Google shuts services to finance ‘high impact products'

Search giant Google will be closing ten of its less successful services in order to focus resources on its 'higher-impact products'.

The services being closed by Google include a social network powered question and answer search tool 'Aardvark', an experiment in displaying news content online 'Fast Flip', and a note-taking and URL clipping service 'Notebook,' the Telegraph reports.

"Over the next few months we'll be shutting down a number of products and merging others into existing products as features," Google's senior vice president, Alan Eustace, said in a blog post.

"This will make things much simpler for our users, improving the overall Google experience. It will also mean we can devote more resources to high impact products, the ones that improve the lives of billions of people."

"We'll continue to take risks on interesting new technologies with a lot of potential. But by targeting our resources more effectively, we can focus on building world-changing products with a truly beautiful user experience," he added.

Google's other services being discontinued include Desktop, which according to the company was superseded by cloud computing, Google Pack, the company's bundle of downloadable software, and Sidewiki, a collaborative approach to annotating websites.

Other services to be closed also include Google Maps API for Flash, Google Web Security, Image Labeler and Subscribed Links, the report said.

The company said that the staff who had been working on the discontinued projects would be moved to other services.