Google silently kills Orkut and QuickOffice

Google silently kills Orkut and QuickOffice

So Google does it again! Google ditches two of its products, namely Orkut and Quickoffice.

QucikOffice was bought by the big G as a seeming alternate to Microsoft Office. Quickoffice was compatible with the Drive and cloud services by Google enabling users to edit on the go and have it all synced across devices. The suit also helped users to convert the MS doc files to the Drive. Sounds all handy.

But now since Google is all into Drive for office kinda business, Quickoffice is silently killed. Google says it will pull the Quickoffice apps from the Google Play store and App store.

Google seems to be more and more involved in developing the Drive with more new features and take it towards a more complete Office suite. Although Google is killing Quickoffice, existing users can continue to use it. But Google will not be updating it.

Orkut, Google’s social network will also be shut down at the end of September. Even though Google started Orkut as a social network it couldn’t keep up with the other popular ventures like Facebook, for instance. And then, Google launched its own (yet another) social network Google+ in 2011. Social networks like Twitter and Instagram, and ephemeral messaging services like Snapchat take over the mobile world.

In this scenario Orkut seemed to get very little attraction. Google has closed the door for new signups for Orkut accounts, since the service will be closed at the end of September. Existing users could use Google Takeout to export their Orkut photos and profile information.

RIP Quickoffice and Orkut.

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