Google"s website publishers tool, Meebo bar, is retiring after 5 years out on the field. The bar was a tool that publishers could put on their site for users to share to social networks and often featured links to the sites Facebook, Twitter account or other relevant pages that the user could pick.
Google today announced that it will be closing the service in an effort to focus its resources towards its Google+ Sign-In service and other plug-ins for the social network. The company says that after the 6th of June, all installs of the the code will stop working.
Meebo was acquired last year by Google which it subsequently added a strong emphasis on its Google+ platform. By closing this service and putting more emphasis on Google+, it"s clear that Google is trying to keep users on its own social network, instead of trying to let users post content on rival networks.
Google launched its Google+ Sign-In as a direct competitor to Facebook connect which many websites and other networks use for users to log-on to their services.
Here"s Google"s announcement:
Five years ago, we launched the Meebo Bar to bring community, engagement, and revenue to publisher sites.
As part of the Google team, this continues to be our focus, but we want to best serve mobile and desktop publishers moving forward. Therefore, we have decided to focus our resources on initiatives like the recently launched Google+ Sign-In (which includes interactive posts and over-the-air app installs) and the Google+ plug-ins.
This means we will retire the Meebo Bar, effective June 6, 2013.
Thank you for being a Meebo Bar publisher. We have truly appreciated the opportunity to serve you.
Sincerely,
Sandy, Seth, and the Meebo Team
Google has been on a bit of a spring clean lately, clearing out a few of its services - most notably Google Reader which it will shut down on July 1st.
Source: The Next Web | Image via Google