Google finds even more apps to clean out

Say goodbye to Google Apps for Teams, Google Listen and Google Video for Business

Since the beginning of the year, Google has been on a tear, cutting out services and products left and right, all in an attempt to get rid of outdated and redundant products.

After over 50 products were altered, or removed, you may have thought there were no more services to cut, but Google found some extra dead weight to get rid of.

Say goodbye to Google Apps for Teams, Google Listen and Google Video for Business, as well at least 150 Google-created blogs for products and services.

“We work every day to create a more seamless, beautiful user experience—to give you a better, easier-to-use Google. This means continuously improving the products we offer, and recognizing when users of one product might have a better experience with another, “Max Ibel, Google’s Director of Engineering, wrote.

Google Apps for Teams was launched in 2008, allowing businesses and schools to use non-email services like Google Docs without having a Google email address. Ibel says the services was “not as useful for people as we originally anticipated,” and so it will be shit down on September 4. The existing accounts will be converted to personal Google accounts.

Google listen was a Google Labs project that was launched in August 2009 as a way for people to listen to podcasts. Google Play has so many podcast apps, though, that the service has become unnecessary. It will be discontinued on November 1, but existing podcast subscriptions will be abailable in the ““Listen Subscriptions” folder on Google Reader.

Google Video for Business allows for users to host and share videos. Those videos will now be moved to Google Drive, where they will be stored for free, and will not count against the user’s available storage.

As for the blogs that will be shut down, Google says they will be the ones that are “either updated infrequently, or are redundant with other blogs.”

Just the latest Google cuts

Back in January, Google announced its New Year’s resolution: to continue refocusing on building good products for their users. Part of that process meant cutting out useless and repetative products.

“As we head into 2012, we’ve been sticking to some old resolutions—the need to focus on building amazing products that millions of people love to use every day. That means taking a hard look at products that replicate other features, haven’t achieved the promise we had hoped for or can’t be properly integrated into the overall Google experience, “ Dave Girouard, VP of Product Management, wrote in January.

These cuts were a continuation of a process that began in July 2011, after Larry Page took over as CEO, following the departure of Eric Schmidt.

The phrase used at the time was “More wood behind fewer arrows.”

So far this year, Google has either shut down, or altered, 50 existing products, including: Google Message Continuity, Google Sky Map, Needlebase, Picnik, Social Graph API, Urchin, Google Flu Vaccine Finder, Google Related, Google Sync for BlackBerry, mobile web app for Google Talk, One Pass, Patent Search, Picasa for Linux, Picasa Web Albums Uploader for Mac, Picasa Web Albums Plugin for iPhoto, Google Mini, Google Talk Chatback, Google Video, iGoogle, and Symbian Search App,

(Image source: wrecycleit.com)