Google to shut down iGoogle, four other products by 2013-end

Internet giant Google has announced that it will shut down five of its products, including iGoogle, Google Video and Google Chatback, in order to streamline its business.

Google Mini and Symbian Search App would be turned off.

These products would be closed in a phased manner and would be completely shut down by the end of 2013.

"...last fall we started a spring clean, and since then we've closed or combined more than 30 products. Today we're announcing a few more closures," Google Global Enterprise Search general manager Matt Eichner said on the company's blog post.

Five products have been opted for closure on account of them being outdated and the availability of new enhanced product and services.

"Closing products always involves tough choices, but we do think very hard about each decision and its implications for our users. Streamlining our services enables us to focus on creating beautiful technology that will improve people's lives," Eichner said.

One of the products that Google will be turning off is iGoogle, which allows users to personalize their Google homepage. The product which will retire on November 1, 2013, giving users 16 months to adjust or export their data.

According to Google, the product has lost its usefulness with the introduction of modern apps that run on Chrome and Android.
Among the products to be recalled is Google Mini, a smaller and lower-cost solution for small and medium-sized businesses to set up a search engine that allows them to index and search up to 300,000 documents.

The product will be turned off from July 31 this year as products such as Google Search Appliance and Google Commerce Search perform the functions of the product better.

Similarily Google Video, the company's video search engine, which had stopped taking video uploads since 2009, will become fully inactive from August 20. Google will be moving the remaining video content to You Tube.