At the top of this latest wave of products that the Mountain View, Calif.-based corporation canceling is Google Mini, which was launched in 2005 as a smaller, less expensive option to the Search Appliance.
The company says this midsummer, five-product death notice is part of a “spring clean” the company started last fall. On the run first in line on anvil is the Google Mini, which like its more sophisticated cousin is a hardware box loaded with Google search software and designed to be installed on customer premises, will be discontinued as of July 31.
The Mini had “a good run,” but its functionality is better provided by other enterprise search products like the Search Appliance and the cloud-hosted applications Site Search and Commerce Search, wrote Matt Eichner, general manager of Global Enterprise Search, in a blog post.
“We will of course continue to provide technical support to Mini customers for the duration of their contracts, and will reach out to them shortly with more details,” he wrote.
Among other products getting the ax is Google Talk Chatback, which lets Web publishers plant a Google Talk widget on their sites to communicate with their visitors. That product is now “obsolete” so it will be turned off and websites are being encouraged to use the Meebo bar instead.
Another is Google Video, which has been closed to uploads since mid-2009, will have its remaining hosted videos transferred to YouTube “later this summer,” and its users will have until Aug. 20 to migrate, delete or download their content.
“We will then transfer all remaining Google Video content to YouTube as private videos that users can access in the YouTube video manager,” Eichner wrote.
Also on the anvil is widget board iGoogle is just one example of a platform that made a lot of sense back in 2008. But with the ability to add apps to your browser on Chrome and Android, this one just looks outdated already. Not to mention you can configure your Google+ page to perform a lot of the similar news and updates activities as well.
“With modern apps that run on platforms like Chrome and Android, the need for iGoogle has faded away over time, so we will be wrapping it down,” Eichner, wrote in a blog post.
Google will retire iGoogle on Nov. 1, 2013, so users have 16 months to “adjust or export their data,” Eichner said.
Among other things, the Symbian Search app is being retired, meanwhile, so Google can focus on its mobile Web search experience.
“Closing products always involves tough choices, but we do think very hard about each decision and its implications for our users,” Eichner wrote. “Streamlining our services enables us to focus on creating beautiful technology that will improve people’s lives.”
Nevertheless, Google has been cleaning house for more than a year, ever since Larry Page took the helm as CEO and shifted to a product-focused management structure. In September Google announced the shutdown of services like Aardvark and Flip, and followed that up with the end of Google Buzz and other products like Google Labs, Boutiques.com, and more. In Nov. 2011, it also announced the end of Gears, Wave, Knol, and more.