Late last year I wrote, “This Meebo Bar Could Be Huge For Google+“. Apparently I was wrong, because Google announced that it is shutting it down.

To be fair, they’re shutting it down to focus on Google+ Sign-In, which was announced two months after I wrote that.

A message from the Meebo team on the Meebo homepage says (via TNW):

Five years ago, we launched the Meebo Bar to bring community, engagement, and revenue to publisher sites.

As part of the Google team, this continues to be our focus, but we want to best serve mobile and desktop publishers moving forward. Therefore, we have decided to focus our resources on initiatives like the recently launched Google+ Sign-In (which includes interactive posts and over-the-air app installs) and the Google+ plug-ins.

This means we will retire the Meebo Bar, effective June 6, 2013.

Thank you for being a Meebo Bar publisher. We have truly appreciated the opportunity to serve you.

While the Meebo bar showed some big potential for keeping people engaged with Google+, mainly due to the notifications box being visible on non-Google sites, it’s not entirely shocking that Google would go this route, with more of a focus on Google+ Sign-In. Is it the right move? I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t have thought shutting down Google Reader was either (another great way to keep those Google+ notifications in front of users).