Monday 11 June 2012

Google to shut down several Meebo services


It seems this past week, Google had been on a buying spree and they had purchased the browser-based messaging service, Meebo and shortly after that, the tech giant acquired Quickoffice. If a report by Dvice and a banner on the site is anything to go by, then it appears that Meebo will soon be shutting down.

As per the report, the Dvice's Travis Andrews states, “Google recently purchased social media site Meebo and has announced a shutdown of most of Meebo's products, leading to a fairly sad set of new banners on Meebo's site. The first states "Google has recently acquired Meebo!" The second: "Meebo.com will be shutting down July 11, 2012.”

On a post by Meebo, a list of the services that will be deleted on the 11th of June, 2012 have been stated. The products of Meebo that will be discontinued are Meebo Messenger, Sharing on Meebo, Meebo Me and all Meebo Mobile Apps. For more information on retrieving your chat log and downloading your history, click here.

When Google acquired Meebo, they had stated, “We are happy to announce that Meebo has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Google! For more than seven years we've been helping publishers find deeper relationships with their users and to make their sites more social and engaging. Together with Google, we're super jazzed to roll up our sleeves and get cracking on even bigger and better ways to help users and website owners alike. We've had a blast building Meebo so far and we're really excited to start the next leg of our journey.”

Talks about the Google and Meebo merger started off in May, when All Things D reported talks about an asking price of $100 million for the start-up. More than the web-based messaging feature, which Google already has in their Gmail web interface, they will most likely be interested in the social toolbar and other sharing aspects of Meebo, which they could transform in to a new upcoming product. Since Google+ didn’t exactly take off like they expected it to, this could be their way of trying something new.

Let us know your thoughts on Google shutting down various Meebo services in the comments section below.

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