ニキビつぶしが続くGoogle: 今度はAardvarkがあの世へ

【抄訳】

Googleは今、猛烈な速度で、製品を整理している。2週間前にはSlideのほとんどのプロジェクトを殺したが、今日また、もうひとつの死を迎えた: Aardvarkだ。

協同ファウンダのMax Ventillaによると、サービスは今月の終わりに閉鎖される。2009年のGoogleとAardvarkの交渉は、本誌が特ダネとして報じた。そして2010年2月に、GoogleはAardvarkを5000万ドルで買収した。

しかしGoogleは、大きな可能性を秘めていたAardvarkを何もせずに放置した。それは一種のソーシャル検索で*、のちのQuoraや今度のJigなどの先がけとなった。Googleは検索に専念させず、Aardvarkのチームの多くをGoogle+のプロジェクトに向けた。〔*: ソーシャル検索というより、（いまだに未完成な技術であるところの）セマンティック検索の草分け。やる気のないGoogleに買われたのが、あわれだ。〕

〔Googleの製品整理に関する関連記事: （１）、（２）。〕

以下は、Ventillaからユーザに宛てた書簡の全文である:

[以下英文ママ]

As part of the shutdown of GoogleLabs, Aardvark will be shutting down at the end of September.

Aardvark began as a small experiment in a new kind of social search, and over a few years blossomed into a service that made millions of connections between people to answer each other’s questions. It was a great experience in seeking to combine a broad vision for the future of technology with a rigorous user-centered design process. Over this time, we learned a lot about creating and maintaining online communities, and how to facilitate sharing of knowledge between people.

We’ve been excited to share these lessons within Google over the past year, especially as part of the effort behind Google+. It has been gratifying to see how well this project is doing — even in these early stages, Google+ has already become a great place to share knowledge online, eclipsing the original vark.com! — and there is much more to come very soon. In this and other projects at Google, the Aardvark team remains committed to developing powerful tools for connecting people and improving access to information.

Of course, we’re also sad to say goodbye to the original Aardvark here at vark.com. Who would have thought that a digital version of a nocturnal burrowing mammal would have engendered so much affection! We’re very grateful to the whole Aardvark community for your support along the way.

Onwards,

Max and Damon

p.s. In the spirit of data liberation, we want to make sure that any of you Aardvark users who would like to retrieve your past data from the service can do so. Right now of course you can log in and manually copy anything you’d like to keep. Or if you prefer, you can email us at support@vark.com and we’ll send you a bulk dump of your data (please allow time for us to process these). After September 30, there will be no way to retrieve your data, as shortly after that we will delete everything permanently.

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（翻訳：iwatani(a.k.a. hiwa)）