Google shuts down Google Desktop and nine other projects

September 2, 2011 By Mike Flacy

A belated Spring cleaning hit several projects at Google today. The search giant announced the closure of ten ventures that have been replaced by newer products or simply remained stagnant since launch.

Earlier today, Google CEO Larry Page announced the end of many projects at Google as well as the closure of Aardvark, a start-up that Google acquired in 2010 that was experimenting with social search. The concept of Aardvark was designed to help people answer questions by searching for the most qualified person on the Web. The company was started by former Google employees and is scheduled to be completely shut down by the end of September. Users of Aardvark have until September 30 to download all data related to user accounts.

Google Desktop is also on the chopping block and will be completely shut down on September 14 including all APIs and widgets. Google’s reasoning behind abandoning Desktop is the current shift in data storage from local to the cloud. Google’s Fast Flip is also closing down and will be removed from Google News within the next few days. Fast Flip allowed users to browse through Google News in a magazine-style layout and was previously thought to become the successor to Google News with publishers taking advantage of built-in micropayments to sell content as well as share in the profits of advertising revenue.

Other projects being shut down by Google include Google Sidewiki, a place to leave comments about any webpage given that the user was logged into a Google account, and Subscribed Links, a 2006 project that allows webmasters to create a custom link that users could add to search results. While users of Subscribed Links only have until September 15 to download archived data, users of Google Sidewiki will be allowed a few months to download content. More projects on the chopping block include Google Notebook, Google Image Labeler, Google Web Security, Google Pack and Google Maps API for Flash. These project closures allow Google to refocus employees onto larger projects such as Google+.

Showing 13 comments

LamboP at 3:22pm 5th September 2011 Try the Everything search engine.
Nathan Clarke at 9:34am 4th September 2011 I actually liked Aardvark. But I guess there will be no more aggravation at nubs pasting google search links to me
Raul Neves at 1:50am 4th September 2011 Google has been confusing a democratic workplace with an anarchy. Besides one (ads) is there any other really profitable business area at google? A successful company is not a bunch of self organizing techies, working in whatever projects they come up with by themselfs without direction. Finally they realized a company needs leadership and direction from top, making people creativity and innovation working for shareholder value, instead of self fulfilling toys.
KingOfChaos at 9:42am 3rd September 2011 Google Desktop was a security nightmare anyway, considering it allowed the recovery of deleted files from the hard drive without the owner of said file's permission. Allowing access to password protected accounts online and recovery of information you may not want someone else getting access to.
KingOfChaos at 9:41am 3rd September 2011 Actually, Google Desktop was a massive security hazard you shouldn't have been using at work, anyway. If it was anything like the first version I tried, it allowed people to bypass password protected websites, recover deleted content on your hard drive you may not want others to get access to, etc. and that included websites that had already been deleted from temporary internet files.
TechFreak at 9:26am 3rd September 2011 Again, Google is getting rid of innovation when they decide to close these R&D projects. Now they will be more like Microsoft than ever before - falling some other innovating company rather than pioneering the way themselves.
Mark Oakley at 12:54am 3rd September 2011 I'll miss Google Desktop. I have it to search our servers at work for quotations we have raised, it can search through thousands in less than a second, just what I needed in our busy office. Anyone know of any alternatives I can use instead??
Muhammad Farooq at 7:11am 3rd September 2011 Its called plan 'B' in life! Besides it would be nice to see others fill some of the cyber space in addition to Google.
Joe Abellard at 3:54am 3rd September 2011 Gearing up for N.W.O.
Mark Hermanson at 3:47am 3rd September 2011 ...probably a good initiative since ya can pretty much dial up anything via Windows 7...have that development team hop on the Android OS and other key initiatives :-) Google's concept are very simple and powerful ...Steve Jobs who?
Rodney Verdiner at 3:43am 3rd September 2011 Spreading themselves to thin trying to Chase $$$$
Michael Baksh at 3:37am 3rd September 2011 i have gadgets with win7 so bye bye :D
Gordon LaMontagna at 3:36am 3rd September 2011 HATE google desktop