Google’s Kill date announced!

We’ll it’s been in news that Google is killing majority of it’s side projects. Today it added few more to be switched off lists. It’s quite clear that Google is moving to it roots and don’t want to try and experimental features as of now, at least for common public. It’s concentrating more on it’s competitive markets such as Ads, Search (Bing is pitching against it), Android (pitching against iOS, Symbian, Blackberry, Windows Phone 7), and Google+ (pitching against Facebook). As it’s clear that the competition is huge and in some places (Search for example) and it still has to grow in other (Social Network), Google simply can’t afford to distract itself.

In today’s blog, Google mentioned switch off of some other features.

• Code Search, which was designed to help people search for open source code all over the web, will be shut down along with the Code Search API on January 15, 2012.
• In a few weeks we’ll shut down Google Buzz and the Buzz API, and focus instead on Google+. While people obviously won’t be able to create new posts after that, they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile, and download it using Google Takeout.
• Jaiku, a product we acquired in 2007 that let users send updates to friends, will shut down on January 15, 2012. We’ll be working to enable users to export their data from Jaiku.
• Several years ago, we gave people the ability to interact socially on iGoogle. With our new focus on Google+, we will remove iGoogle’s social features on January 15, 2012. iGoogle itself, and non-social iGoogle applications, will stay as they are.
• The University Research Program for Google Search, which provides API access to our search results for a small number of approved academic researchers, will close on January 15, 2012.
• In addition, later today the Google Labs site will shut down, and as previously announced, Boutiques.com and the former Like.com websites will be replaced by Google Product Search.

Clearly these are the product, we more likely to forget (Buzz, anyone?). But there are a handful of few things, I simply don’t want to discontinued. Take Labs for example. I can hardly figure out a power user who hasn’t turned any of the Labs features on, Google’s Translate API, which was free earlier, now costs you. This doesn’t feel good. As a general user it may not be much, but for a power user it’s some what great loss.

At least, Google should ask it’s user if we really need something. There are products which we need, but not on daily basis, Google should preserve that.

Google’s Kill date announced!

We’ll it’s been in news that Google is killing majority of it’s side projects. Today it added few more to be switched off lists. It’s quite clear that Google is moving to it roots and don’t want to try and experimental features as of now, at least for common public. It’s concentrating more on it’s competitive markets such as Ads, Search (Bing is pitching against it), Android (pitching against iOS, Symbian, Blackberry, Windows Phone 7), and Google+ (pitching against Facebook). As it’s clear that the competition is huge and in some places (Search for example) and it still has to grow in other (Social Network), Google simply can’t afford to distract itself.

In today’s blog, Google mentioned switch off of some other features.

• Code Search, which was designed to help people search for open source code all over the web, will be shut down along with the Code Search API on January 15, 2012.
• In a few weeks we’ll shut down Google Buzz and the Buzz API, and focus instead on Google+. While people obviously won’t be able to create new posts after that, they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile, and download it using Google Takeout.
• Jaiku, a product we acquired in 2007 that let users send updates to friends, will shut down on January 15, 2012. We’ll be working to enable users to export their data from Jaiku.
• Several years ago, we gave people the ability to interact socially on iGoogle. With our new focus on Google+, we will remove iGoogle’s social features on January 15, 2012. iGoogle itself, and non-social iGoogle applications, will stay as they are.
• The University Research Program for Google Search, which provides API access to our search results for a small number of approved academic researchers, will close on January 15, 2012.
• In addition, later today the Google Labs site will shut down, and as previously announced, Boutiques.com and the former Like.com websites will be replaced by Google Product Search.

Clearly these are the product, we more likely to forget (Buzz, anyone?). But there are a handful of few things, I simply don’t want to discontinued. Take Labs for example. I can hardly figure out a power user who hasn’t turned any of the Labs features on, Google’s Translate API, which was free earlier, now costs you. This doesn’t feel good. As a general user it may not be much, but for a power user it’s some what great loss.

At least, Google should ask it’s user if we really need something. There are products which we need, but not on daily basis, Google should preserve that.