This "more wood behind fewer arrows" approach sounds great to me as long as they keep trying new things.<p>The only thing that concerns me about the approach is along the lines of what Doug Bowman said when he quit[0]: relying on data too much can blind you to what cannot be represented in data. Or, maybe, as Steve Jobs said: "A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."[1]<p>I'm optimistic that Larry Page is finding a way that comes from conviction in combination with data.<p>[0]: <a href="http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html" rel="nofollow">http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html</a><p>[1]: <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may1998/nf80512d.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may1998/nf80512d...</a>
I'm surprised Google Desktop is shutting down. A lot of my coworkers use this and rely on this quite heavily. I used it a lot myself.<p>There certainly is a need to index and search the vast amount of data that's now in our ever growing HDs. Is the search feature in the latest Windows versions capable of tackling this?
I use Desktop frequently. It's often the only way I can find things on my computer.<p>"Desktop: In the last few years, there’s been a huge shift from local to cloud-based storage and computing"<p>OK, but I'm pretty sure most files are still stored locally on most computers. I've barely ever used Windows own search feature. I hope it's up to scratch.
I like how they didn't mention that their translation dictionary is now deader than a doornail. My wife used it virtually every day. I'm tempted to just make one, the hosting costs and complexity for such a thing (a web server with a lookup table) must be ridiculously tiny.
I think that Ninite[1] is more than up to the task of replacing Google Pack. It even lets you select what software you want.<p>[1]: <a href="http://ninite.com/" rel="nofollow">http://ninite.com/</a>
It will be interesting to see where Google lands on the spectrum of "don't discontinue anything" and "all eggs in a few baskets". IBM did well in the former, Apple the latter.<p>Google almost seems to be taking the role of VC. Make many bets. Some pay off. For those that don't, Google can at least keep some of the engineers.
"Due to the rapidly decreasing demand for downloadable software in favor of web apps [...]"
I just hope they get rid of the memory leaks in their web apps...