Google undergoes housecleaning, Video and Tags services killed off

Google released its first-quarter 2011 financial report late last week, and while the company’s profits are up 17 percent overall, its earnings per share fell short of expectations and its stock prices slid as a result. The Google bosses are almost certainly looking for ways to cut costs now, a fact which we’re seeing signs of in the company’s move to axe two now-redundant services: Google Video and Google Tags.

The Google Video move in particular has been a long time coming. It all started two years ago, when the company announced that it would no longer support uploads to the site. Now CenterNetworks has confirmed that the content portal’s deconstruction will continue in the coming weeks, with a total shutdown to commence before the start of summer. Starting on April 29, videos hosted on the site will no longer be viewable. You’ll still be able to download whatever you happen to have posted however, though that feature will be cut off on May 13.

The site did some testing and discovered that some users are running into a problem where the download link isn’t visible for their hosted videos. There’s a solution, however. CenterNetworks writes: “Just hover over the link “Edit Video Info” and copy the CID into the following link: http://www.google.com/video/upload/DownloadVideo?cid=XXXXXXX&hl=en.”

In related news, TechCrunch reports that Google is also killing off its Tags service, which allows local business to enhance their listings on Google Places and Google Maps for a flat monthly rate. If you do a Google Maps search for a particular business/type of business, any listings that pop up with a yellow tag and include additional links are powered by Tags. The company apparently sent out an e-mail to merchants last week informing them that the service would be discontinued on April 29.

While both cost-cutting measures were probably in some way informed by the results printed in the recently released financial report, these are two Google services which both became redundant in recent years. Video was a fierce YouTube competitor in the early Aughts, but Google acquired the company in 2005. Understandably, Video users are advised in the e-mail referenced above to re-post their videos on YouTube.

It’s a similar situation with Tags, now being bested by the Google’s Boost service, which manifests on the Internet as blue-colored pushpins in Maps and paid search results, pulling content from the business in question’s Google Places listing. TechCrunch also points to Yext Tags, which will be renamed to PowerListings on Monday, for offering businesses tag purchases on a range of non-Google sites, such as CitySearch.

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