Google Inc has announced closure of five products for streamlining its business. Since September 2011, the company has shut down a number of products and merged others into existing products as features.

This is aimed to make things simpler for users and improving the overall Google experience. In its official blog, Google announced that this way they can devote more resources to high impact products - the ones that improve the lives of billions of people.

Techcrunch reported that the company is continuing to shut down services which are not core to its business - something it has been actively doing ever since Google co-founder Larry Page took over as CEO. Today, the tradition continues as Google is announcing the shuttering of five more services, the most notable of which are Google Video and iGoogle, its personalised homepage offering.

"Technology creates tremendous opportunities to improve people's lives. But to make the most of them, we need to focus - or we end up doing too much and not having the impact we strive for. So last fall we started a spring clean, and since then we've closed or combined more than 30 products," the official Google blog mentions.

Google Mini has been an important part of the company's Enterprise Search offering since it was first introduced in 2005. It has had a good run, but beginning 31 July the company is discontinuing the product because its functionality can be better provided by products like Google Search Appliance, Google Site Search and Google Commerce Search. Google will continue to provide technical support to Mini customers for the duration of their contracts.

Another product that Google will discontinue is iGoogle. The product was originally launched in 2005 but with modern apps that run on platforms like Chrome and Android, the need for iGoogle has eroded over time. Users will have 16 months to adjust or export their data.

Google Talk Chatback, on the other hand, allowed websites to embed a Google Talk widget so that they could engage with their visitors. It is now outdated, so Google is turning off Chatback and encouraging websites to use the Meebo bar.

Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009. Later this summer the company will be moving the remaining hosted content to YouTube. Google Video users have until 20 August to migrate, delete or download their content.

Google will also retire its Symbian Search App to focus in order to focus on its efforts on the mobile web search experience.

Android