It’s spring and Google’s back to taking out the trash with many more products and services hitting a dead end. In addition to this, the Mountain View-based search giant has even carried out a number of changes to various offerings.
From June 1, 2012, onwards, the company plans on dropping support for the Google Sync for BlackBerry. The mobile web app for Google Talk is also scheduled to shut down sometime soon. Along with the Picasa Web Albums Uploader for Mac and the Web Albums Plugin for iPhoto, the Picasa for Linux tool will no longer be available for download. Moreover, the Patent Search homepage is expected to be redirected to Google.com for a better search experience. Various new patents from other countries and additional features to this service are expected to roll out sometime in the future.
Matthias Schwab, Director, Cloud Services, expressed, “Over the last six months we’ve done a lot of spring cleaning—though it’s all happened out of season. Spring has now arrived and we’re ready to close or combine another round of products. Focus is crucial if we are to improve our execution. We have so many opportunities in front of us that without hard choices we risk doing too much and not having the impact we strive for.”
According to the official Google blog, a few changes have also been made to a handful of products and services. Besides the introduction of new APIs, the company plans on adopting a one-year deprecation policy for certain ones and might even knock off the deprecation policy for others. The Google App Engine, Cloud Storage, Maps and Earth as well as YouTube APIs are the latest additions to fall under the one-year deprecation policy.
Most changes to the aforementioned services and products are already in effect. And the main purpose for carrying out these modifications is apparently aimed towards ‘creating a simpler, more beautiful user experience across Google.’