15 January 2009
Time for a spring clean! Ok, maybe it seems a little early in the year for some of us, but Google seems to be raring to go. The Mountian View giant has announced that it's closing or ceasing further development on a variety of services and applications. This list currently consists of:
From the official Google Video Blog:
"At Google, we like to launch early, launch often, and to iterate our products. Occasionally, this means we have to re-evaluate our efforts and make difficult decisions to be sure we focus on products that make the most sense for our users."
While it makes sense to clear out the cobwebs and free up space for progression on apps and services that are actually popular and useful, you can't help but wonder if this is further proof that Google isn't immune from the almighty credit crunch. The news of this clean-up has come out not long after news that Google laid-off some recruiters, independent contractors and temporary employees.
On the other hand, these changes have made some people wonder if uploads to YouTube will be increased and if other less popular products are due for the chop such as Knol, Google's version of Wikipedia.
Of course, on the wonder that is the web, all you can do is ponder while in reality we will just have to see if this is for better or for worse while rumours will no doubt be a-plenty.
Is Google feeling the Squeeze? Selected services and apps get the chop
Time for a spring clean! Ok, maybe it seems a little early in the year for some of us, but Google seems to be raring to go. The Mountian View giant has announced that it's closing or ceasing further development on a variety of services and applications. This list currently consists of:- Google Video no longer supporting uploads, YouTube has taken over
- Catalog Search has fallen in favour of Google's Book Search
- Google Notebook will continue to function, but will no longer accept new accounts
- Jaiku will be ported to Google App Engine and will be released as open source on Google Code although there will be no further development from Google
- Dodgeball will be discontinued, the application allowed users to share their current location via SMS à la twitter
- The Mashup Editor is being replaced by App Engine
From the official Google Video Blog:
"At Google, we like to launch early, launch often, and to iterate our products. Occasionally, this means we have to re-evaluate our efforts and make difficult decisions to be sure we focus on products that make the most sense for our users."
While it makes sense to clear out the cobwebs and free up space for progression on apps and services that are actually popular and useful, you can't help but wonder if this is further proof that Google isn't immune from the almighty credit crunch. The news of this clean-up has come out not long after news that Google laid-off some recruiters, independent contractors and temporary employees.
On the other hand, these changes have made some people wonder if uploads to YouTube will be increased and if other less popular products are due for the chop such as Knol, Google's version of Wikipedia.
Of course, on the wonder that is the web, all you can do is ponder while in reality we will just have to see if this is for better or for worse while rumours will no doubt be a-plenty.
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