Google's Spring Cleaning, April 2012: Web Giant Kills Off More Products

Spring is in the air. Flowers are in bloom, birds are chirping and Google's taken the axe to a few more products, projects and features.

On April 20, a post on the Official Google Blog announced the web giant's plans to kill off Google Sync for BlackBerry, Google Related, the mobile web app for Google Talk and Google Flu Vaccine Finder, among other changes.

Here's what will happen to these services, according to Cloud Services Director Matthias Schwab.

The company will drop support for the BlackBerry platform's version of Google Sync on June 1. "If you currently use Google Sync for BlackBerry, we encourage you to switch to BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) or the Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server going forward," wrote Schwab. "These alternatives offer a better overall experience, as you can sync your email messages, calendar and contacts through a single service."

Google Related, which Schwab says is "an experimental browsing assistant launched to help people find interesting and useful information while they browse the web," will be shuttered. Apparently users weren't really interested in the service.

The company will also shut down the mobile web app for Google Talk and suggests users switch to the official Google Talk app for their respective mobile platforms.

The Google Flu Vaccine Finder map tool, created to help U.S. users find vaccination locations during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, is also done. Schwab writes that Google has "passed the baton" to HealthMap's new HealthMap Flu Vaccine Finder.

Google-owned photo-sharing site Picasa will also see a few changes, too. Google said it is phasing out the WINE-based version of Picasa for Linux. In addition, the Picasa Web Albums Uploader for Mac and Picasa Web Albums Plugin for iPhoto are no longer available for download, and Google advises that users download Picasa 3.9 for Mac.

Visit the Google Blog to read about Google's latest round of "Spring Cleaning."

Last July, Google said it would gradually close its experimental Google Labs projects. The first round of Spring Cleaning came in September, with the announcement that Desktop, Notebook, Fast Flip, Aardvark and others would be shut down. In October came word that Google Buzz would meet a similar fate. November saw the planned shuttering of Google Wave, Google Gears and Google Friend Connect, as well as several more products.

The launch of Google+ last year marked a shift in the company's focus. Google CEO Larry Page said in his 2012 Founder's Letter that the process of targeting Google's efforts on "core products" began in April 2011. "Google has so many opportunities that, unless we make some hard choices, we end up spreading ourselves too thin and don’t have the impact we want," Page wrote. "So we have closed or combined over 30 products, including projects like Knol and Sidewiki."

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Comments

[Kashif Qureshi]

05:16 PM on 04/24/2012

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[neem]

05:15 PM on 04/21/2012

Short-term, Google has an interest in the preferences of humans.

[breindal]

02:00 PM on 04/21/2012

Google should stay focused on what they are good at, instead of trying to make a "clone" of everything everyone else does.

[jabreal00]

11:35 AM on 04/21/2012

Google just has too many of these applications that are poorly marketed or just plain half-baked. I like Gmail and Google images. I tried to like Google docs but it's not intuitive and Dropbox is so much better. All the other services I just don't see a point.

[Steven Watson]

10:05 PM on 04/21/2012

Google Docs is a replacement for Microsoft Office, not storage of any file like dropbox, at least not yet. (Rumor has it Google Drive is coming soon) When it comes to creating documents, it isn't half bad, though it still doesn't seem to work as well as a stand-alone program.

Most of these current aps being killed, I've never heard of - I don't have a BlackBerry or Mac, and it sounds as if they are just consolidated into other current programs. Makes sense to me.

As for the "it's related", I tried it when it came out, but just not something I really used.

[lurkinman]

12:10 PM on 04/23/2012

Google Docs is a pretty substandard "replacement" for Office. I'm not at all befriending Office, but GD's is really clunky.

[StinkyPete0279]

11:31 AM on 04/21/2012

"Google Flu Vaccine Finder" was actually a thing?

[PCPrincess]

11:15 AM on 04/21/2012

I actually really liked Google Notebook. That was one of the products that could have done much better if they actually put it out there for people to 'see'. Google needed only look at the success of Evernote to see that people like storing things!

