Google has announced that it’s calling it quits on several products, stopping support or completely shutting down six of their current services in order to focus instead on those “that can have the most impact.”

The company has decided to no longer focus energy on Google Catalog Search, Google Notebook, Google Mashup Editor, Jaiku, and Dodgeball as well as no longer allow the upload of new videos to Google Video. None of the losses are all that dramatic, with Google in most cases simply consolidating in areas where they currently have several services that do relatively the same thing.

The end of video uploads on Google Video makes sense. Google currently owns not only YouTube, but also the site Picasa, which also allows you to upload video. While Google Video allowed longer uploads than the other two, it wasn’t anything special otherwise, so it makes sense to encourage users to focus on the two more successful sites.

The Google note taking application Google Notebook closes but leaves behind services such as Google Docs and Google Bookmarks which also allow for note taking. Existing users will be able to continue to save material on the service-but the company doesn’t plan on allowing new accounts to be added or developing the service any further (although we were able to open a new account this morning).

Jaiku is a microblogging service similar to Twitter. With Twitter competitor Pownce closing earlier this year, the end of the service isn’t much of a surprise. In fact, Jaiku never actually made it out of beta in the first place. Google plans on releasing an open source Jaiku code on Google Code so fans can create their own microblogging services on the Google App Engine. Unlike all the other closures, however, Google doesn’t currently offer another similar product- with the massive success of Twitter they may just be packing it in on this one.

Chances are good you didn’t realize the final three--Google Catalogs, Google Mashup Editor and Dodgeball--even existed. Google Mashup Editor was a test product that never made it out into the public, with the Google App Engine serving a similar purpose.

 

Google Catalogs hasn’t been on the scene in quite some time and Dodgeball was a cell phone social networking service acquired by Google in 2005 that they never did much with--even to a point where the founders of the company quit because it wasn't being developed.

While none of these services are a huge loss, this could be a huge gain for the services Google has decided to focus its energy on. The company has also recently announced the relocation of 70 of its enginnering employees,  maintaining they will replace employees who don't move with new hires. The consolidation of products and shuffling of employees could make for a more streamlined, focused Google in the future. 

  

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