Over the years, Google team has experimented a lot with its various services. Some of them have really worked in favor of the company, but many services have failed to make a mark on its users. And now once again, they have decided to close some of these services due to their poor performances.
Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations has revealed in his blog post that they have shortlisted the products which didn’t do well as per the expectations -
To recap, we’re in the process of shutting a number of products which haven’t had the impact we’d hoped for, integrating others as features into our broader product efforts, and ending several which have shown us a different path forward. Overall, our aim is to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience.
If you’re interested to know, here’s the list of services that will be closed down soon -
- Google Bookmarks Lists
- Google Friend Connect
- Google Gears
- Google Search Timeline
- Google Wave
- Knol
- Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal (RE<C)
There is nothing really surprising as far as the decision is concerned. These services have been refused by the end users, so there is no point in keeping them live and wasting money. Instead, Google will now invest more money in its current and upcoming products.
With this move, Google is also making a point that they don’t want to spend their developers’ efforts on the products which may not work in the future. The services like Google Wave and Knol had received initial praises from the users, but then these services didn’t attract many users. And that’s why it seems like a good decision, and it would also allow Google team to concentrate on other services.