Google kills off Jaiku, Dodgeball, other projects
Published: 16 Jan 2009 08:46 GMT
In a series of posts on various official Google blogs, the company announced on Wednesday it is terminating, stopping development on, or restricting access to six of its products.
Industry watchers say all the products in question, which include Jaiku, Dodgeball and Google Notebook, have added little lately to the Google brand or bottom line.
Having acquired YouTube in 2006, Google has now announced that within a few months Google Video will no longer allow user uploads. In 2007, Google turned off access to paid videos on Google Video and recently added video upload capability to its Picasa Web Albums site.
Google Catalog Search, which was launched as a demonstration of OCR technology that was eventually used in Google Book Search, is being closed. In announcing its closure, Google described it as "a great experiment".
The company said Google Notebook will remain live for the moment, but announced that development on the product will cease next week, which means Google will "no longer be adding features or [offering] Notebook for new users". Other products, such as Google Docs, Tasks in Gmail, and Google Bookmarks, will perform some of Notebook's functions.
Mobile social-networking site Dodgeball, acquired by Google in 2005, will be shut down "in the next couple of months".
Google's Mashup Editor, which remained a private beta, will be terminated, in favour of "the more powerful Google App Engine". Social-networking and micro-blogging site Jaiku may continue with support from a "volunteer team" of Google employees, but the main product is getting ported to the Google App Engine, and will be released as open source.
Credit: Google killing Jaiku, Dodgeball, Notebook, other projects from CNET News
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