According to a new post by Google VP of Product Bradley Horowitz, on the official company blog, Google is delivering the death blow to several more products and services, including its code search engine, Buzz, Jaiku, iGoogle features and the University Research Program for Google Search, the latter which provides API access to Google Search results for a small number of academic institutions.
Here are the details on the new shutdowns, per Google:
- Code Search, which was designed to help people search for open source code all over the web, will be shut down along with the Code Search API on January 15, 2012.
- In a few weeks we’ll shut down Google Buzz and the Buzz API, and focus instead on Google+. While people obviously won’t be able to create new posts after that, they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile, and download it using Google Takeout.
- Jaiku, a product we acquired in 2007 that let users send updates to friends, will shut down on January 15, 2012. We’ll be working to enable users to export their data from Jaiku.
- Several years ago, we gave people the ability to interact socially on iGoogle. With our new focus on Google+, we will remove iGoogle’s social features on January 15, 2012. iGoogle itself, and non-social iGoogle applications, will stay as they are.
- The University Research Program for Google Search, which provides API access to our search results for a small number of approved academic researchers, will close on January 15, 2012.
Google also said that it will be closing down the Google Labs site, as it promised earlier. That site will be gone as of today, so get your last visit in now. In addition, Boutiques.com and Like.com will now be replaced by Google Product Search.
These latest closures come on the heels of several other service shutdowns from the company whose previous strategy seemed to involve throwing a bunch of a spaghetti on the wall to see what sticked. In June, it shut down Google Health. In August, Google killed off the projects from its Slide acquisition, and in September, it killed Aardvark. Despite all the streamlining and shutdowns, Google has previously stated that its “20% Time Project” isn’t going anywhere.