Google Discontinues Sync Support And Other Services In Winter Purge

San Francisco – It is that time of year again-with Winter Google begins leading its ostensibly lonely and unloved services out to pasture. The search engine giant over the weekend announced that they are doing some “winter cleaning” by getting rid of some of their services and features that they think were not getting a lot of use. One of the significant services they are ought to phase out is its Sync service for consumers and discontinue several other services in early January.

This time, Google said that it is closing down a handful of products, including several that make it easier to synchronize data between devices. Among them is Google Sync, which was designed to allow access to GMail, Calendar, and Contacts via the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol – hence, customers would not be able to create new accounts after January 30, but existing connections will continue to function, but the company is recommending that users move to alternatives.

The announcements came as part of “winter cleaning,” one of the company’s periodic purges of products it no longer wishes to support. Also on the anvil are, Google Sync for Nokia S60, as will SyncML will all go away; the Issue Tracker Data API; and Punchd, a smartphone app for organizing digital loyalty cards.

Here is the breakdown, with all the dates you need to know:

• Google Calendar: Several “less popular” features are going away on January 4, 2013.
• Google Sync: You would not be able to set up new devices on January 30, 2013.
• Google Calendar Sync: Discontinued on December 14, 2012.
• Google Sync for Nokia S60: Discontinued on January 30, 2013.
• SyncML: Shutting down on January 30, 2013.
• Issue Tracker Data API: Shutting down on June 14, 2013.
• Punchd: Android and iOS apps discontinued and merchants will no longer honor loyalty cards on June 7, 2013.

Google said, with the introduction of new CardDAV open protocol provides the same functionality, but starting on January 30th, you would not be able to sign up for a new Google Sync account. The company says that existing accounts will trudge through unaffected, and Google Sync will no longer be available on new accounts beginning January 30, 2013, but it will still work for users who already have it set up for Google Apps for Business, Government and Education.

Finally, as a part of the company’s winter cleaning effort, the company is also shutting down their Issue Tracker API in Google Code, and will also be discontinuing their Punchd Android and iOS app, which was an app that could store loyalty cards from various stores.