What’s With Google Web Quotes and Google Keyboard Shortcuts?

Sometimes I don’t understand Google. At times they are quite brilliant, and other times they act like some high school kids with a web site. I understand that Google Labs is a playground for their software engineers, but they need to keep users more informed about the products they become bored with.

For example, although no longer on the Google Labs page, Google WebQuotes and Google Keyboard Shortcuts are still accessible. In fact, there are still Google Groups product support discussions linked from those pages. So, if one were to search for Google WebQuotes or search for Google Keyboard Shortcuts, the first search result points right to the product page. Then, when you get on the page, you’ll find some short instruction and from all appearances, it looks ready to go. But, it’s not. Neither works.

In the Google Groups for these products (Google Group for WebQuotes and Google Group for Keyboard Shortcuts), I can read pleas from users wanting to know what going on with the products. I haven’t read every post, but I have not seen any response from Google. So, we’re in limbo. Are we to assume they’ll work again someday, since they still have the pages up? If so, when? Or, are they just abandoned, with no one at Google having the courtesy to, if not take them down, at least put a notice on the pages top let us know they intentionally don’t work , and if they ever do again, that they’ll let us know on their Google Blog

Sometimes I just scratch my head with these guys.

Message to Google: Yahoo wouldn’t do this.