Since 1998, the world has enjoyed impeccable online products from the tech giant – Google. Google products were a breath of fresh air to people who have mostly used others like Yahoo! Lycos, etc., for searching and Microsoft Office products for other works.
What started as a search engine company, now has grown into a mammoth tech firm that’s into cloud computing, AI, online advertising, quantum computing, and more. Today, Google offers you everything you ever need – a superfast search engine, Google Drive, YouTube, and more.
But, did you know countless Google products are now discontinued? If you think hard, you will remember the fancy Google talk that we commonly used to chat, call and share files with our loved ones across the world. We also used Picasa for photo editing and sharing, Google Latitude to share our exact location with friends, and more.
Over the years, Google has killed these products as they were either a flop or there came a better version of it. Let’s check out 5 of the Google products the company ditched away post-launch.
5 Cool Google Products That Are Now Discontinued
#1 Google+
Google launched Google+ in 2011 to give tough competition to other social networks and to link other products such as Blogger, YouTube, Google Drive, etc. It let you share photos or videos, send messages to multiple people, group different people into “Circles,” and upload or edit photos to private albums in the cloud.
Several users signed into Google+ while using other products. However, users spent minimal time exploring Google+ compared to other social networks. Due to low engagement and a software bug, Google ditched this product in 2019.
#2 Google Talk
Google Talk, with its cute chat bubble icon, was one of the best products it developed. An instant messaging service quite popular from 2005 to 2015, Google Talk or GTalk was a favorite tool for communication among youngsters.
It was available for Microsoft Windows, Chrome OS, Blackberry, and Android. Although we have several new and innovative chat applications, Google Talk was an incredible product of its time.
#3 Picasa
Before Google Photos, users relied on Picasa a free image organizer and editor compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux. Developed by LifeScape and later acquired by Google, Picasa has been available since 2004, but in 2016 the tech giant announced discontinuing the software to focus solely on Google Photos, a cross-platform cloud-based service.
#4 Google Latitude
Google Latitude was a cool feature that allowed users to view their current location on Google Maps. With their Google account, users could map their location on Google Maps using their cell phones. They could control the details and accuracy of what their friends or other users could see. For instance, they can share their exact location or limit it only to the current city. Google discontinued this product in 2013 and incorporated the location-sharing feature into Google Maps itself.
#5 Google Go Links
Did you know Google offered a URL-shortening tool? It was called Google Go Links aka Google Short Links. This tool allowed Google Workspace subscribers to customize and shorten URLs as per their needs. Users used these shortened URLs to redirect other users to the original URL of their choice. Recently, the software giant shut down this service, and people switched to other popular URL-shortening websites online.
