Google Spaces Social Sharing App to Be Shut Down on April 17

Google kept itself busy last year, launching a number of new applications, software, and devices. While you may have heard a lot about Allo, Google's intelligent messaging app with Assistant, many would have passed over Spaces, an experimental group messaging app that was launched in May. Google has now announced it will shut down its experimental app on April 17.

John Kilcline, a Google product manager, said in a Google+ post that the company "decided to take what we learned with Spaces, and apply it to our existing products." Although Kilcline wasn't specific, one of the products that could implement Spaces' features is perhaps Allo.

Spaces allowed users to easily share content and commentary on any specific topic. The app was more of a forum-like service than a true messaging app. Much like creating specific topic-oriented groups on Facebook, Spaces was meant to be used to create small groups where you could invite friends or co-workers to discuss about specific topics. And being a Google product, users could bring in Google searches, images and YouTube videos directly into Spaces.

The app, which was Google's latest attempt at social networking, seemed to be suffering from a crisis of identity. With a number of specific social networking giants like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat, Spaces was perhaps too late to find a footing.

Kilcline added in the post that Spaces will now move into read-only mode before it completely shuts down the service on April 17. It looks like Google is slowly abandoning some of its stagnant applications, and perhaps Hangouts, which is slowly being replaced by Duo, could be next.