Getting Rid of Dead Wood

This morning BBC News reported that Google is getting rid of seven of its products.  The general consensus is that Google is finally recognizing the seriousness of competition, and the BBC story cited Facebook as a specific example.  It described Google’s action as a “cull” and observed that this was the third such effort.

I suppose it comes down to whether you prefer animal or vegetable metaphors.  Personally, I thought that Knol was dead wood from the day of its launch.  In this case I suppose that I preferred vegetable to animal because, at the time of launch, no one bothered to take word “BETA” off of its Web site.  It was as if one faction thought this “knowledge product” was cool but another likened it to a bowl of leftover lima beans.  It was definitely hard to think of Knol having any animal qualities.  At best is was a product of let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom thinking;  and now it has suffered the fate of all those flowers that bloomed in Mao’s garden!