geekosystem

Calling it a "fall spring-cleaning," Google said yesterday on their blog that the search giant would be shutting down several Google Labs projects and merging others with existing products. This comes not long after the announcement that Google Sets list-guessing application would be shutting down. For the most part, Google is characterizing most of the shut downs as products who have become obsolete. Google Desktop, for instance, just doesn't seem to fit as the almighty cloud becomes a larger and larger part of computing. Google Notebooks, another example of a product being shut down, ceased development years ago but can be seen as precursor to Evernote. Google says that these shut downs will help streamline their list of products -- which is rather vast and fractured -- and help give more resources to more important projects. In all, Google lists 10 projects that will be terminated. While its good to see Google not letting these projects simply languish, it's hard not to wonder if perhaps the entrepreneurial spirit that allowed the creation of so many projects (and albeit some dead-ends) will no longer be a major focus at Google. We can only speculate on that point, so in the meantime read on below for a full list of the cut programs and see if any of your favorites were spared.

Gmail's forgotten attachment detector is a wonderful thing, and in that vein -- helpfully analyzing the context of an email using the data centersful of information without being too pushy -- Google is rolling out two new features to Gmail which previously existed only in Google Labs. Called "Don't forget Bob" and "Got the Wrong Bob?", respectively, they both analyze a user's email history and scan the current recipients of the message in draft. The first of the two makes suggestions as to who to include "based on the groups of people you email most often": Clicking on those suggested names automatically adds them to the recipients list. The second has the potential to avert even more awkwardness: If Gmail 'thinks' you are accidentally including the wrong person as the recipient of a message in the place of someone else with a similar name, it gives you a clickable suggestion to replace the "wrong Bob." Both of these features will roll out over the next few days across all Gmail accounts. (via Gmail Blog)