Remember what the internet forgot.

An encyclopedia of apps, websites and platforms that shut down: who owned them, how big they got, and why they died. 257 projects documented, every claim sourced.

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HipChat The team chat that was there before Slack, bought by Atlassian, renamed Stride, and then sold to Slack to be switched off 2010–2019 Messengers Seesmic Loic Le Meur's video Twitter that became a Twitter client that became a Salesforce app and was finally sold to HootSuite for its users 2007–2013 Social Networks Google Lively Google's cartoon chat rooms with avatars, launched in July 2008 and switched off on New Year's Eve the same year 2008–2008 Online Services Aardvark Ask a question over instant messenger and a friend of a friend who actually knew the answer wrote back within minutes, until Google bought it and put it on the spring-cleaning list 2009–2011 Search Engines & Directories Readmill The Berlin e-book reader that put your highlights in the margin for other people to see, bought by Dropbox for its team and closed within three months 2011–2014 Mobile Apps iTunes Ping Apple built a social network inside iTunes, launched it without Facebook and without the songs, and closed it after two years of silence 2010–2012 Social Networks Google Health Google tried to be the place you kept your medical records, found that almost nobody wanted one, and closed it in 2012 2008–2012 Online Services Color Forty-one million dollars before launch, an app nobody understood, and a shutdown within two years: the cautionary tale of the 2011 app boom 2011–2012 Mobile Apps Everpix The photo service that solved the problem everyone had and ran out of money anyway, and then published its entire post-mortem for others to learn from 2011–2013 Photo Sharing Songza Playlists for the moment you were in, picked by people rather than an algorithm, until Google bought it and melted it into Play Music 2011–2016 Music Streaming Gowalla The prettier check-in app from Austin that lost the SXSW war to Foursquare, was bought by Facebook for its team and switched off three months later 2009–2012 Mobile Apps Google Fusion Tables The free tool that let journalists and researchers turn a spreadsheet into a map, retired by Google in 2019 with no direct replacement 2009–2019 Web Technologies & Tools

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Messengers 14 Social Networks 22 Search Engines & Directories 5 Web Browsers 6 Email & Groups 4 Blogging & Web Publishing 7 Photo Sharing 5 Video & Streaming 15 Music Streaming 8 Media Players 4 File Sharing 14 Web Technologies & Tools 12 Online Services 18 E-commerce & Retail 10 Mobile Apps 14 Desktop Software 10 Operating Systems 11 Developer Tools 7 Reference & Learning 5 Games 10 Game Platforms & Services 9 Consoles & Handhelds 16 Phones & Tablets 12 Gadgets & Hardware 10 VR & AR 5 Storage & Media Formats 4

Structured, not folklore

Ownership chains, launch and shutdown dates, user numbers with confidence levels. Registered accounts are not active users, and we label the difference.

Sourced & archived

No claim enters the database without a source, and every source gets an archived copy. Read the methodology.

The numbers nobody keeps

Which company killed the most products? How long does an app live after being acquired? See the statistics.