Google Cleans House, Shuts Down Apps and Consolidates Content

In an effort to give you an even better Google experience, the company is cleaning house and reorganizing a few of its products. In addition to the changes Google has already made to about 50 products over the past year, the company recently announced a few additional changes that will be coming soon.

First up, Google plans to shut down Google Apps for Teams. Originally introduced in 2008, Google Apps for Teams was designed to give people with a verified business or school email address the ability to collaborate using non-email applications such as Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Talk. Now, Google is realizing the service isn't as useful as it hoped, so the company will start converting Google Apps for Teams accounts into personal Google Accounts beginning September 4, 2012. The service will officially be shut down on October 15, 2012. Google has provided additional information for users who are affected by the shut down on its support page.

Google also realizes that most people are using the podcast apps available in Google Play to find and listen to podcasts. As a result, Google Listen is going to be discontinued. If you already have the app installed, you'll be able to continue using it but the podcast search feature won't work after November 1. Users will be able to access their podcast subscriptions through Google Reader.

In an effort to consolidate products, Google will be migrating all videos hosted on Google Video for Business to Google Drive. The videos that will be migrated won't count against a user's Google Drive storage quota.

Last, but not least, Google is shutting down some of its company blogs in order to consolidate the number of communications channels. Google assures customers updates won't decrease; they'll just be available on some of Google's more popular blogs.