Google Lays Off 100, Shutters DodgeBall, Jaiku, Videos and few more

GoogleWifi In a series of blog posts, Google has announced that they’ll be discontinuing 100 employees and shutting down uploads to Google Videos and ceasing development of Jaiku, DodgeBall, Google Notebook, Google Catalog Search and Google Mashup Editor.

After Google’s acquisition of YouTube, Google Videos became redundant, so it was transformed into a video search engine. Uploads were still allowed, but from this point onwards, that’ll be stopped as well. However, existing video content can still be viewed. We’ll miss Google Videos as it had no limit on video length (YouTube limits the videos to be under 10 minutes)

Jaiku microblogging service was a rival to Twitter, it was under invite-only beta when acquired by Google. Jaiku’s code will be made open source and will be available on Google Code for anybody to develop their own microblogging platform. Jaiku will be shifted to App Engine, where it will continue to run under the support of volunteer Googlers. This announcement makes Twitter, the only surviving microblogging platform (Pownce was closed down last year).

I’m wondering about the fate of other less-popular Google services, such as Knol. Any thoughts on this one?

Via: Search Engine Land

This post was published by on January 15, 2009

About the Author: Thilak Rao works as a Social Media Expert. He is one of the first professional bloggers from India, and he loves to write, travel and click photos. Follow him on Twitter @thilak

  • http://www.netage.co.za/web-marketing/ Marketing

    Damn, so many apps being shedded all at once. Well I do admit that all the above mentioned programs were against greater giants than them, but axing them seems a bit too drastic for Google. I thought that Google thrives on competition against any popular online apps or programs.

    I’m a bit disappointed. :-(

  • http://www.seoresults.co.za/pages/seo-tips/ SEO Tips South Africa

    We’ve been spoilt the past couple of years, with a plethora of web based services and apps from loads of service providers, incl Google. The world economy is in utter disarray, and when even giants like Google start to trim excess, non-profitable ventures it indicates that the recession is rally starting to bite.

    One can expect more and more consolidation from players in the market, focusing on what works the best and spending their R&D budgets on those apps. Sadly it seems that we’re going to lose tons on fringe apps and services across the board.

  • http://www.eczema-free.org eczema

    It’s a shame to see google videos go. Most of the great free videos I watch are on Google video. Does a company that size and with that much power really need to save a few bucks by shutting down one of their best features? I seriously think that’s a mistake. Jaiku can go down the tubes with Google Answers, but Google Video should definitely stay…

  • sumant

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