Google farewells apps in spring clean

Mac users, it seems, haven’t embraced the ability to sync to Picasa to any great degree, with Google removing the platform from its Picasa service in its latest round of app spring cleaning.

Picasa Web Albums for Mac and Picasa Web Albums Plugin for iPhoto have both been unplugged from the machine-that-goes-ping, along with a slew of other services that seemed like a good idea at the time.

BlackBerry’s reinvention from rooster to feather-duster has landed it on the junkpile, with the Chocolate Factory telling users of Google Sync for BlackBerry that downloads will end June 1, and suggesting they switch to either the BlackBerry Internet Service or Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

The mobile Web app for GoogleTalk will be withdrawn, with customers redirected to native Android apps using GoogleTalk.

Also on death-watch are the One Pass publishing payment system; the WINE-based Picasa for Linux won’t be getting any new updates; and the short-lived experiment, Google Related, is being wound down so (in the kind of phrase that takes perfectly good words and strangle them) “the Related team can focus on creating more magic moments across other Google products”.

The spring clean also means new API deprecation policies. The Google App Engine, Google Cloud Storage, Google Maps/Earth and YouTube APIs are moving from a three-year deprecation policy to a one-year cycle. This change will happen in April 2014. On the Google Developer Blog, APIs product manager Adam Feldman also http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/changes-to-deprecation-policies-and-api.html writes that Google will “strive to provide one year notice before making breaking changes”.

Older APIs – too many to list here – are being retired, and Feldman is also giving notice that in April 2015, the deprecation policies for a number of APIs are being removed (the APIs themselves will remain).

The Google retirement announcement is here. ®