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In a move Google characterizes as “off season spring cleaning,” the search engine revealed plans to close down, phase out, and discontinue at least seven of their products and services. This is the third time this year that Google has streamlined its product line.
Google has been making posts on the progress of their cleanup once a month since September. In that first post, the search giant reported plans for ten of their products. Discontinued or substantially altered products included Aardvark, Desktop, Fast Flip, Image Labeler, Google Pack, and many others. In some cases, products were deprecated; in others, the product’s technology was moved for use in other services Google provides. In this first post on the “spring cleaning,” Google noted that it would “make things much simpler for our users, improving the overall Google experience. It will also mean we can devote more resources to high impact products – the ones that improve the lives of billions of people.”
The October post on the progress of the cleanup effort featured a shorter list, but may have hit some a little harder. Of particular note, Google shut down Google Labs, a wonderful place on the website where users could play with lots of experiments that Google’s engineers created. Many of these mini-applications were both cool and useful, sometimes involving different ways of finding and visualizing data. With the Google Labs shutdown, each of those projects would have to stand or fall on its own merits. Other casualties this time around included Code Search, Google Buzz, Jaiku, iGoogle’s social features (pushed aside in favor of Google’s focus on Google+), and the University Research Program for Google Search.
For this month, Google’s blog post covered seven products. As Frank Watson reported in his article for Search Engine Land on the topic, Google seems to be remaking its products and focus with specific users in mind. He spotted a bias toward “holders of Google+ accounts and supporters of HTML5.”
The seven products being eliminated represent a mixed bag, with relatively few surprises. For example, Google Knol stands out on the list. It was one of those products I’d always been wanting to try, but only used perhaps a couple of times. As with many of the products and services Google is closing down, it seems as if something else already fills the niche – something that is at least “good enough” that the Google product can’t get traction.
Launched about four years ago as Google’s answer to Wikipedia, it was supposed to allow real experts to collaborate on in-depth articles. Google won’t be continuing this work, but the company worked with Solvitor and Crowd Favorite to create Annotum, an open-source scholarly authoring and publishing platform based on WordPress. If you have a Knol or use the system, it will continue to work until April 30, 2012. From May 1 through October 1 of that year, knols won’t be viewable, but owners can still save them by downloading them and/or exporting them. Even now, you can check out Annotum and move your content over.
Next: The Other Rejected Products
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