[centinople.com]- Google is cutting back on some non-core operations, including development of social networking services Jaiku and Dodgeball, and will soon suspend uploads to its Google Video service.
In a string of announcements on Google blog sites, the company announced changes to properties that, for the most part, have not made the company any money.
Among the changes announced was the news that in the coming months the company will discontinue support for uploads to Google Video. Google will continue to host videos that have already been uploaded, according to an FAQ that the company published.
The decision to shut down uploads at the site seems to have been a long time in the making, ever since the company announced it would acquire Google Video competitor YouTube Inc. in October 2006. Since then, YouTube has continued to show outstanding growth, while growth at “Google’s other video site” lagged.
In the most recent comScore Inc. Video Metrix report, Google sites had 5.1 billion video views in November, or 40.3 percent of the online video market in the U.S. But YouTube accounted for the lion’s share of that viewing, with 98 percent of Google’s total views.
While changes to the Google Video service was significant, it wasn’t the only Google property to feel the heat from the global economic crisis.
In an entry on Google’s Code Blog, the company announced it will shut down social networking site Dodgeball and end development of its Mashup Editor, which was in beta. The company will end development of its Jaiku micro-blogging service, but that tool will live on as an open source project that runs on the Google Apps Engine.
Other casualties included projects like Google Catalog Search and Google Notebook, of which Google announced it will stop development.
And, last but not least, Google finally announced that it is cutting down on personnel costs. In an entry on the Official Google Blog, the company said it was eliminating “almost all” of its external contractors, and laying off 100 members of its recruiting organization.