In a recent blog post, Renewing old resolutions for the new year, Google announced the closing of a number of publicly available services and tools. The search giant has been on a killing rampage with the goal of removing under-performing and peripheral businesses from it’s portfolio.
Examples of the recently killed Google programs include:
- Buzz social network
- Google Labs
- Google Health
We are pretty saddened at one of the now-doomed services, Picnik, an online photo editing toolset. Picnik is possibly the best-known of the services that Google is killing. The craziest part is that Google purchased the company less than a year ago–in March 2010. Most likely, Google will be incorporating photo editing tools into it’s core products, and perhaps even recycling the Picnik technology.
Other tools that will be phased out, rolled-up or merged:
- Google Message Continuity (GMC)
- Google Sky Map
- Needlebase
- Social Graph API
- Urchin: This online web analytics product became the foundation for Google Analytics
Facebook has begun trials of coupon-based advertising, which allows for a new way of targeting fans. The coupons can be posted on a brand’s Facebook Page wall and also appear on a user’s homepage feed as clickable ads.
Cyber Monday is an artificial shopping holiday designed to give the eCommerce market a boost in sales similar to that of Black Friday. Last year was the first time that Cyber Monday was the largest shopping day for online sales. Cyber Monday of 2010 was extremely exciting for 
A group called Occupy Flash is trying to bring Flash to it’s end with expediency. Even though Adobe has severely crippled Flash’s potential with it’s recent decision to end work and support for mobile Flash. The web development platform was certainly doomed at that point, but outdated technologies have a way of lingering on within the web, which is why a group of passionate developers have created a campaign to kill Flash development.
Google will begin using SSL encryption for search queries when users are logged in to their Google accounts. This will have an impact on SEO and marketing analytics, as those encrypted searches will be obscured as website traffic referrers. The new encryption of search query information will be a default setting for logged-in users going forward. Google’s goal is to protect the search data, which is increasingly personalized and revealing about it’s users’ interests and behaviors.