPhone or Android phone with full articles, images and offline viewing
Follow Us On Twitter
Featuring every article from the magazine and website, plus links from around the Web. Also see our PopSci DIY feed
April 2013: How It Works
For our annual How It Works issue, we break down everything from the massive Falcon Heavy rocket to a tiny DNA sequencer that connects to a USB port. We also take a look at an ambitious plan for faster-than-light travel and dive into the billion-dollar science of dog food.
Plus the latest Legos, Cadillac's plug-in hybrid, a tractor built for the apocalypse, and more.
Popular on Popsci
Most Commented
Technology
- Warp Factor
- Bill Gates Will Pay You $100,000 If You Can Make A Better Condom
- FBI Wants To Spy On Your Online Chats As They Happen
- Blueprint: Engineers Invent A Healthier Toilet
- Faster-Than-Light Drive
- Who Are The Casualties Of America's Drone Strikes? [Infographic]
- Why Legal Experts Say It's Okay To Kill A Civilian Hacker In Cyber Warfare
- In The Future We Will All Live In Photosynthetic French Sea Pods
- China Makes 50% Of Your Stuff. How Many Chinese Brands Can You Actually Name?
- The 6 Most Absurd Military Hoaxes By North Korea And Iran
Most Emailed
Technology
- How It Works: The Robotic Chicken Butcher
- Invented: A Much Better Way To Predict Airline Delays
- Brain Wave Sensor Shields You From Phone Calls When Your Mind Is Too Busy
- Border Patrol's Newest Tool? VADER On A Drone
- In The Future We Will All Live In Photosynthetic French Sea Pods
- BigPic: The James Webb Space Telescope, Ready To Be Frozen
- The Newest Defense Against Biological Warfare? This Cube
- The Navy Sees A Bright Military Future In 3-D Printing
- 9 Revolutionary Elevators From The Otis Elevator Company
- 9 Revolutionary Elevators From The Otis Elevator Company
Most Viewed
Technology
- How It Works: The Robotic Chicken Butcher
- Invented: A Much Better Way To Predict Airline Delays
- Brain Wave Sensor Shields You From Phone Calls When Your Mind Is Too Busy
- Border Patrol's Newest Tool? VADER On A Drone
- In The Future We Will All Live In Photosynthetic French Sea Pods
- BigPic: The James Webb Space Telescope, Ready To Be Frozen
- The Newest Defense Against Biological Warfare? This Cube
- The Navy Sees A Bright Military Future In 3-D Printing
- 9 Revolutionary Elevators From The Otis Elevator Company
- 9 Revolutionary Elevators From The Otis Elevator Company
Online Content Director: Suzanne LaBarre | Email
Senior Editor: Paul Adams | Email
Associate Editor: Dan Nosowitz | Email
Assistant Editor: Colin Lecher | Email
Assistant Editor:Rose Pastore | Email
Contributing Writers:
Rebecca Boyle | Email
Kelsey D. Atherton | Email
Francie Diep | Email
Shaunacy Ferro | Email
Today on PopSci.com
Copyright © 2012 Popular Science
A Bonnier Corporation Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
Lol. This equation means nothing. Waste of bandwidth.
"Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth. There is no spoon."
GEEZ Popsci, whats with all this hate on Google all of a sudden? Sure they took down the reader app but so what? I have an android tablet and everything gets linked up together into one google account. This new note app lets me transfer all my notes to google drive or gmail if i want so im not worried about the possibility of a service going down. Its like when apple tried to make their own map app, either its a hit or a total failure, doesnt mean there gonna stop selling iphones. Popsci really needs to give the Google/Android community a bit more respect
They not hating, they just trying to use a popular brand like Google to generate some traffic. Lol. Fail.
"Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth. There is no spoon."
Google Is A Well Known Source Which Is Facilitating All Its Users In All Over The World. It Has Provides Many Services Like, Email, Searching,Google Tv etc.
http://www.bit-cart.com/multi-vendor-shopping-cart-software.html
in order to thank everyone, characteristic, novel style, varieties, low price and good quality, and the low sale price Thank everyone
http://l2y.eu/dddRo
http://l2y.eu/dddRo
http://l2y.eu/dddRo
│＼＿╭╭╭╭╭＿／│
│ │＼｜／
│ ● ● │—☆—
│○ ╰┬┬┬╯ ○│／｜＼
│ ╰—╯ ／
╰—┬○————┬○╯
╭│ │╮
╰┴—————┴╯ adfghjkyulyu
Google needs to be eliminated entirely. Yeah they might have cool products but they have a bad attitude.
Anyone here ever piss off a crazy drunk?
All the crazy drunk has to do now to get back at you is create slander about you on a website like GoAnimate or some other company that caters to online trolls.
He then passes his slander around on that huge network of online trolls.
Passing the slander around on this huge network boosts the Google Page Rank of the drunk's slander about you.
When Google's online bots go out to search for the text string that is your name, the slander attached to your name is found and then ranked by Google as the most important thing to know about you. The slander then appears FIRST in a search of your name.
Google refuses to intervene or even acknowledge that they are contributing to online bullying and slandering.
Think it can't happen to you? Think again.
Do a search of Lindsey Stone's name.
Because her mistake was picked up by the mainstream media, her mistake is now listed FIRST in a Google search of her name. That is because the media can boost the Google page rank of news items very quickly. As long as the Page Rank of Lindsey's mistake remains higher than any other item about her, her mistake will remain FIRST in a search of her name; ensuring that no one ever forgets about her mistake.
Tabloids and trolls have networks that are comparable to the media. And the people who participate in these networks don't have the same standards for reporting as the mainstream media...in fact, they thrive on slander.