Google’s revamp continues with another set of services that got shut down. Google adds to the list of services it killed recently Google Apps for Teams, Google Listen and Google Video for Business.
Another 50 products in Google’s portfolio got killed or modified over the past year. The internet tycoon has been going through a major revamp and part of that strategy means killing products that don’t deliver. But for those few users that had a thing for Google Apps for Teams or Google Video for Business, the company has something bigger and better prepared.
Earlier this month, Max Ibel, director of engineering at Google, announced via a blog post Google’s decision to kill some services. It’s all part of the company’s goal to “create a more seamless, beautiful user experience – to give you a better, easier-to-use Google”.
Google Apps for Teams was introduced four years ago. It was part of Google’s educational and business solutions as it allowed people to collaborate through Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Talk provided they had a confirmed business or school email. But as Max Ibel wrote in his post, “Google Apps for Teams was not as useful for people as we originally anticipated”. Google Apps for Teams will be converted into personal Google Accounts as of September 4, 2012.
Google Listen was launched August 2009, before Google Play became the favorite alternative. So now Google Listen is to be discontinued by Google. As of November 1 2012, the podcast search in Google Listen won’t function anymore, but podcast subscriptions can still be accessed from Google Reader in “Listen Subscriptions” folder.
Eric Ravenscraft. Android Police, said the hope is Google Listen will be integrated with Google Play. “Built-in podcast functionality as part of Play Music, as well as perhaps listing pages for podcasts in the Play Store would be really, really nice (and if it happens, you can bet we’ll be there”.
The third service Google decided to kill recently is Google Video for Business. “Starting this fall, we’ll migrate all videos hosted on Google Video for Business over to Google Drive, which has similar storage and sharing capabilities”, reads Max Ibel’s blog post.