Every few months, Google decides to shut down or merge a number of its projects that it feels doesn"t fit with the company"s direction anymore. The last such announcement was made in January. Today, Google announced several more of its programs will be retired in the near future.
In a post on Google"s official blog, the company went over the latest victims of its "spring cleaning in the summer." One of them is Google Video. The company bought YouTube several years ago and stopped accepting new uploads for Google Video back in 2009. People who still have videos hosted on Google Video have until August 20th to download, delete or move their content.
Google will move the remaining videos from that service to YouTube later this summer. The content will be set up as private videos that users can later access in YouTube"s video manager.
The company also announced that Google Mini, which offered search features for small business websites, will be shut down on July 31. Google feels that other applications such as Google Search Appliance, Google Site Search and Google Commerce Search can better handle the features that Google Mini users have had since 2005.
Google Talk Chatback, which allowed website creators a way to embed a Google Talk chat client, is now being retired in favor of the Meebo bar. Also, the company"s Symbian Search App will also be unavailable for download in the future.
Finally, iGoogle, which let people create their own customized home page, will be closed on November 1, 2013. Its current users will have until then to export their data.
Source: Google blog