Google Labs is winding down this year, with gradual shutter dates for all of the experiments. Google Squared and several more services have had their morgue tickets punched.
Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) has arranged some more closing dates
for its various
Google Labs Web services as part of CEO Larry Page's plan to put "more
wood behind fewer arrows."
That is Page's code for focusing on more strategic aspects of the company's
business, such as search, Google+, Android, Chrome and YouTube.
Page first
issued the more wood, fewer arrows remark in June, when he shuttered Google Health and PowerMeter. This credo was the title of a blog post Google made in July to
announce
the gradual closure of Google Labs, the company's broad experimentation effort.
At the time, Google said it would only announce new Labs closings via the Labs Website.
Search Engine Land noted that Google News Timeline, which surfaced news search
items in a timeline format, closed Aug. 17, and that the Google Squared spreadsheet
visualization application would wind down Sept. 5.
Meanwhile, any Squares Squared users built with the
service will be deleted unless they export them to CSV files or Google
Spreadsheets using the Export function on the upper-right hand side of the
Squared screen. Squared will still be featured in some search results.
Google has dates for more Labs closings. Script
Converter, which let users read text in any language they chose, was closed Aug.
16. The Sputnik JavaScript conformance test suite will go kaput Aug. 31.
The Google Breadcrumb mobile learning tool will be shutting down
Sept. 2. CityTours, which suggested popular sites to tourists via
Google Maps, is
closing Sept. 6.
Google Talk Guru, which let users get answers to a
multitude of questions via Google Talk, will close at the end of September
2011. Google Image Swirl, a neat image search trick that shows results in a
circle graph, is going to get the kibosh soon.
Other Labs escaped the morgue.
App Inventor for Android
lives on at MIT. Google Scribe graduated from Google Labs and is used in
Blogger. Swiffy, the developer tool that lets users convert Flash SWF files to
HTML5, is moving to another domain.
Google Books Ngram Viewer will be graduating from Google Labs and will be incorporated into Google Books.
Search the experiments in
Google Labs for additional closings or Labs migrations.
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