Google Spaces, one of the many messaging apps available from Google, is officially being shut down on April 17th. Google Project Manager, John Kilcline announced the shut down on Google+ earlier today. Noting that they are taking what they have learned with Spaces and will implement it into their existing products. Kilcline didn’t say whether that would be implemented into Allo, Hangouts or another messaging platform, though. After all Google has many of them right now.
Spaces launched back in 2016, and it was a pretty interesting messaging app when it launched. One of the big features of the app was the ability to instantly pull in things like pictures, attachments, websites and so much more (basically what Gboard can do now). Which made it easier to share things like an article on a website, with someone without having to go and look for the article in a web browser and then pasting the link in the app. Spaces was also pretty unique in the fact that you could create a space for a topic and talk with others interested in that topic, but also create one for a your family or even with a few of your friends.
This is just one of the many Google projects that will likely be phased out and shut down over the next few months. Every year, Google goes through and does a Spring Cleaning of their many products and services. Usually they get rid of ones that are either redundant or many people aren’t using. Of course the most popular Spring Cleaning shut down was Google Reader a few years ago. It caused a huge uproar among Google’s users, and actually made Feedly into a star, as people were looking for a new RSS reader to get all of their news.
Google Spaces is going to go into a “read only” mode within the next few weeks, Kilcline has not given an exact date as to when that will happen though, just “coming weeks”. And then it’ll be completely shut down on April 17th. So if you are a user of Spaces, you’ll want to leave the service soon and find a suitable replacement, which there’s no shortage on the number of messaging apps available right now.