Google To Shut Down Code Search, Google Buzz, Jaiku iGoogle and Others

[engine]

Google To Shut Down Code Search, Google Buzz, Jaiku iGoogle and Others [googleblog.blogspot.com]

Here’s the latest update on what’s happening:

Code Search, which was designed to help people search for open source code all over the web, will be shut down along with the Code Search API on January 15, 2012.
In a few weeks we’ll shut down Google Buzz and the Buzz API, and focus instead on Google+. While people obviously won't be able to create new posts after that, they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile, and download it using Google Takeout.
Jaiku, a product we acquired in 2007 that let users send updates to friends, will shut down on January 15, 2012. We’ll be working to enable users to export their data from Jaiku.
Several years ago, we gave people the ability to interact socially on iGoogle. With our new focus on Google+, we will remove iGoogle's social features on January 15, 2012. iGoogle itself, and non-social iGoogle applications, will stay as they are.
The University Research Program for Google Search, which provides API access to our search results for a small number of approved academic researchers, will close on January 15, 2012.
In addition, later today the Google Labs site will shut down, and as previously announced, Boutiques.com and the former Like.com websites will be replaced by Google Product Search.

[Gibble]

Why would they shutdown Google Labs? And Code search? I get the rest...but those two seem like odd choices.

[MrFewkes]

Im just wondering if getting rid of useful to webmaster things is them attacking webmasters more and more but bit by bit in this war - like getting rid of the cached link in the serps (which I found useful for dates).

Is there anything in that lot above - which was useful to webmasters?

[Dave_Hybrid]

cached link still exists, its just moved.

[ChanandlerBong]

this is why Google+ just isn't worth it. The wind will change in another year, they'll come up with the LATEST, HOTTEST social "thing" and all your hard work on Google+ will be wasted. All their endless betas are just fly-by-nights.

[aleksl]

That's why it's not the brightest who run the ship, but ADD-ridden arrogant MBAs and "investors". This is a clear case of lack of vision and a corporate ADD.

No clearly smart, new ideas, just reroute the corporate billions into yet another niche.

I am thinking they need to still pretend to help the world, hopefully there's enough dough they can spare towards electric cars and sustainable energy. But something in me says that's also a "buzz" driven by for-profit money hungry marketing types.

Essentially, what they want is to be a shopping portal, and essentially drive everyone's commercial traffic i.e. take a cut of any commercial type of transaction. They are now redirecting Products searches into Google Offers (bye-bye Groupon)....The motto - "organize and sell the world's shopping information and make it universally accessible through our paid offers".

[httpwebwitch]

But they're keeping Orkut?

[Leosghost]

Orkut is where they stash their NSFW ..

[ByronM]

Wow.. i knew Buzz would get the chop, but didn't think it would be "buzzed" this soon.

Why would anyone want to adopt google+ knowing they're not in anything for the long haul? - especially if it can't be monetized. This shows clearly that Google is a marketing company, not a tech company...

[g1smd]

This lot comes as a directive direct from Page to "clear the decks and concentrate on doing less things better, not more things badly"... or words to that effect. The initial announcments came soon after his most recent job change. Another part of the cleanup is to standardise the look and feel of all Google properties, not have a myriad of different schemes. I guess the recent WMT upgrade was just one part of that.

[Hugene]

Most these things can go and no one will care.

But Google Labs? This is really weird: since the early days of G, I always associated G with research and innovation because of the Google Labs! It gave the company this kind of cool academic image, where you can explore ideas and yet be in industry.

And wasn't Google Labs used to test new apps, see if they catch on? Wasn't Gmail started there and then "graduated".

I mean, it seems to me that this G Labs initiative was hands in hands with the mythical 10% (or was it) of time that G employees are given for "pet projects".

I work in a big corporation and I know 1st hand that when you start killing innovation and black-box playgrounds to explore new ideas, then employee morale goes down.

True, I never visited or used the products from G Labs. But it was the idea of the Labs I liked.

Like the mythical ATT Labs back in the day.

Man, this is weird/stupid.

[randle]

"clear the decks and concentrate on doing less things better, not more things badly"

That is an excellent course of action for them right now. Its one thing to have a lot of expensive people sitting around dreaming up new products/platforms, but its a whole other ball game to get them to actually contribute to the bottom line.

They got a little carried away with the Google this, Google that and Google the other thing.

[g1smd]

They're making a million dollars every 14 minutes.

There's enough cash floating around to be doing a lot of things.

[lexipixel]

The old GOOG investment / development philosophy was, rather than invest $1M in one project, they would invest $100k into each of 10 projects --- and hope one of them was a home run... I though that was smart.

But I guess they ended up with a bunch of stuff that doesn't really work, definitely is NOT part of a single unified platform --- kind of a "jack of all trades, master of none" result, (except AdWords/AdSense).

Now they are going after content, not apps or services.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Why would they shutdown Google Labs? And Code search?

Neither helps get people to click +1 and neither is appealing to the non-webmaster Google user thus neither has a chance of increasing the revenue generated by Google's affiliate/advertising business. Google used to like webmasters, doesn't seem true anymore. I expect Google to make bigger strides into becoming the content instead of just the search engine, soon.

