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Other poster is correct, it was a 20% project, so it didn't even cost Google any money to acquire, which is crazy.

I remember it getting absolutely destroyed by Spam at some point. Then they tried some redesigns, and an integration with Google+ that caused more problems than it solved. Each one of these events drove people to other websites.



Also, the implementation and infrastructure was a total shit show.


True, its downtimes predated the Twitter fail whale.

Interestingly, the first version used ASP.NET, visible in the .aspx domains, which really deviated from other Google tech.


What is (and was) Google tech? I naively thought Google didn't have a praised stack.


Back then it was mostly Java, Python and C++.

They even made a Java-based framework that would generate Javascript, GWT. Orkut was rewritten to use in 2009.


I used to use GWT. It was such a mess to work with, but an interesting mess.


Well it used what was available at the time. Which was not a lot, that it even worked is insane


We still have it running somewhere. Not pretty but zero issues for a largish GUI


But also a highly specific Linux runtime environment, distributed storage, etc.


Yeah, internally it was, uh, an issue.

Just before launch there was a attempt to hide that it was google.




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