Google Bids Fond Farewell To Some Apps

Not even search engine giant Google is immune from putting out a few products that don't spark any interest. On various Google blogs Wednesday, Google said it will be migrating or moving some products that never caught on the same way Gmail or Google Documents have. On the chopping block are Jaiku, Dodgeball.com, Mashup Editor, Catalog Search, Google Notebook and Google Video.

The first project to take the hit is Jaiku, a type of microblogging service. The plans to roll Jaiku over to the Google App Engine were laid out by Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering for Google, on the Official Google Code Blog.

"As we mentioned last April, we are in the process of porting Jaiku over to Google App Engine," wrote Gundotra. "After the migration is complete, we will release the new open-source Jaiku Engine project on Google Code under the Apache license. While Google will no longer actively develop the Jaiku code base, the service itself will live on thanks to a dedicated and passionate volunteer team of Googlers."

The salient point here is that Jaiku will no longer be supported by Google, with the company preferring to roll it up into the Google App Engine. That means developers will still be able to use the code but shouldn't expect any new additions or support from Google.

Also getting subsumed by the Google App Engine is Mashup Editor, which is currently in a private beta.

"Existing Mashup Editor applications will stop receiving traffic in six months, and we hope you will join our team in making the exciting transition to App Engine," Gundotra wrote.

In the same post, Gundotra bids farewell to Dodgeball.com, Google's mobile social networking service that allows users to upload their location with friends via text. The service just never really caught on.

"We have decided to discontinue Dodgeball.com in the next couple of months, after which this service will no longer be available. We will communicate the exact time frame shortly," Gundotra wrote.

Google is also pulling the plug on its eight-year-old Catalog Search, the precursor to Google Book Search. Writing on the Google Book Search Blog, Punit Soni, product manager, waxes poetic about days in a small closet, scanning catalogs, noting that Catalog Search taught the company a lot and made getting Book Search off the ground much easier. Still, it was never a popular program, and Google is pulling the plug.

"So tomorrow, we're bidding it a fond farewell and focusing our efforts to bring more and more types of offline information such as magazines, newspapers and of course, books, online," wrote Soni.

Google is also stopping active development on Google Notebook, according to Raj Krishnan, product manager, Google Notebook. Writing on the Google Notebook Blog, Krishnan says the move is so that the company can continue to focus on technologies that will yield the best results.

"Starting next week, we plan to stop active development on Google Notebook," wrote Krishnan. "This means we'll no longer be adding features or offer Notebook for new users."

However, Google will continue to support users who have already signed up for the service but will no longer support Notebook Extension. Instead, the Notebook team will focus on SearchWiki, Google Docs, tasks in Gmail and Google bookmarks.

Finally, Google Video will stop accepting uploads in a few months, said the Google Video Blog. Previously uploaded hosted content will not be removed, but users will no longer be able to add any videos to the service, wrote Michael Cohen, product manager for Google Video.

"We've always maintained that Google Video's strength is in the search technology that makes it possible for people to search videos from across the Web, regardless of where they may be hosted," wrote Cohen. "And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide."

SHARE THIS ARTICLE