Google gives up the ghost on Slide, its social software unit, which found itself on the outs with the introduction and success of Google+.
Google CEO
Larry Page has struck again with his "more wood behind fewer arrows"
mission to streamline the search engine giant's products.
While the
company won't confirm this was what happened to the Slide social software unit
Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) acquired a year ago for $228 million, a source
confirmed for
eWEEK that this is
exactly what has happened. Also, Slide founder Max Levchin has left Google.
Last August,
Google
under then-CEO Eric Schmidt acquired Slide, a maker of social games such as
SuperPoke that became popular on MySpace and Facebook.
This was right
around the time dozens of software engineers were building the Google+ social
network. Rather than assign Slide CEO Levchin to the Google+ team, he and his
team were allowed to work on their own social media applications from Google's
San Francisco office.
Those
applications began
appearing
in the last six months or so. There was
Disco,
a group-messaging application; photo-sharing applications
Pool Party and
PhotoVine; and
Video Inbox for
viral video consumption. Interestingly, these applications worked for Apple's
iPhone, not Google's Android platform.
Google paid
hundreds of thousands of dollars to secure these domains. Many journalists and
pundits expected these applications would somehow be applied to Google+, which
launched to limited field-testing in June.
However,
Page's resumption of the reigns made it apparent that all presumptions to
Google's Web services were off of the table. Page, who streamlined Google's
executive management, embarked on a big cost-cutting plan, shuttering
Google
Health and PowerMeter in June and axing
Google
Labs in July.
Slide is the
latest casualty of casual attrition. According to a
Slide blog post: "We created products with the goal
of providing a fun way for people to connect, communicate and share While we
are incredibly grateful to our users and for all of the wonderful feedback over
the years, many of these products are no longer as active or haven't caught on
as we originally hoped."
Slide will
help users preserve their data via download or transfer to another service.
AllThingsDigital, which broke the
news, said many Slide employees would land at Google's YouTube video-sharing
unit. Curiously, Prizes.org, which is being developed by the Slide China team,
will survive the axe.
With Google
thinning at this rapid rate, it could be whittled back down to search, Android,
Chrome and YouTube by Christmas.
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