A Wonderful Romp through a Tech Graveyard

August 31, 2023

Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.

I heard about a Web site called killedby.tech. I took a look and what a walk down Memory Lane. You know Memory Lane. It runs close to the Information Superhighway. Are products smashed on the Info Highway? Some, not all.

The entry for ILoo, an innovation from the Softies was born and vaporized in 2003. Killedby describes the breakthrough this way:

iLoo was a smart portable toilet integrating the complete equipment to surf the Internet from inside and outside the cabinet.

I wonder how many van lifers would buy this product. Imagine the TikTok videos. That would keep the Oracle TikTok review team busy and probably provide some amusement for others as well.

And I had forgotten about Google’s weird response to failing to convince the US government to use the Googley search system for FirstGov.gov. Ah, forward truncation — something Google would never ever do. The product/service was Google Public Service Search. Here’s what the tomb stone says:

Google Public Service Search provided governmental, non-profit and academic organizational search results without ads.

That idea bit the dust in 2006, which is the year I have pegged as the point at which Google went all-in on its cheerful, transparent business model. No ads! Imagine that!

I had forgotten about Google’s real time search play. Killedby says:

Google Real-Time Search provided live search results from Twitter, Facebook, and news websites.

I never learned why this was sent to the big digital dumpster behind the Google building on Shoreline. Rumor was that some news outfits and some social media Web sites were not impressed. Google — ever the trusted ad provider — hasta la vista to a social information metasearch.

Great site. I did not see Google Transformic, however. Killedby is quite good.

Stephen E Arnold, August 31, 2023

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Innovation, News

Comments

Comments are closed.

Search the site
Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive

Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.