Google kills off 7 more products including Wave

Google has announced that it is dropping seven more products in an effort to simplify its range of services. This is the third time that Google has announced a cull of several of its products at the same time after they had failed to take off. This move was announced in their official blog.

"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" - Urs Holzle (Google's vice president of operations).

The seven latest products earmarked for the chop are as follows:

1. Google Wave - an attempt to combine email and instant messaging for real-time collaboration
2. Google Bookmarks List - a service which allowed users to share bookmarks with friends
3. Google Friends Connect - allowed webmasters to add social features to their sites by embedding a snippet of code
4. Google Gears - much-hyped effort to maintain web browser functionality when working offline
5. Google Search Timeline - a graph of historical query results
6. Knol - a Wikipedia-style project, which aimed to improve web content
7. Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal - a project which aimed to find ways to improve solar power 

It has now given details about when the switch-offs will occur. For example Wave will be retired in April, and Knol content will be taken offline in October.