- Uploading to Google Video
– Google Notebook
– Jaiku
– Google Catalog Search
– Mashup Editor
– Dodgeball

Now, some notes on each.

The Google Video Team is now encouraging users to upload their videos to either YouTube or Picasa, both of which are owned by Google of course. Uploading will still be available for a few months. They won’t be removing any content that is already there.

The Google Notebook team is encouraging users to try other Google Products with notebook-like functionality like SearchWiki,Google Docs, Tasks in Gmail, and Google Bookmarks. And they claim to have plenty of new ideas for these services.

Jaiku is shutting down before it ever really got going. It is a Twitter-like service that never left invite-only status. According to Read Write Web, "Google will release the Jaiku code under the open source Apache license, so that other organizations can pick up where the Google team left off. It is not clear if current users will be able to transfer their accounts."

Google Catalog Search just wasn’t popular enough to keep around, but the Book Search Team leaves it behind with fond memories. "Catalogs helped us better understand and refine the technology we use today to scan and make the full text of books available online," says Product Manager Punit Soni. "We also learned more about how users read scanned documents online, and how to best present this type of information to them."

Mashup Editor is another one that never really got off the ground. It is still only available in limited testing. Google encourages users to instead use the Google App Engine.

Dodgeball is a mobile social networking service. It will be shut down in the next couple months. Google says they will communicate the exact timeframe shortly.

A post on the Official Google Blog talks about the company consolidating some engineering offices, by shutting down Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden locations, though they say they intend to keep as many of the employees as possible, and just have them move to other locations.

"Our long-term goal is not to trim the number of people we have working on engineering projects or reduce our global presence, but create a smaller number of more effective engineering sites, which will ensure that innovation and speed remain at our core," says Google Senior Vice President, Engineering and Research Alan Eustace.

Google also announced that they are trimming some recruiting jobs – about 100 of them. "Our first step to address this was to wind down almost all our contracts with external contractors and vendors providing recruiting services for Google. However, after much consideration, we have with great regret decided that we need to go further and reduce the overall size of our recruiting organization by approximately 100 positions," says Google’s Vice President of People Operations, Laszlo Bock.

Big changes through Google’s organization today indeed. As far as the services being shut down, I can’t say that I will particularly miss any of them, as I haven’t thrown them much use anyway. Will you miss any of these services?

Where do Google services go when they, well, go away? Andy Beal suggested services like Jaiku fall into the cushions of a “Google Sofa,” never to be seen again.

Beal cited his experience with Jaiku, post-Google acquisition. He had signed up with Jaiku before that, and returned after the Google news to update his social media feeds.

“Ten hours later, my Jaiku feed still hadn

Google Acquires Jaiku

Jaiku, which was founded by Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen, offers a Twitter-like service.  Reviews of the service have been extremely positive, and Google appears ready to leave well enough alone at the moment. 

Yet Tony Hsieh, a product manager, made a strange comment on the Official Google Blog.  “Although we don’t have definite plans to announce at this time, we’re excited about helping drive the next round of developments in web and mobile technology,” he wrote.

Talk about mixed signals.  Could the “next round of developments” relate to the Gphone?  Or is the “lack of definite plans” just a sign of the same disinterest that led to Dodgeball’s semi-demise?  Also, new signups are no longer being allowed by Jaiku – this could point to either big behind-the-scenes stuff or total stagnation.

One more fuzzy point: terms of the deal have not been disclosed, so it’s impossible to say how much of a financial commitment Google made to the acquisition.

Crowley made the announcement on his blog.  “So…. Alex and I quit Google on Friday,” he began.  “It’s no real secret that Google wasn’t supporting dodgeball the way we expected.  The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us – especially as we couldn’t convince them that dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space.”

He may have a point – Om Malik and Donna Bogatin, among others, feel that Dodgeball has been more or less ignored since its acquisition.  And it’s hardly a finished product – the service is available in just twenty-two U.S. cities.

So Crowley and Rainert appear to be cutting their losses, rather than giving up or losing interest, as they find new jobs.  “I’m joining the kids at area/code who are knee-deep in building all sorts of Big Games (remember PacManhattan? ConQwest?),” wrote Crowley.  “Alex is moving on to IconNicholson where he took a gig as a Creative Strategist focusing on mobile and emerging technologies.”

Dodgeball will presumably soldier on as before – Google hasn’t addressed this development in any way, and there’s no reason to believe it will.  Ah, well.  Feelings were undeniably hurt, but at least no noses were broken.

Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert, co-founders of Dodgeball, are the latest acquirees to find out the hard way. Dodgeball’s SMS-social network was ahead of the pack, when acquired, but since then, nothing has really been done with the company, and the founders have had to watch the likes of Twitter and Jaiku pass them by.

Here’s part of Crowley’s announcement to the world…

It’s no real secret that Google wasn’t supporting dodgeball the way we expected. The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us – especially as we couldn’t convince them that dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space. And while it was a tough decision (and really disappointing) to walk away from dodgeball, I’m actually looking forward to getting to work on other projects again.

And here’s what they have planned next…

So, what’s next? Starting today (Monday!) I’m joining the kids at area/code who are knee-deep in building all sorts of Big Games (remember PacManhattan? ConQwest?). Alex is moving on to IconNicholson where he took a gig as a Creative Strategist focusing on mobile and emerging technologies. (And sorry, but I don’t know what Google has planned for dodgeball going forward.)

So, be warned. Google needs your technology. It may actually only need it, in order to prevent it from falling into the hands of a competitor, and it has enough PHD’s on staff that it unlikely needs you.

Via Om Malik.

Comments

They plan on marketing their new site to college campuses. Senior director of Yahoo’s Advanced Products Group said,” It’s really an experiment. We’re putting it out to consumers to see how they use the product.”

Mixd just launched on Wednesday. On their site it says,” Mixd is about going out. Coordinate last-minute meetups, share pictures and videos from your phone, and remember last night on a website we create for you, automatically.” Yahoo expects users to form groups of friends and focus on a variety of social events. They have a reply-all feature, which allows a user to communicate to all of their friends in their network.

Each group will have a Web site, which will archive all photos, videos and text messages sent through the phones. There are several other sites that offer similar services such as Dodgeball, Zemble and Twitter.

Yahoo has probably launched this site now in hopes of attracting advertisers. The site caters to the 18 to 26 year old demographic which advertisers want to reach. Currently Yahoo does not have a business model for the site. Gatz said, “It’s really about testing, and gathering user feedback.”

Yahoo seems to be taking a wait and see attitude towards their new site. They admittedly call it an experiment. An experiment that may not be that original but could possibly pay off.

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Dodgeball, in the words of Steve Poland, “allows users with cell phones to notify their friends via text messages (SMS) as to what bar or restaurant they currently are at (and thus where their friends can meet them for a drink).” Changes to this relatively small service, which is only available in 22 cities, may not have massive repercussions.

Still, asking users to sign in with a Google Account is a move that has raised some eyebrows. “Though not surprising, it is concerning that some people (ahem, me) will have so many services linked to one ID that can be cracked or subpoenaed,” wrote Brady Forrest. “Though there will be greater convenience with this change it also brings on greater ricks [sic].”

And as Donna Bogatin pointed out, the sign-in page offers a bit of a “push.” “If you already have a Google Account, use that to sign in,” it reads. “If not, use your dodgeball username and password and we’ll help you create a Google Account.”

Dodgeball is still being ignored in other ways, though. Bogatin, who made the “orphan” observation, also noted that “the Dodgeball.com About Us’ page . . . still makes no reference to owner Google and Dodgeball is not featured on Google’s Google Products‘ page.”

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Out of the 13 teams fielded five of them were AOL-employee teams, and all five lost in the first round! Google also got slammed, and the final wound up being the two MSN teams against each other.

AOL got to walk away with some sort of honor: According to Sree Kotay, all the losers had a mini-tournament, and an AOL team beat Google and went on to win the “losers bracket”. Insert AOL joke at your leisure.

Anyway, it sounds like a really great event. Next time they hold something like this in New York (rare that anything cool and tech-related happens in this city), somebody tell me so I have a chance to be there!

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

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Be Ready To Dodge Google’s Latest Move

So, first off thank you Nicholas, Justin, Derrick and Wayne.

It makes more sense if you set it to music.

Dodgeball is a social networking service for mobile phones. Users sign in on their phones and notify the service where they are, which then lets friends know which friends are in the area. Basically, it lets you navigate your social scene. BoingBoing called it “social software for mobile phones”. Basically, the killer app for Dodgeball is signing in, finding out your friend Joe has a friend Wendy who is at a newsstand two blocks away, and walking up to her and saying “I didn’t know people actually named their kids Wendy”.

Alex and Dennis of Dodgeball say in the their members that they are excited to now have the resources to make the service bigger. One can only wonder what Google’s plans are for the service.

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

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