After Buzz, Google to discontinue seven more products

After Buzz, Google to discontinue seven more products

Internet search titan Google plans to discontinue seven more products, including ‘Wave’, in a bid to simplify its services further after bringing down the curtains on its ‘Buzz’ social networking, microblogging and messaging tool.

The off-season “spring cleaning” would mark the end of various Google services such as Wave, Knol, Gears, Bookmarks Lists, Friend Connect and Search Timeline, Google Senior Vice-President (Operations) Urs Holzle said in a blogpost.

In addition, Google said it will also shelve its ’renewable energy-cheaper-than-coal initiative, which was touted as an effort to drive down the cost of renewable energy.

This is the third time that Google has announced a whittling down of its products slate after they failed to generate interest among users.

Google said some of the services will stop working from next month and by next year, most of the products will be shut down completely.

“To recap, we’re in the process of shutting a number of products which haven’t had the impact we’d hoped for, integrating others as features into our broader product efforts and ending several which have shown us a different path forward. Overall, our aim is to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience,” Holzle added.

The US-based firm said Google Wave -- which was an attempt to combine email and instant messaging for real-time collaboration -- will turn off completely from April 30, 2012.

In addition, Google Friends Connect service -- which allowed webmasters to add social features to their sites by embedding a snippet of code -- would be retired from March 1, 2012.

Google Gears, which maintains web browser functionality when working offline, will stop working from December 1 and Google Bookmarks List, a service which allowed users to share bookmarks with friends, will end on December 19.

Last month, Google announced that it will shut down its social networking product Google Buzz. In September, Google said it will close as many as 10 products, including Aardvark and Fast Flip, as it streamlines operations and focuses on areas that have “higher impact”.

Indian banks not facing any stress, says RBI

Amid contradictory ratings by global agencies, the Reserve Bank of India on Friday said the Indian banking sector was not facing any stress, though state-owned lenders need capital infusion.

“Overall, we don't see any fundamental stress on the banking system as a whole. So we are nowhere close to the problem,” RBI Deputy Governor Subir Gokarn told reporters on the sidelines of an Assocham event here.

His comments come within days of ratings firm Moody's downgrading the outlook of the Indian banking system to ‘negative', from ‘stable'. Another rating agency Standard & Poor's, however, upgraded the ranking saying domestic regulations in India are in line with global standards.

“There are of course long-term issues of capital. If the system is growing at 20 per cent a year, it needs the capital to grow at 20 per cent at a year... It is not any indication of systemic threat,” Dr. Gokarn added.

He, however, admitted that there could be some pressure points on the banking system on account of high interest rates.

The capital requirement of PSU banks, including SBI, for the fiscal has been estimated at between Rs.10,000 crore and Rs.20,000 crore. The government has already made a provision to infuse Rs.6,000 crore in public sector banks in the current fiscal.

As regards the increase in non-performing assets (NPAs) of the banking sector, he said, “NPAs are increasing, but it is not dramatic.''

NPAs of state-owned banks have increased to 2.31 per cent of their assets at the end of March, 2011, from 2.27 per cent in the year-ago period.

As at the end of the September quarter, gross NPAs of country's largest lender SBI stood at 4.19 per cent, higher than 3.38 per cent in the year-ago period.