Ever since Larry Page took his reign back from Eric Schmidt at Google one trend has been prominent: saying goodbye to products which are of no use anymore to Google. We’ve seen many products being closed in the past year or so and now we can add several more to them, amongst which iGoogle and Google Video.
Google calls it ‘spring cleaning in the summer’ as they announced the last of now 30 products being closed.
The products which are closed are:
Google Mini
Part of Enterprise Search, but the functionality is outdated. Google itself says it can replaced by products like Google Search Appliance, Google Site Search and Google Commerce Search.
Google Talk Chatback
Being able to embed a chat functionality on your site (one of those ‘gadgets’ some site owners put there but never use). As an alternative Google suggests using the Meebo bar.
Google Video
With YouTube around Google Video has no use anymore. If you had any videos left there you have been getting notifications from Google suggesting you to transfer the videos from Google Video to YouTube. You have until August 20 to do so.
iGoogle
There once was a time when we were all personalizing our homepages on our browsers. iGoogle was a way to do that and get the information you wanted at your startup. Google believes that is outdated, and they are probably right. They are therefore retiring the service as off November 1st 2013, so don’t worry you’ll still have 1,5 years to get used to the idea.
Symbian Search App
Remember the ‘old’ Nokia phones? Once they were the most powerful phones out there. There are probably people who never saw anything but a smartphone, but once Symbian was the OS which mattered. And Google made an app for that. But Google steps away from the app there and urges you just to use google.com.
