‘Hire by Google’, the next product killed by Google; services to end in 2020

Google has notified users in a support note that they are taking down the Hire by Google service on September 1, 2020. In the vague note, no particular reason has been specified by Google. It simply states, “While Hire has been successful, we’re focusing our resources on other products in the Google Cloud portfolio.”

Launched in 2017, the Hire by Google service is an applicant tracking system aimed to assist small to medium businesses (SMBs) for candidate sourcing. Its integrated software (Google Search, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Hangouts) makes activities like applicant search, interview scheduling and feedback simpler.

A profile on Google Hire, can make a candidate more trackable as recruiters and hiring managers can get more information about the candidate from web sites such as LinkedIn, GitHub, and others. Even an email communication with the candidate is tracked on the candidate profile available on Google Hire. Until now, Hire was only available to companies in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada.

In the FAQs following the note, Google has said that no new functionalities will be added in the Hire product. It also states that until September 1, 2020, customers under contract will be provided support in accordance with the Technical Support Services Guidelines (TSS) of Hire.

“After your next bill, there will be no additional charges for your standard usage of Hire up until the end of your contract term or September 1, 2020, whichever comes first”, adds the note. It also specifies that closing down of Hire will have no impact on user’s G Suite agreement.

Which other Google products have been shut down

Google’s decision to shut down its own projects is not new. Two months ago, Google announced that it was shutting down the Trips app which was a substitute for Inbox's trip bundling functionality. This news came after the community favorite Google Inbox was discontinued in March 2019.

In April this year, Google also ceased and deleted all user accounts on its Google+ social network platform. Per Verge, the reason behind the closure of Google+ was the security liabilities the social network posed. It suffered two significant data leaks causing millions of Google+ users’ data at risk. Though Google stated that Google+ failed to meet the company’s expectations of user growth and mainstream pickup as the reason for its packup.

In May, another popular Google product, Works with Nest was given an end date of August 30, 2019. This was the result of Google’s plan of action to bring all the Nest and Google Home products under one brand ‘Google Nest’. With an aim to make its smart home experience more secure and unified for users, all the Nest account users were asked to migrate to Google Accounts, as it is the only serving front-end for using products across Nest and Google. This decision of phasing out Works with Nest had made many Nest products users’ infuriated back then.

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With this trend of killing its own products, Google is gaining a lot of negative campaigning. Many people are of the opinion that Google’s side projects cannot be trusted for long term adoption.

A user on Hacker News comments, “What is humorous to me is that Google is hurting users who typically have the most influence over SaaS integrations at their company (managers) by taking away a tool that helped them deal with the part of their job most of them hate the most (hiring/recruiting).

If it hasn't been obvious yet to managers watching this, Google's software is not a safe investment for you to make for your company. It is only a matter of time until you will suddenly have to divert your time to figuring out how to migrate away from a Good Tool to a Less Good Tool because Google built it well then took it away. 

Swapping a tool like this is an abysmal resource sink for you and your company. This is not the first, second, third, fourth or even fifth time this has happened, but this one should hit close to home. Google's software is not a safe investment for you to make for your company.”

Many are wondering if Hire was really successful as stated by Google, then what could be the reason behind its shut down.

Another comment on Hacker News reads, “Why do they cancel this product? Are they losing profit over this? Were they working on any new features? If no new features are required, would it be such a hassle to just keep the product working without assigning engineers to it? Only support?”

Interested users can read the FAQs in the Google support page to know more information.

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