Google to shut down 11 services in “winter cleaning”

As 2012 comes to a close, Google is shutting down more of its services, in what it calls ''winter cleaning'' instead of the usual "spring cleaning."

Venkat Panchapakesan, Google's VP of engineering, said in a blog that difficult decisions were necessary for Google to maximise its impact.

Eleven services would no longer be available, but there would be little impact as none of these offerings enjoyed a particularly high profile.

Google is also pulling the plug on Google Sync from 20 January, 2013, as it had been superceded by other open protocols, specifically IMAP, CalDAV and CardDAV. However, this is applicable to users of Google's free services, and Google Sync would be available with Google Apps for business, government and education customers.

Google Calendar Sync availability came to an end 14 December. Google Sync for Nokia S60 gets withdrawn on 30 January 2013, along with a little-used contact sync service for older devices, known as SyncML.

A mechanism for viewing and updating Project Hosting issues in Google Code, the Issue Tracker API, would no longer be available from 14 June, 2013.