[Steven Watson]

10:06 PM on 04/21/2012

Google Notebook is one of the one's I miss.

[wilray]

04:36 PM on 04/23/2012

I imported my Google notebook into Zoho notebook. I can even login with my Google account, so I am not missing anything.

[Maschine]

10:58 AM on 04/21/2012

I just use google for, well, googling. The rest of the stuff just reminds me of the early IBM/Microsoft/PC years. Jumbled, bloated, unintuitive, cluttered and just plain weak.

[Deaninphilly]

09:01 AM on 04/21/2012

Google just needs to stop. Get back to basics and stop wth all this worthless nonsense they keep coming out with. The last update of Picasa completely screwed the whole thing up. All these "upgrades" to the current products are hardly that anyway.

I really don't understand what happens to these companies. They come out with a nice basic product, everyone starts using it and they start "improving" it with this and that and screw everything up. You would think that someone would learn out there that people are using the thing because it is basic.

[clearthinker2008]

09:18 AM on 04/22/2012

So they shouldn't ever try anything new? Then there will be a long list of comments about that. You try stuff, sometime it works out sometimes it doesn't but there is no harm in trying.

[arnabdas]

07:18 AM on 04/21/2012

So will Linux users not have Picasa anymore? Or will it be a new deb package that they'll be rolling out? As for axing redundant services, I am completely in favour of these steps. Google must trim its offerings to fine tune its core ones.

[Deaninphilly]

08:59 AM on 04/21/2012

Just don't do anything with the one you have in your system now. It should be fine... Frankly my distro upgraded us to the new version and I hate it.

[Kyle Noe]

06:37 AM on 04/21/2012

Didn't Google learn anything from Microsoft? You know, not using your consumers willy-nilly as a test base for a bunch of products that you cut when they aren't a commercial success? Every company does this to an extent, but MS and Google are now famed for their lack of perspicacity in products.

Google is even worse - buys up a company, stomps on its technology, and discards it - essentially killing off potential startup competition by preventing its users from enjoying it any further. Case in point, Aardvark.

[Balkingpoints]

03:53 AM on 04/21/2012

The Google Friends Connect was in use on Balkingpoints for a few months in 2010, until it just decided to stop loading. It was a nightmare to configure for install, then when it went out there was absolutely nobody from Google working their help forum. (And of course, they provide no phone support)

Total piece of garbage app, and very disappointed in Google to ever allow it out with no vetting for functionality to the average blog, and no intention to support the myriad problems it caused. Good riddance.

[adrianrf]

10:39 AM on 04/21/2012

"very disappointed in Google to ever allow it out"

- curious. in trying to understand your vehemence, I'm left wondering:

exactly how much did Google charge you for this software you're so disappointed by?

[Razzer]

03:36 AM on 04/21/2012

I really loved Fast Flip.

RIP.

[GCL 1]

03:13 AM on 04/21/2012

Google, the one-trick search-algo pony.

[Peter Luis Venero]

02:55 AM on 04/21/2012

What an annoyingly misleading article, Huff! Sounds to me more like they are streamlining their products - not killing them off. You're obviously trying to leverage off of their previous bad press of dropping products. What a cheap shot. You can do better!

[Kyle Noe]

06:39 AM on 04/21/2012

Sorry, what's the difference between "streamlining" and "killing off" products here? The end result is the same as far as I can see...

[Peter Luis Venero]

07:01 AM on 04/21/2012

I thought they were killing off redundant services and rolling users over to their existing services - I read too quickly! Wow, my bad! Thanks for the smack in the head!

[traveller77]

02:45 AM on 04/21/2012

Google Sites. If China and GM got together to design a blogging platform, it would look and behave just like Sites does.

Please, Google. Your dystopian contribution to our blogging future has failed because you got too frightened to support a really useful blogging platform. Retreat gracefully and just let WordPress have the field.

tt77

[wilray]

04:39 PM on 04/23/2012

Blogger is also Google.