Google’s Spring Clean – Say Bye Bye To Old Services

For Google, the time has come to dispose of those services that are just no longer relevant. Google themselves are calling it spring cleaning in summer. This has been an ongoing process, which started last autumn, and during that time, more than 30 products have been closed or combined with current services.

Yesterday, they announced a number of additional products will be closing. These include services such as Google Mini, Google Talk Chatback, Google Video, iGoogle, and the Symbian Search App. In a world where technology is ever-changing, Google clearly feel that some of these services no longer fit the bill. Let’s take a closer look at why they’ve been given the boot.

Google Mini

As part of Google’s Enterprise Solutions, Google Mini was a great way to search one’s website for internal pages and documents. However, it is felt that the functionality for this is now outdated. Google say it can be replaced with products such as Google Search Appliance, Google Site Search and Google Commerce Search.

Google Talk Chatback

This facility used to let your website visitors chat with you. Whenever you signed in as a user, your visitors could chat. However, Google feel that this facility is now outdated as many site owners never actually used it.

Google Video

This is no longer a necessary platform with its bigger brother around, YouTube. They actually stopped taking content years ago, and all remaining content will be moved over to YouTube in the coming months. For anyone that has Google videos, you will have received, or will receive notifications telling you to transfer such videos to YouTube.

iGoogle

Back in the day, iGoogle was a fantastic way of personalising your online experience. However, in the advent of Smartphones and Apps which run on platforms such as Chrome and Android, it is no longer needed. Users do have until November 1st 2013 until it’s officially retired though.

Symbian Search App

Again, prior to improvements made to mobile web search, Google launched an App on Symbian OS which enabled users to search Google on their phones. However, since its inception, the mobile web has grown dramatically, and Google have been making a whole range of web-wide improvements to make mobile search even better.

As Google continues to evolve and dominate the search engine landscape, change is inevitable. This means that existing services will be removed, improved or integrated. It also means that newer services, like Google Plus will take on more significance. What are your feelings? Are you sad to see some of these services removed, or are you glad to see the back of them? Let me know your thoughts.