A lot of people are familiar with Google+ but few knows it is is not the first foray by Google into social networking, its first social network platform is Orkut. Most of the highest numbers of Orkut users come from Brazil and India, apparently it is less familiar in other countries of the world. Orkut is not only Google’s failed attempt at social network, the search giants also failed with Buzz.
Orkut has for a while been rumoured to be living past its time as there were already plans in motion to the social network platform. Google has finally announced plans to end Orkut starting from September 30th, also announcing it is looking to focus on Youtube, Google+ and Blogger.
Registration on Orkut is blocked and current users will be able to access their accounts from now till october. Google is keeping the communities created on Orkut alive in an archive which would also be available online, users who don’t want to be included in the archive is advised to remove Orkut from their Google Account.
For users who would like to export their profile data, community posts, and photos using Google Takeout which would be available also until the closure date.
Asides Orkut, Google has also discontinued mobile productivity suite, QuickOffice in a move to give more preference to Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides. Quickoffice will be unpublished from Google Play store and Apple store in coming weeks; new users would not be able to download them and existing users can continue using the apps but no new features would be added henceforth.
Google has also shutdown customer feedback platform Talkbin, which it acquired for an undisclosed amount in 2011. According to the talkbin, due to dwindling usage the service would shut down as from July 31st, 2014 and all account details would be deleted afterwards.
Image via GSMArena
