Ahh Google Helpouts, we hardly knew ye. If you’re unfamiliar with the Helpouts app and service which Google launched in August of 2013 initially, then again on iOS in April of last year, it was a form of hangouts in which people could gain help from other people or experts on a certain topic whether it be guitar lessons, help on a certain math problem, a cooking recipe, virtually anything as a paid or free service. It was like having a one on one video chat with someone that could walk you through something step by step. The idea sounded cool and you would think people would have embraced it, but as of today Google has quietly pulled both the Play Store version and the App store version of the Google Helpouts apps from their respective stores, so you can no longer download and install them.
The service is also seemingly unavailable via the apps so we can only assume that Google has no plans to continue Helpouts going forward. After learning that it wasn’t doing particularly well on either Android or iOS, it isn’t that much of a surprise to hear Google pulling the app, as Google is never one to keep things going for too long if they aren’t doing well. Perhaps it’s the fact that people just didn’t see the need for something like Helpouts when they could just as easily watch video tutorials on YouTube without the need to pay for a service from an expert. Things could also be learned at one’s own pace with YouTube where as Helpouts could generally be limited by a person’s time in which they have to actually help someone out.
In reality it could have been a combination of things. In either case, the apps are now unavailable and we would wager they aren’t coming back. Of course it is possible Google could revamp it or just roll the feature into Hangouts altogether. You can still use the web based Helpouts if you wish to give it a try or if you were already using it and wanted to continue doing so.