Google: the death of more products

Google has announced that they are continuing with their spring cleaning. This is the end of certain products including One Pass, Picasa for Linux, Google Sync for Blackberry and others.

Google is continuing with the clean-up of product and services to concentrate on those that are deemed essential, while abandoning those that haven’t been a success. This "spring cleaning" has now been going on for a few months with it today affecting One Pass.

Launched in February 2011, One Pass was the online payment platform for the press. Through One Pass, editors were able to sell online subscriptions, single articles and even magazine packs from their sites or mobile applications (Android). Google was paid 10% commission for each sale, with this being very attractive compared to Apple’s 30% commission.

Google has assured users that they want to continue to work with editors on new tools, with their One Pass partners to be transitioned towards other platforms like Google Consumer Surveys, a polling service which appeared at the end of March.

Among the other announced deaths is the mobile BlackBerry synchronization service called Google Sync for BlackBerry (end announced for the 1st of June 2012). "We encourage users to migrate to Internet Service (BIS) or Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server", states Google.

Still in mobility, the mobile web app of Google Talk (instant messaging) will finish up for Android’s native Google Talk application or other mobile applications compatible with the XMPP protocol.

Under Linux, the Picasa version based on WINE will end with no future improvements or updates to be made. At the same time, the Picasa Web Albums Uploader for Mac and Picasa Web Albums Plugin for iPhoto tools will no longer be available. Google will direct users towards Picasa 3.9 for Mac which will include online functions and iPhoto importation.

For some APIs, support will reduce from three years to one (Google App Engine, Google Cloud Storage, Google Maps/Earth, YouTube). Once this time has expired then the program, will either be updated or abandoned. Other changes are mentioned in the Google blog aimed at developers.

It should be noted that Google Related will also finish up, with an experimental extension for Google Chrome to be made available to help users find information relative to browsing.