Google releases a lot of products but at the same time, shuts many apps down. Most of the time, the search giant says that it will be discontinuing the services due to poor response from the consumers or it is looking to concentrate more on other products. 

We listed some of the applications and services that Google has planned to discontinue in the year 2020:

Google Shoelace

Started as an invite-only platform that was available in beta for Android and iOS, Google Shoelace was launched in 2019 to help people connect locally. However, the company sent out an email to all the users of the app saying that Shoelace will be shutting down on May 12th. The Shoelace team believes that the downfall of the social app was due to the customers reprioritising their life and work due to the COVID-19. 

Neighbourly

Neighbourly was first introduced in May 2018, which lets one explore their neighbourhood with help from local experts. In the same year, the company expanded it to some other cities. But eventually, it failed to strike a chord with the public and saw declined usage. The company announced that it would be shutting down its Neighbourly app on May 12th. In their statement, Google said that Neighbourly was their attempt at connecting people with neighbours and making sharing local information more human and helpful. But, the app did not add value, thus, it will be shut down to concentrate on other Google products like Google Maps Local Guide.

Hangouts

Google announced back in 2017 that it would eventually phase out Hangouts, but despite the announcement, it is still around. After much delay, Google plans to transition existing Hangouts (in the G suite) user to a new app called Hangouts Chat and Hangout Meet by June this year.

Google earlier planned to shut the app down in October 2019 but delayed it. The company believes that some companies might need more time to transition from the G Suite. 

In fact, the company provided an update where it introduced video meetings and introduced better group chats (which wasn’t there earlier) to help existing users to have an easier transition.

Cloud Print

Google Cloud Print gave users the ability to print from any device, from anywhere, to any web-connected printer. Sadly, Google will be shutting down the product on December 31st, 2020.

It will be swiftly replaced by Chrome OS, which already handles administrative tasks for printers that use CUPS. Although in the past, Chrome OS relied on Cloud Prints for its printing needs, it is still unclear why Google would want to move away from a multi-platform, cloud-based printing solution and rely on local, native hardware.

Google Hire

Adding to their line of products being shut down, Google recently announced that it would be abandoning Google Hire in September this year. Google built the app to simplify the hiring process, with a workflow that is integrated into Google’s G Suite consisting of Search, Gmail, Calendar, Docs etc. The app was built for medium-sized businesses.

Google, in its statement, said that while Hire had been successful, they are going to shift their focus on utilising their resources on other products in Google Cloud portfolio. 

Google App Maker

While this one is slated to be axed in 2021 (January), shutting down App Maker will greatly affect admins, developers and end-users. In April, it was announced that users will no longer be able to create new App Maker apps but can still edit and deploy existing apps.

Presently the existing apps continue to work even though the App maker is no longer active. Users need to revise their organisation’s App Maker application as it will stop working in January 2021, and users will no longer have access to them. The data stored in Cloud SQL will remain unchanged and continue to follow the policies established by GCP.