Google will put two products to rest in the coming days.
Social software development company Slide and short-lived photo-sharing app Photovine will be shut down on March 6.
Notices about the shutdown are posted at the top of the site's respective landing pages. Slide's notice links to information about how users can export data from existing Slide software before the close date.
Google acquired Slide for $182 million back in August 2010. The Photovine app launched in August of the following year. A week after that launch, however, Google announced that Slide co-founder Max Levchin had left the company and that Slide products, including Photovine, would eventually be shut down.
Now, roughly six months later, the web giant is pulling the final plug. Writes The Next Web, "The shutdown of Slide and Photovine obviously doesn’t come unexpectedly, after other products acquired by Google in the process, such as VideoInbox, Disco and Pool Party, had already been terminated." TNW also notes that only one Slide project, Prizes.org, will live on after March 6.
According to TechCrunch, Google acquired Slide "to cobble together a serious social gaming and apps strategy to counter Facebook." But that was before Google launched its large-scale social network, Google+.
Since Google+ opened to users, Google has been phasing out some of its smaller side projects, such as Google Labs, the company's incubator for experimental products and programs. In September 2011, the company said it would kill off 10 products, including Desktop, Notebook, Fast Flip and Aardvark. According to a July report by Mashable, two popular products, blogging platform Blogger and photo-sharing site Picasa, will be rebranded. "Although the rebranding could upset some existing customers, it also gives Google the ability to completely integrate both services into Google+," Mashable wrote. Earlier attempts at social networks -- Google Wave and the controversial Google Buzz -- were also axed toward the end of 2011.
[Hacker News via TNW]
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