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iGoogle, four other Google products officially getting the boot

It's the end of the line for five of Google's products, the company announced in a blog on July 3.

iGoogle, Google Video, Google Mini, Google Talk Chatback and the Symbian Search App will all be shutting down this year, as Google says it hopes to further focus and streamline its product offerings.

The blog says that more than 30 products have been closed or combined with others since the company started cleaning house last fall. Other casualties of the oddly-named spring cleaning included Aardvark, Desktop, Fast Flip, and Notebook back in September, followed by Google Buzz in October.

In the October blog announcing Buzz's demise, Google said they would be taking out the social features of iGoogle since their social focus would now be on Google+, but that iGoogle would remain intact. It seems that over the last several months, Google has changed its mind.

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For those not familiar with the product, iGoogle is a home page customized by the user to meet their various needs when they first open their browser. In addition to the usual search bar, users can program 'gadgets' or widgets on the page based on their individual interests and needs, including ones for Gmail, horoscopes, favourite news outlets, weather, YouTube and a number of third-party gadgets created by users. Google says in the July 3 blog that apps designed to run on Chrome and Android have replaced much of the functionality of iGoogle, and the product, which was launched in 2005, is no longer the current best option for users.

Anyone currently using iGoogle has 16 months to migrate his or her data; it will be officially shut down on November 1, 2013.

Google Video predated the company's purchase of YouTube but hasn't actually been available for uploading videos to since May 2009. Anyone who hasn't migrated their videos to YouTube from Google Video has until August 20. Users can also opt to delete or download their content by the deadline instead.

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Google Talk Chatback, a widget that users could embed in their website, allowed visitors to see if the site owner was online and chat with them. Following their massive purchase of web-based chat software Meebo, Google is pulling Chatback and encouraging users to use the Meebo Bar, instead.

Two products likely not as well-known to the Canadian public, Google Mini for enterprise customers and the Symbian Search app, will also both be going the way of the dodo.

This may not be the end of Google's spring clean, as the company has many, many other products out there and it's likely there are still more than a few that have fallen on hard times.