In a recent e-mail sent to Google Groups group owners, the Corp. politely announced that it will cut the leash on several of the app’s most favored features as of January next year, as these are evidently standing in the way of its other apps including G-Docs, G-Sites and more.

“Starting in January 2011, Groups will no longer allow the creation or editing of welcome messages, files and pages; the content will only be available for viewing and only existing files will be downloadable…In February 2011, we will turn off these features, and you will no longer be able to access that content.”

As made apparent from the e-mail, which was sent straight out of the blue to countless group owners, the Google Groups fun time is now over. Its core features will apparently be improved, but if the user will want to want to use a welcome message, share files documents and/or do a variety  of other actions, they will have to accomplish that in other ways; via none other than Google of course.

Users sticking to one product, in this case G-Groups, is definitely not a good thing from the corporate point of view. In the light of this, Google’s motive to try and get users be more aware of their other products is a fairly reasonable one, but there are just some cases were incentives can work much, much better.  A sort of active approach Google is initiating is certainly an outlook worthy of the drawing board, but that’s right about where it stops.