Google To Close Its 10 Services

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Google has decided to close its ten services which turns out less successful. These include: Aardvark, Desktop, Google Pack, Google Web Security, Image Labeler, Notebook, Sidewiki and Subscribed Links. Google said that it will help them to devote more resources to ‘higher-impact products’.

Many of the features that these products provide will be integrated into Google’s other services. “Over the next few months we’ll be shutting down a number of products and merging others into existing products as features” said Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President, Google. “This will make things much simpler for our users, improving the overall Google experience” he added in the blogpost.

Here’s a list of Google products that are going to die very soon

Google Pack
Closed on : September 2, 2011
Due to the rapidly decreasing demand for downloadable software in favor of web apps, Google Pack has been discontinued.

Google Web Security
Closed on : September 2, 2011
New sales of Google Web Security has been discontinued, support to existing customers still be provided.

Google Maps API for Flash
Closed on : September 2, 2011
Google Maps API Premier customers will still able to use the Google Maps API for Flash but JavaScript Maps API v3 will be focused.

Fast Flip
Closed on : September 6, 2011
Fast Flip was started to help pioneer news content browsing and reading experiences for the web and mobile devices

Google Desktop
Closing Date : September 14, 2011
With ChromeOS being the future, a desktop application is not needed.

Subscribed Links
Closing Date : September 15, 2011
Image Labeler
Closing Date : September 16, 2011
It was started to help people explore and label the images on the web. A number of similar Google tools are avilable for such purpose.

Aardvark
Closing Date : September 30, 2011
Aardvark was a start-up we acquired in 2010. An experiment in a new kind of social search, it helped people answer each other’s questions.

Google Notebook
Closing date not announced.
All notebook data will be exported to Google Docs and Notebook will be closed.

Sidewiki
Closing date not announced.
Google Sidewiki is a browser sidebar that lets you contribute and read information alongside any web page. Much more similar products are available for use.

Notebook
Closing date not announced.
Subscribed Links enabled developers to create specialized search results that were added to the normal Google search results on relevant queries for subscribed users.

Suggested Readings:-
Google Blogpost by Alan Eustace
Google Blogpost by Bill Coughran