Google to Shut Down Aardvark and 9 Other Products [FULL TEXT]

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"This will make things much simpler for our users, improving the overall Google experience," Eustace said of killing the projects. "It will also mean we can devote more resources to high-impact products-the ones that improve the lives of billions of people. All the Googlers working on these projects will be moved over to higher-impact products."

Here's Eustace's statement on the Google projects shut down:

A fall spring-clean

9/02/2011 12:45:00 PM Technology improves, people's needs change, some bets pay off and others don't. So, as Larry previewed on our last earnings call, today we're having a fall spring-clean at Google.

Over the next few months we'll be shutting down a number of products and merging others into existing products as features. The list is below. This will make things much simpler for our users, improving the overall Google experience. It will also mean we can devote more resources to high impact products-the ones that improve the lives of billions of people. All the Googlers working on these projects will be moved over to higher-impact products. As for our users, we'll communicate directly with them as we make these changes, giving sufficient time to make the transition and enabling them to take their data with them.

Here's a quick overview of where a number of products and features are headed:

- Aardvark: Aardvark was a start-up we acquired in 2010. An experiment in a new kind of social search, it helped people answer each other's questions. While Aardvark will be closing, we'll continue to work on tools that enable people to connect and discover richer knowledge about the world.

- Desktop: In the last few years, there's been a huge shift from local to cloud-based storage and computing, as well as the integration of search and gadget functionality into most modern operating systems. People now have instant access to their data, whether online or offline. As this was the goal of Google Desktop, the product will be discontinued on September 14, including all the associated APIs, services, plugins, gadgets and support.

- Fast Flip: Fast Flip was started to help pioneer news content browsing and reading experiences for the web and mobile devices. For the past two years, in collaboration with publishers, the Fast Flip experiment has fueled a new approach to faster, richer content display on the web. This approach will live on in our other display and delivery tools.