Google recently announced the death of Slide and its apps, which angered Super Poke! Pets players, some of which threatened to file a class action lawsuit.  If Google managed to anger a hoard of people by shutting down one of their services, imagine what would happen if they shut down 10 services.  Would it create chaos or would it just go unnoticed?

Last September 2, Google announced in their blog that in the following months they will be discontinuing 10 of their services.  Some of them will be integrated into current services others will have the same fate as Slide, they will just cease to exist.

The products and services awaiting the impending termination are:

• Aardvark – the social search service that helped users answer other user’s questions.
• Desktop – since everything is in the cloud, the service is no longer needed and it will be discontinued on September 14 along with all the associated APIs, services, plugins, gadgets and support.
• Fast Flip – the experiment that fueled faster, richer content display on the web will be discontinued but the approach will live on in our other display and delivery tools.
• Google Maps API for Flash – launched to provide ActionScript developers a way to integrate Google Maps into their applications; though this will be discontinued, Google will keep supporting Google Maps API Premier Customers using the Google Maps API for Flash but they will shift their focus on the JavaScript Maps API.
• Google Pack – with the domination of web apps and the decrease in the need for downloadable products, Google Pack had already been discontinued last September 2 but users will still be able to access Google’s and their partners’ software quickly and easily through direct links on the Google Pack website.
• Google Web Security – sales of this security product will be discontinued but support and service assistance will still be available for current GWS users.
• Image Labeler – a Google game that explore and label images on the web will not be available anymore but other Google games will still be available for users to enjoy.
• Notebook – the product that enabled people to combine clipped URLs from the web and free-form notes into documents so they could share and publish them will be discontinued in the following months but users’ Notebook data will automatically be exported to Google Docs.
• Sidewiki – the service that focuses on making the web more collaborative will also be discontinued to focus more on social initiatives; users will be given ample time to download all their content.
• Subscribed Links – this enabled developers to create specialized search results that were added to the normal Google search results on relevant queries for subscribed users; the service will be discontinued on September 15 and developers are advised to download all their data before the specified date as subscribed links will no longer appear in people’s search results after the said date.

Google’s not afraid to shake things up a bit.  They believe that taking risks is needed in order to improve.  And besides, if the products and services aren’t really being utilized, Google isn’t really losing anything, they’re just cutting their loss.  This could actually be beneficial for them.  They just celebrated their 13th year in the industry and these changes could probably be in preparation for something grand.

“We’ve never been afraid to try big, bold things, and that won’t change. We’ll continue to take risks on interesting new technologies with a lot of potential. But by targeting our resources more effectively, we can focus on building world-changing products with a truly beautiful user experience.”