Google Shelves More Products; Including Research Efforts on Renewable Energy
Google continues its latest campaign of retiring products and services that the tech giant admitted failed to deliver the desired results, company officials said.
On Tuesday, Google Operations Senior Vice President Urs Holzle announced in a blog post that more projects will be axed, a move that he stressed is in line with CEO Larry Page's company streamlining efforts.
Mr Page's overall blueprint, which he unveiled when he re-assumed Google's top post earlier this year, calls for the elimination of company offerings that were assessed as considerable failures, Mr Holzle said.
"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," Mr Holzle was quoted by Agence France Presse (AFP) as saying in his blog post.
Targeted for immediate retirements are Wave, Knol, Timeline, Gears, Bookmark Lists and Friend Connect, all of which, Google said, would cease existing between April and October in 2012.
Mr Holzle said that Google plans to either integrate these services to other products that have become popular with Google users while some of them will be sent to the archives.
The move was revealed following Google's decision in October to shelve projects such Fast Flip, Aardvark and Sidewiki, which was preceded by the sidelining of other high-profile services such as the social networking tool Google Buzz and Google Video services.
These products, in turn, have been effectively replaced by Google+ and YouTube, a video sharing service that has become the industry standard worldwide and which Google had purchased years ago.
One high-level casualty of Mr Page's elimination program is Google's take on tapping renewable energy resources for its operation as the company opted to ditch its 'Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal', which Mr Holzle said would have found effective ways to drive down the cost of generating power from the sun.
After some careful consideration, Google realised that "other institutions are better positioned than Google to take this research to the next level," Mr Holzle said.
He stressed though that Google will sustain its interest in renewable energy sources and in the future will reconsider investment options for the technology.