Google, the indisputably best search engine is going to officially shut down the famous mobile app Latitude that allows the users to share their location by using their Smartphone’s GPS. So, after shutting down the app Google Reader which became highly popular among its users, Latitude will be another major shut down of services from the company. However, in an effort to decrease the level of disappointment among the fans of Latitude, Google has assured to add a location-sharing feature. Therefore, in the meanwhile, the company has requested its users to use the Google+ app on Android for sharing their location.
Although Google is still yet to receive responses from the users on this major decision, but the shutdown of one popular app after another within a short time is not going to bring any positive responses. Most users often find it very hard to get used to a new app and once they do so, it becomes very hard to suddenly stop using it either. Therefore, complaints from the customers for killing the app Latitude is apparent and there is doubt if the Latitude users will be comfortable enough to switch to the Google+ app in order to keep on sharing their locations.
On the other hand, it is not a new trend with Google to shut down one services after another whenever it has plans to launch new products in the market. For example, Google replaced the less popular Google Video with the highly popular You Tube, Google+ app was replaced by Google Buzz and then Google Hangouts replaced the former Google Talk. So, it has become a company policy to cut off the current services before rolling out their new services and make them popular. However, it would be too early to say if the new app that Google has planned to replace Latitude will be as popular as Latitude was and if it will be able to generate as many users as Latitude did.
On the other hand, there are also speculations about shutting down iGoogle which is a Google homepage, due to its inability to attract many users. However, shutting down the services of the less popular apps is not going to cost the company dearly, but killing popular apps all of sudden might not bring good responses from the market either.
