Google has decided to shut down some of its services, as well as trim some recruiting jobs, and consolidate engineering offices. Services that Google is shutting down include:
– Uploading to Google Video
– Google Notebook
– Jaiku
– Google Catalog Search
– Mashup Editor
– Dodgeball
Now, some notes on each.
The Google Video Team is now encouraging users to upload their videos to either YouTube or Picasa, both of which are owned by Google of course. Uploading will still be available for a few months. They won’t be removing any content that is already there.
The Google Notebook team is encouraging users to try other Google Products with notebook-like functionality like SearchWiki,Google Docs, Tasks in Gmail, and Google Bookmarks. And they claim to have plenty of new ideas for these services.
Jaiku is shutting down before it ever really got going. It is a Twitter-like service that never left invite-only status. According to Read Write Web, “Google will release the Jaiku code under the open source Apache license, so that other organizations can pick up where the Google team left off. It is not clear if current users will be able to transfer their accounts.”
Google Catalog Search just wasn’t popular enough to keep around, but the Book Search Team leaves it behind with fond memories. “Catalogs helped us better understand and refine the technology we use today to scan and make the full text of books available online,” says Product Manager Punit Soni. “We also learned more about how users read scanned documents online, and how to best present this type of information to them.”
Mashup Editor is another one that never really got off the ground. It is still only available in limited testing. Google encourages users to instead use the Google App Engine.
Dodgeball is a mobile social networking service. It will be shut down in the next couple months. Google says they will communicate the exact timeframe shortly.
A post on the Official Google Blog talks about the company consolidating some engineering offices, by shutting down Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden locations, though they say they intend to keep as many of the employees as possible, and just have them move to other locations.
“Our long-term goal is not to trim the number of people we have working on engineering projects or reduce our global presence, but create a smaller number of more effective engineering sites, which will ensure that innovation and speed remain at our core,” says Google Senior Vice President, Engineering and Research Alan Eustace.
Google also announced that they are trimming some recruiting jobs – about 100 of them. “Our first step to address this was to wind down almost all our contracts with external contractors and vendors providing recruiting services for Google. However, after much consideration, we have with great regret decided that we need to go further and reduce the overall size of our recruiting organization by approximately 100 positions,” says Google’s Vice President of People Operations, Laszlo Bock.
Big changes through Google’s organization today indeed. As far as the services being shut down, I can’t say that I will particularly miss any of them, as I haven’t thrown them much use anyway. Will you miss any of these services?
