Google seems to be working on re-structuring and re-shaping all the projects that are currently running under the gambit of active projects. Like some other technology giants, Google seems to be looking to churn out the non-performing projects or the ones that have been essentially laggards in the scheme of things at the Google headquarters.
And with the financial year coming to a close in another 6 weeks time, the time seems to be absolutely apt for such a makeover of the organization and reduction of the obvious flab in terms of projects that have lost meaning or considerable significance over the past few months.
The 4 applications or platforms that have lost favor with the current schema at Google are:
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Google Bids Adieu – 4 Applications
1. Knol
Once considered a competitor to WordPress, Knol will become history in the next year. The platform was considered a right choice for content collaboration. However, is will close its shop on 30th April, 2012 and all the ‘Knols’ will be beyond public viewable status. The users will be able to download their content until October, 2012. After this date, Knol will be completely off the web.
2. Google Friend Connect
Once considered a nice tool for Social Collaboration, the ‘Google Friend Connect’ will be taken-off in the month of March, 2012. The application and the platform will only be available for the ‘Blogger’ platform after this date. Google encourages users to adopt and use the Google+ in place of the ‘Friend Connect’ as a preferred medium to collaborate socially.
3. Google Wave
The Wave platform shall be retired in April, 2012. The platform will become read-only on 31st January, 2012 after which Google will allow users to download their ‘waves’ before April 30th. The current set of ‘waves’ can be exported using the ‘export to PDF’ option available on the Google Wave.
4. Google Gear
The platform for creating offline web applications, aka the ‘Google Gears’ will be taken off the web in December. Starting 1st December, the ‘Gears’ for offline web application programming will be unavailable for Gmail and Google Calendar. Eventually the entire platform will be brought down before the end of the year.
Now, apart from these four, Google is also looking to put an end to the sharing feature on the Google Bookmarks and this could be again a part of the company’s strategy to promote the use of Google+. On a similar basis, Google has also shelved the project to create renewable energy at a lesser cost than Coal. Now, this could be easily explained by the fact that Google really does not have the domain knowledge to produce energy from renewable sources.
On its part, the company has mentioned that it will look forward to making use of energy derived from the renewable sources in its data centers as part of its efforts to promote cleaner and greener environment.