It appears that the bad economic times are catching up with Google, as the search giant has announced that it will shut down - or at least stop supporting - various of its more unpopular web based services in an effort to streamline its operations in a recessionary economy. Included among the affected services are: Google Notebooks, Google Catalogs, Dodgeball, Google Video, Google Mashup Editor and Jaiku.
Google will not be shutting down all of these services though. For instance, all existing content in Google Video will remain viewable and be searchable but the ability to upload new stuff will be switched off in a few months from now. As for Jaiku, the less popular Twitter clone, will become a part of Google Apps and should be released later on as open source while Catalog Search and Dodgeball, the mobile social networking service, will be discontinued. Lastly, the Mashup Editor is being replaced by App Engine and Google Notebook will continue to function for current users but will no longer accept new ones.
The company said on its corporate blog that it will be hiring at a reduced rate, but still laying off 100 recruiters and reshuffling 70 engineering staff to other locations worldwide.