Google cuts back on services

IT'S NOT JUST employees being given the chop at Google. Some services are now being given the boot, too.

Last week we reported the search engine giant was handing out pink slips to some 100 employees from the firm's recruitment department and would be shutting offices in Austin, Texas, Trondheim, Norway and Lulea, Sweden.

But now the company bogosphere is abuzz with the news that pet projects and services will also be cut loose, including Google Catalog Search, Mashup Editor, Google Notebook, Jaiku, Dodgeball and even being able to upload clips to Google Video.

Gurgle Veep of engineering Vic Gundotra blogged that mobile social not-working service, Dodgeball, would be shut down within months, and that Jaiku, Google's microblogging service, would live on, but only in the world of Open Source.

Google boffins have apparently been working away to port Jaiku to the Google App Engine, which, once achieved, will allow the Google monster to make the code available to open sourcerers under the Apache license.

"The new Jaiku Engine will include support for OAuth, and we're excited about developers using this proven code as a starting point in creating a freely available and federated, open source microblogging platform" wrote Gundotra.

Gundotra also confirmed Google's Mashup editor, only ever released as a closed beta test, would never see the light of day and would be terminated.

Sadly, for those who like their Pr0n in segments longer than 10 minutes, Google also confirmed its video service will now no longer be letting people upload footage, leaving people at Youtube's mercy instead.

Something which probably won't affect too many people, however, is Google's decision to pull the plug on Google Catalog Search this Thursday. Hardly surprisingly considering the credit crunch, not too many people took advantage of being able to search through the full texts of thousands of product catalogs.

Truly Shocking. µ

L'Inq
Google Bog

See Also

Google cuts 100 recruiting jobs