The Wall Street Journal takes a close look–aka one long article that includes everything we’ve covered over the past few months–at how Google is battening down the hatches.

If you rely on any of Google’s fringe services, you should be concerned about this:

So with the U.S. economy in a recession, Google is ratcheting back spending and cutting new projects. “We have to behave as though we don’t know” what’s going to happen, says Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt. The company will curtail the “dark matter,” he says, projects that “haven’t really caught on” and “aren’t really that exciting.” He says the company is “not going to give” an engineer 20 people to work with on certain experimental projects anymore. “When the cycle comes back,” he says, “we will be able to fund his brilliant vision.”

Google has already pulled the plug on Lively and SearchMash–easy decisions considering they had no momentum–but what about the other “non-search” offerings?

If your business relies on anything outside of Google’s core offerings–search, ads and apps–then you might want to consider a back-up plan. Google could pull the rug at any time.

What service do you think Google will shut down next?

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