Google Wave, Knol, Friend Connect, Gears and others are being put to sleep

Nov 23, 2011 10:16 GMT  ·  By

Google is announcing another round of spring cleaning, in fall. The company has been looking to shed unsuccessful projects and has dropped plenty of lesser known services this year.

Now it's announcing a new bunch of services that are getting shut down. There are some names you'll remember, but most that you won't. Which is kind of the point.

Google Wave

Google Wave is getting its final farewell. Google was quick to kill the service, shortly after it went public, more than a year ago, since no one actually used it, but euthanasia can be a lengthy process it seems.

As of January 31, 2012, Wave will become read-only, no one will be able to add any more content or create new waves. On April 30 the servers will be shut down. There are alternatives though, Apache Wave, for example, which continues work on the technology.

Google Knol

Another relatively high-profile project that is getting shut down is Knol, Google's Wikipedia alternative that was supposed to rely solely on experts creating articles. Needles to say, it didn't pan out.

The site will be closed down on April 30 next year and the content will be deleted permanently on October 1, 2012. However, WordPress.com is picking up the project and offering Knol users hosting or the option of deploying their own Knol site using the Annotum software, which is based on WordPress.

Google Bookmarks List

Other smaller projects are also getting the axe. Google Bookmarks List will be shut down on December 19, 2011. However, Google Bookmarks will continue to work for the time being.

Google Friend Connect

Google Friend Connect, a website plugin designed to add a social components to blogs and sites, will be retired on March 1, 2012. It will continue to work in Blogger. Considering that the functionality can be easily replicated via Google+, Friend Connect's demise is not surprising.

Google Gears

Google announced that Gears, its browser technology that enabled offline support and other more advanced features that have been slowly matched by HTML5, would be deprecated more than a year ago. As of December 1st, Gmail and Calendar will no longer support the Gears offline mode.

Google Search Timeline

Google Search Timeline was a search feature which would plot historical query volume on a chart. Most of the functionality, save for the timeline chart itself, is available via the time frame filters in Google Search and tools like Google Trends and Search Insights. Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal (RE<C)

Finally, Google is shelving one of its clean energy projects. The company was doing research part of the Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal (RE<C) project, but now believes other companies and projects, more dedicated to this, are better able to make headway into the problem. All of its research on the issue has been made public.