Google plans Downsizing on List

The out-of-season "spring clean" brings an end to services including Google Wave, Knol and Google Gears. Google announced the move in its official blog. "We're in the process of shutting a number of products which haven't had the impact we'd hoped for, integrating others as features into our broader product efforts, and ending several which have shown us a different path forward," said Urs Holzle, Google's vice president of operations.

"Overall, our aim is to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience," he added.
Wave goodbye
Google Wave - an attempt to combine email and instant messaging for real-time collaboration
Google Bookmarks List - a service which allowed users to share bookmarks with friends
Google Gears - much-hyped effort to maintain web browser functionality when working offline
Google Search Timeline - a graph of historical query results
Google had previously announced its plans to kill off some of the projects on the list.

Some experts think that Google is streamlining in order to concentrate on its Facebook rival Google+.--continued its out-of-season spring cleaning this week, announcing shutdown dates for several of its products, including Gears, Wave, Knol, and more. "Overall, our aim is to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience." Knol was essentially Google's answer to Wikipedia. Google announced the demise of Wave, meanwhile, in August 2010, but the product will officially retire on Jan. 31, after which Wave will become read-only and users will not be able to create new waves.

If you still need a taste of Wave, Google suggested checking out open-source projects like Apache Wave or Walkaround. Also on the chopping block is Google's renewable energy effort, known as "RE < C." Google Gears was originally launched in 2007 as a tool for allowing Web-based Google applications to work offline, like rivals Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes. Google Bookmarks Lists, an experimental feature for sharing bookmarks and collaborating with friends, will end on Dec. 19. Google Friend Connect will shut down on March 1 and sharing efforts will shift to Google+. In September Google announced the shutdown of services like Aardvark and Flip, and followed that up last month with the end of Google Buzz and other products like Google Labs, Boutiques.com, and more.

The plans, which Google announced on its corporate blog, represent the third so-called "spring cleaning" announcement that Google has made since Google co-founder Page took the reins in April. Google said that it believed other institutions were better positioned to take its renewable energy efforts "to the next level." A Google spokesman said that Weihl had left Google earlier this month. Google noted in its blog post that it would continue efforts to generate "cleaner, more efficient energy," including procuring renewable energy for its data centers. Among the other projects included in Tuesday's "spring cleaning" were Google Knol, Google Search Timeline, Google Gear, Google Friend Connect, Google Bookmarks Lists and Google Wave, an ill-fated social networking and communication service that Google had previously said it would cease developing.

Google said that in December its email and calendar applications will no longer work with Gears technology, which allows Google's software to work when not connected to the Internet. Google said it is working to create offline capabilities into HTML5 technology instead. Google Friend Connect, which allows website publishers to add social features to their sites, will be retired in March for all non-Blogger websites, Google said. It suggested that websites use its Google+ social network instead. Earlier this year, Google said it would "wind down" Google Labs, a website that offered public access to experimental Google products, as well as terminating products that let consumers monitor their home energy consumption and keep track of their personal health records.