Google cuts more services; business users take the brunt
Search giant Google is cutting a handful of business and education related services from Google Apps to make way for bigger and better things. Or nothing, as the case may be.
More than 50 products, feature and services have seen changes over the past year, including merging and shutting down products to preserve the company's resources on lackluster ventures.
Google Apps is the search giant's enterprise communications and collaboration service, allowing enterprises, businesses small and large, and schools and colleges to outsource their platforms to the cloud. But all good things must come to an end, and starting from next month, some services will cease to exist.
To wit:
Google Apps for Teams started in 2008 and allowed Google Apps users, from business domains or hooked-up schools and colleges to collaborate over Google's non-email applications, such as Docs, Calendar, and Talk. It's shuttering citing reasons that it was "not as useful for people as [Google] originally anticipated]." Google Apps for Teams will close September 4, 2012.
Google Video for Business will see the chopping block come fall. Designed to allow business and education customers to use video for "internal communication," all videos will be migrated over to Google Drive -- rather than public-facing YouTube. Videos will not count against Google Drive's overall quota and will be stored for free.
Also: Google Listen will cease to exist after November 1, 2012. First designed for podcast users back in 2009, Google said there are a variety of podcasting apps now available, along with a wide selection from Google Play, making the service redundant.
Google is slashing the number of blogs it maintains in order to consolidate how it communicates with its users. With more than 150 blogs covering different services, the search giant said it will axe channels that are "either updated infrequently, or are redundant with other blogs" in the coming weeks and months, but will not scrimp on the information it dishes out through its blogs.
The firm will likely face a backlash from some -- such as those who continue to protest at the shutdown of iGoogle and enterprise-focused Google Mini -- but out of the smelting pot of service brewing have come some good things, namely Google Drive.