The Consequences Of Current Economy Dynamics: Google Closes Several Projects
Google has announced the closing of several existing projects: Google Video, Google Catalog Search, Google Notebook, Dodgeball, Jaiku and Google Mashup Editor. These decisions could represent the consequences of the current economy state and dynamics, reflected over the global level of Internet usage. (related article:
Over a few months, the support for uploading videos on Google Video will no longer be available, but users having a valid accound will be able to upload video content on YouTube and Picasa. In the same time, the Google Video service will continue to provide the same powerful technology of searching videos across the entire web. In the next months, Dodgeball.com, a mobile social networking service provided by Google will be also closed.
Another discontinued project is Google Catalog Search service, which demonstrated the advantages of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technique and provided access to hundreds of product catalogs with full text search.
Alongside this project, Google Notebook will not longer be developed, but the existing subscribed users to this service will be able to enjoy its benefits. The current users are advised to switch to a more powerful alternative, Google Docs.
Google App Engine will include Jaiku Engine under the Apache License, while the microblogging service will still be functional. On the other hand, Mashup Editor will no longer be available, the Google App Engine powerful infrastructure providing a reliable alternative.
Given these facts, a future list of Google services that will be discontinued in the near future could appear. For further news regarding Google services, you can check Google Official Blog.
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