Okoro Daniel O.
What is the assurance that Google would retain her blogging platform till forever? If you ask me, I’d say 0.01% chances.
The undeniable fact is, Google does not handle Blogspot the same way it handles YouTube, AdSense, Drive, Gmail and every other services that generates income to their firm. This is the fact, you can run the experiment yourself.
Over the time, I’ve watched Google create products and run it down in a relatively short time.
Well, this isn’t applicable to Alphabet Inc. alone, it is a common occurrence in every business sector even to least small business owners.
It’s why Mama Nkechi can kick-start biscuit business today and change it to Pure water business tomorrow, it’s innovation. It’s normal.
Let’s start;
Google Allo
Google Allo was an instant messaging mobile app by Google for the Android and iOS mobile operating systems, with a web client available on Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. It closed on March 12, 2019.
Google Plus
Google+ (pronounced and sometimes written as Google Plus; sometimes called G+) was a social network owned and operated by Google. The network was launched on June 28, 2011, in an attempt to challenge other social networks, linking other Google products like Google Drive, Blogger and YouTube. On October 8, 2018, Google announced it would be ending the consumer version of Google+ by the end of August 2019, later changing that date to April 2, 2019. However, the service was discontinued on April 2019.
Google Feedburner
Just recently, Google announced the part-shutdown of her email burning service, a service that was created 16 years ago. FeedBurner is a web feed management service that provides custom RSS feeds and management tools for bloggers, podcasters and other web-based content publishers. It was founded in 2004 and acquired by Google in 2007.
While you might think that’s all the services Alphabet Inc has shutdown since it’s existence, I’d like to remind you that in 2020, according to Analyticsindiamag, the company announced to discontinued these products; Google App Maker, Google Hire, Cloud Print, Hangouts, Neighbourly, Google Shoelace.
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, 2020. 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, 2020. 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 2020.
Meanwhile, Google had 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 was to 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 2020. 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
In April 2020, 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.
Even Google Play Music was proposed to be discontinued.
Now, Google Blogspot/Blogger
On 15th of May, 2021, at exactly 12.02 WAT (this might not be the accurate time it started, but that exactly was when I noticed the error from my end. I did also received complaints from blogspot users including Kosebinu Roqeeb – ceo of Wapkosh Media during this same timeframe, he drew my attention to tons of tweets on Twitter and that made me cocksure it’s a general issue), Blogspot began malfunctioning.
Well, as a developer, I would say it was probably an attack. But as a business-person, I would say otherwise. Like, why didn’t YouTube experience same attack?
The entire blogspot platform was dysfunctional. You make a post, it gets marked as spam and gets deleted. One couldn’t even open a Blogspot platform on Chrome. You would get a notification stating that the particular website you are about to visit is vulnerable, bla bla bla, whereas the website is as clean as baby’s butt.
This was the experience on Google’s Blogspot last night.
Gladly, the issue seems to have been resolved by Google’s technical team, but it left a big questions to blogspot users, which is;
“What’s the Fate of Google’s Blogspot?”
On the other hand, Google also uses its blogspot services to power some of her platforms, URL includes google. blogspot .com, AdSense. blogspot. com and few others which makes it easy to think they can’t shutdown the platform because they benefit from it’s existence too.
Then I ask, does it means that Google can’t personalize the platform usage to themselves as a private use?
Well, that’s left for you to answer.
It’s business!
It’s okay to open a business and close it down simply because it didn’t generate expected revenue or meet its expected purpose. It’s normal.
In 2017, myself and Joel Anthony, we created 360GPTech. Yes, we generated good amount of traffic, but the income wasn’t cool enough, so we ran it down. Well, that wasn’t the main reason behind the shutdown of 360GPTech though, but it was part of it.
Bottom line: Understand business. Business is different from charity organization.
Meanwhile, I suggest blogspot users should learn to backup their website regularly and should start planning to move to a hosted platform. WordPress won’t be a bad idea.
Adios. ✌️
Written by Okoro Daniel O.