[walkman]

But Google Labs? This is really weird: since the early days of G, I always associated G with research and innovation because of the Google Labs! It gave the company this kind of cool academic image, where you can explore ideas and yet be in industry.

Their image is a carefully crafted lie. Google labs has done jack, I can't think of a successful product that came out of Google other than search.

[Leosghost]

I can't think of a successful product that came out of Google other than search.

android ? ..adwords ? ..adsense ? ..

all three are "products" that came out of Google..

only took me 30 seconds of light thinking and til the letter A to think of them ..the last two come from search but they are not search ..and are pretty successful ..and android definitely isn't search..and appears to be pretty successful..:)

[walkman]

android ? ..adwords ? ..adsense ?

Try again. Search for each and tell us their history.

[tictoc]

It's like the Google Liquidation sale. This is sad to see them start closing everything down. Maybe the big Panda is eating the entire company.

[ergophobe]

What's Google+?

That's sort of a serious question. I mean really, what in the world is Google+ and is there a soul on earth actually using it in any meaningful way? If they had added Google+ to the mix, that would have made sense.

All the others... I'm sure they all lose money and maybe Google is trying to trim back and focus on what they do well. In which case, the fact that Google+ is not on the list remains a mystery.

[ergophobe]

The only two services Google offers that I would be truly sorry to lose are Search and GMail. Of course as an advertising platform, regardless of which side your on, it lives and dies on the strength of search. For that matter, GMail has sucked me in because the search is so good. So I guess for me, Google is still just search.

Now if Google+ had come out two years ago with search that actually worked so you could access all past activity, it might have given FB a run for it.

Otherwise, to me Google just has so much money they buy a company a month, see if they can either suck some useful knowledge out of it, or turn it into a big win, and if not, they abandon it. It's more or less an angel investor mentality. Throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks.

[Leosghost]

Try again. Search for each and tell us their history.

You said "came out of" ..you didn't say "invented by" ..because FYO, they didn't "invent" search either :)

So if one is going to say "apart from search"..one is obviously not restricting the criteria to only things "invented" by Google..

Words have specific meanings..

Careful use of them, and understanding of semantics helps one rank well in search engines ( even those touched by Ailuropoda melanoleuca ), and avoids some people thinking that one has "seen lights", or had other damascene conversions..:)

They may have "invented" pagerank ..at least they claim to have done so..

[votrechien]

I can't think of a successful product that came out of Google other than search.

Google maps? What other company would have had the audacity to photograph every single street in North America.

[Hugene]

There is tons of great products that came out of Google (be it invented or bought and then improved):

Search, Gmail, Maps, Street View, AdSense, AdWord, DoubleClick, Android,

G is actually no longer a one horse pony (it's more like a carriage with one really strong bull, and a few ponies that are also pulling some weight).

But there are also some less popular G products that are actually amazing (if not the best) and are all a side-product of Search:

Scholar (better than even IEEE's own DB), Patents (no compassion to USPTO's horrible search) and Books (simply an amazing initiative, if only everyone could get paid accordingly).

These last 3 products are ground-breaking for me, even if obscure and not money making (probably).

[httpwebwitch]

Do you remember what it was like - before Google Maps - to embed a dynamic map on a website? Their API (far from perfect but good enough IMHO) raised that bar, and it's still the best one around.

Google Earth is pretty darn awesome too (RIP Keyhole)

[loner]

" ... photograph every single street in North America."

Needs to be updated.

[artefaqs]

What other company would have had the audacity to photograph every single street in North America.

Lots of companies. I've seen at least two photographing my city in camera cars in the last couple of years. I looked one up, and it's out of Boston.

More importantly, lots of companies have been systematically photographing the streets and houses of America for decades, and maintain libraries of the content. At least since the 1950's, and probably before. Back then it was on film, but the negatives and the slides still exist. Man, I bet that was an industry that was happy to transition to digital.

The only thing that Google did that counts as innovation is make its pictures available to the public. The companies that did it before Google sold the pictures to local governments, and the real estate and insurance industries. Especially the insurance industry. If your house burned down, the insurance company would pull out its latest photo of your property to help determine the value of the home.

It all goes back to what people have been saying for years -- nothing is new. Just because it's digital or on the internet doesn't mean it's an invention.

[Leosghost]

Probably before

..look up "Francis Frith" photographer..he began photographic "tours" in 1859..I had a B and M in which ( amongst a lot of art books and other stuff, souvenirs and the like ) I used to sell postcards and large prints of his photos of "places" in the UK..he photographed almost every village and town, street scenes, houses, businesses, landmarks, whatever..

All done with Glass plate Cameras and big wooden tripods..

He did other countries too ..began with Egypt and Palestine ( it was then ) in 1856 / 7.

[lexipixel]

The only thing that Google did that counts as innovation is make its pictures available to the public. The companies that did it before Google sold the pictures to local governments, and the real estate and insurance industries.

A lot of German companies photographed (US) landmark buildings, water-works, bridges, armories and other buildings between 1905-1910. They were sold as postcards, but now I really wonder what they were up to...