Google continues clean-up and shuts down more services

Google has continued its cleaning process, announcing yet another round of services and subsidiaries that will be shut down as the internet giant focuses more on its core services and scraps unprofitable ventures.

The move comes after two separate rounds of closures, with Google announcing a number of services including Buzz, Code Search, and the University Research Program.

“Overall, our aim is to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience,” senior vice president of operations Urs Holzle said in a statement.

The announcements are a continuation of the strategy implemented by chief executive Larry Page, who wants to limit the amount of Google’s various experiments and services in order to focus on a select few.

The new closures include Google Bookmarks Lists, Google Friend Connect, which allowed webmasters to add social features to sites, and Google Gears, which was a browser extension for offline web apps.

One of the more interesting closures in Knol, which was launched back in 2007 as a type of alternative to Wikipedia. But despite a few dedicated users the service has never really taken off.

“Knol will work as usual until April 30, 2012, and you can download your knols to a file and/or migrate them to WordPress.com,” Holzle said in the blog post. “From May 1 through October 1, 2012, knols will no longer be viewable, but can be downloaded and exported. After that time, Knol content will no longer be accessible.”

The Google Search Timeline is also on the chopping block, which allowed users to see a graphical representation of the history for certain search queries.

One of the biggest announcements was the closure of Google Wave. While plans to shut down the service have already been announced several months ago, the blog post contains confirmation that Wave will become read only as of January 31, 2012.

“You’ll be able to continue exporting individual waves using the existing PDF export feature until the Google Wave service is turned off,” the post read.

Google Wave was hailed by Google as a “revolution” and possibly the future of email, but few people actually used the service.

Perhaps one of the more interesting announcements was the closure of the RE<C initiative, which was designed to bring down the cost of renewable energy. However, although Google has said it will continue to invest in renewables, “other institutions are better positioned than Google to take this research to the next level”.

Over time the fund has invested millions in geothermal technology, along with Google’s other investments in the renewable energy. Google says those investments will continue.

The move to clean up the company’s miscellaneous services comes as Page focuses on shedding unnecessary parts of the company. Earlier this year he described how Google now views its products in three categories, and will continue to shed elements it doesn’t use.

This strategy comes after Page reportedly spoke to Apple founder Steve Jobs about the direction in which he should take the company. Jobs was quoted in Walter Isaacson’s recent biography as saying Page should “figure out what it wants to be when it grows up”.

“It’s now all over the map. What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you down.”