Google Kills Host of Products, Focuses on Money

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Aardvark -- a question and answer service it acquired for $50 million just last year -- will also be folded, but engineers at Google and Aardvark said the technology it pioneered will live on.

Aardvark uses the contacts in a person's network to provide answers to questions via the Web at Vark.com, instant messaging, email or Twitter.

"Aardvark began as a small experiment in a new kind of social search, and over a few years blossomed into a service that made millions of connections between people to answer each other's questions," Aardvark co-founders Max Ventilla and Damon Horowitz Ventilla said.

"Over this time, we learned a lot about creating and maintaining online communities, and how to facilitate sharing of knowledge between people," they said. "We've been excited to share these lessons within Google over the past year, especially as part of the effort behind Google+"

Under new CEO Larry Page, the company is shifting gears and putting its focus onto monetizing its existing business more effectively.

"Now I think about our products in three separate categories," Page said during the company's Q3 earnings call.

"First, there is search and our ads products, the core driver of revenue for the Company. Next, we have products that are employing high consumer success - YouTube, Android and Chrome. Then we have our new products - Google+ and Commerce and Local."

Google has spawned countless products and services with its 28,000 employees, but investors applauded its strategy to put "more wood behind less arrows," the company said as it shutdown Google Labs earlier this summer.