iGoogle's customized version for iPhone's Mobile Safari is gone: iGoogle is a way to create a set of widgets and other items from Google that display for you on a login page. The iPhone and Android version was better formatted for the WebKit-based browser found in both phones. Now, it's gone. The folks at Download Squad got a tepid answer from a Google product manager, who said they wanted to offer the same (apparently bad) mobile experience to all phone users. Which is a bit silly given that Apple now has a huge share of the smartphone market and the No. 2 competitor, Research in Motion has a crummy browser in its BlackBerrys. Ah, well; easy come, easy go. [Thanks to Matthew Y for the tip!]
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Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land rounds up Google's slaughter of the services: He writes, Google's changes include "an end to video uploads to Google Video, closure of Google Catalog Search, Google Notebook, Dodgeball, the microblogging service Jaiku and the Google Mashup Editor."
As noted earlier in this blog, Google has already shut some services down like Lively (a 3D world with avatars) and JotSpot (which was migrated into Google's wiki service, but with some features dropped, like class reunions).
Sullivan has run down the Google blog entries that detail the changes, so I'm cribbing from his work here, and annotating with my own take.
Google Video: Upload will no longer be allowed in the near future; videos that have been uploaded will remain. The service will be refocused on search instead of sharing. Google bought YouTube for a reason.
Google Catalog: This move has little impact on regular users, because it wasn't a hosted offering. Google Catalog was an effort to turn print catalogs via OCR into online searchable listings.
Google Notebook: The service allowed you to annotate Google search results by linking and creating notes. Google has various offerings that replicate but don't fully replace this offering, which obviously didn't have enough uptake to develop. The service won't stop working for those using it, but no one can newly sign up for Notebook, nor will development proceed.
Jaiku, Dodgeball, and Mashup Editor: Jaiku was a Twitter-like service for creating communication among friends; the project will move to a different platform (Google App Engine), and volunteers will maintain the code, which will be released as open source. Dodgeball was an SMS-based notification service for informing friends of your whereabouts, among other social lubrication. Mashup Editor let you create applications from simple pieces, but it's also migrating to the App Engine architecture for good reason.
Google is getting serious by reducing the number of projects in the works, and teaching people that beta isn't just the second letter in the Greek alphabet.
I don't think that People Connection was originally meant to be a death pool: However, AOL has turned this blog into a relentless drumming of sites and projects they're canceling, including several I was unaware that AOL wrote. There must be a lot of layoffs and shifting around at the firm, given how many sites are shutting down.
For instance, Circavie, a personal timeline feature, will erase itself from all four dimensions on 15-January-2009; there's no apparent way to extract timelines you've created. Ficlets, a kind of exquisite corpse for the digital world, will also be shredded on 15-January-2009.
One of the People Connection bloggers is still trying to maintain a good attitude, though. Kelly Wilson posts in the middle of the death march of shutdowns, "What's on your plate this Thanksgiving? Share a recipe or your favorite dish!"
Pownce, a mash-up of instant messaging, file-transfer, and Twitter-like features lies down for the great recline on 15-December-2008: The service was intended to make it easier for groups of friends to exchange messages, invitations, pictures, and other communications. It was a great success in getting people to use it, but one expects not on the monetization side.
As appears to be a trend, the founders Ariel Waldman and Mike Malone, are shuttering the service, going to work for another firm (in this case, Six Apart), and selling their Pownce technology to Six Apart as part of the deal. Six Apart is one of two major blog-software and hosting firms, developing Movable Type and hosting TypePad and Vox. (WordPress is the other major pure-play firm in that space.)
This move mirrors the shut down Values of n, a company run by Rael Dornfest, who will turn off its two hosted offerings and take a job with Twitter, bringing along his intellectual property. (See "I Want Sandy and Stikkit Melt Away on 8-December-2008.")
It's come to this already! Someone I know is shutting his company's doors: Rael Dornfest, once an O'Reilly man about town and conference organizer, and fine, fine fellow, has sold the intellectual property of his firm Values of n to Twitter, and will be joining them as an employee.
Values of n ran two Web applications for reminders and notes: I Want Sandy and Stikkit. I Want Sandy was a reminder service where you could have the eponymous Sandy send you email, SMS, Tweets (via Twitter), and other forms of communication for reminders. Stikkit was a somewhat intelligent sticky note Web app that let you enter freeform and lightly structured data to keep track of stuff without having to launch separate contact/notes/calendar/email programs to pull it together.
Rael, a quintessentially good guy in my experience with him, noted in the farewell post that both services have a variety of ways to export data; that Stikkit has a full API that can pull out more information; and they're providing even more tools for export before they shut down.
Sandy won't live here any more and Stikkit will have a fork in it on 8-December-2008.
