Seven more Google products meet their demise in accord with Larry Page’s spring push for a slimmer, more focused company. Among the list is the Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal (RE<C) initiative and the Wikipedia-esque Knol.
The continued “spring cleaning” was announced on Tuesday in a blog post from Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Operations & Google Fellow. This marks the third round of product cuts since current Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page took over for Eric Schmidt earlier this year. Programs which did not have the impact desired have been shut down or integrated as features into new products.
Out of the seven recently cut, the RE<C initiative seemed the most ambitious as Google aimed at generating cheap, renewable electricity on a globally significant scale. The search giant says that other companies are now “better positioned” to advance the research required. Goole will continue renewable energy efforts on a smaller scale.
Next on the cut list is Knol, launched in 2007, an open-source Wikipedia challenger that never made it off the ground. Knol will continue till April of next year, and will allow downloading and exporing of knols until October 2012. Google Wave is officially getting shut down as well, though the company stopped development on that product a year ago. Offline web apps browser Google Gears is also getting its official shut down, which will happen in December. The last couple prodcuts shuttered are Google Search Timeline, Google Bookmarks Lists and Google Friend Connect (replaced by Google Plus).
Other products Google pulled the plug on earlier in the year include: Google Labs, Jaiku, Buzz, Fast Flip, Slide, Desktop, Aardvark and more. All of this is in attempt to put, as CEO Larry Page phrased it back in July, “more wood behind fewer arrows”.
