In a move as lame as it is inexplicable, Google has killed off its photosharing service Photovine just days after releasing the well-reviewed official iOS app. WHAT?
To understand the move, you have to know that Photovine is actually a product from Slide, a social apps company that Google bought out for about $200 million.
Now Google’s shutting down Slide and getting rid of the group leader, Mex Levchin. That means that all of Slide’s apps — include Photovine, Disco, Pool Party and Video Inbox — are kaput.
On Slide’s official blog, they’ve posted that they’ll at least allow users to migrate their stored photos and videos:
We wanted to give you all advance notice that in the coming months, a number of Slide’s products and applications will be retired. This includes Slide’s products such as Slideshow and SuperPoke! Pets, as well as more recent products such as Photovine, Video Inbox and Pool Party. We created products with the goal of providing a fun way for people to connect, communicate and share. While we are incredibly grateful to our users and for all of the wonderful feedback over the years, many of these products are no longer as active or haven’t caught on as we originally hoped.
Most importantly, we wanted to take this opportunity to reassure you that we’re committed to helping our users preserve their data as easily as possible. We recognize that many of you have stored valuable content with us and want to assure you that, wherever possible, you will have ample time to download that information or transfer it to another service.
For example, on Slide.com, we will enable users to either download their photos or export them to a Picasa account. We are working to release this export feature over the coming weeks and, once added, users will have several months to take advantage of transferring their photos.
It’s pretty obvious what is going on here, because it’s very similar to the background politics that caused HP to kill off the TouchPad after just 49 days. Essentially, when Google CEO Larry Page took over the reins from former CEO Eric Schmidt, he inherited some of Schmidt’s past acquisitions, including Slide., acquired in just August of last year. Page was willing to give Slide a chance to be a success, but only one: when Slide’s services didn’t immediately become popular, it was all the reason he needed to kill off the division and repurpose the talent… possibly to higher-priority internal projects like Google+.
Even so, it’s an incredibly lame move, because Photovine was actually pretty good. And Google seriously just launched it last month! Even understanding why it was killed doesn’t make the whole thing any less of a big WTF.
