Google clips Exchange backup service

Google has revealed plans to axe its Postini-based cloud back-up service for Microsoft Exchange emails in a new round of cuts to the firm's product portfolio.

The axing of Google Message Continuity would occur despite "hundreds of thousands" of businesses signing up since December 2010.

The service was charged at $US25 per seat for non-Apps customers.

It wasn't necessarily a failure, Dave Girouard, Google's vice president of product management, said.

But by contrast, "millions" of businesses had moved entirely to its Google Apps product, and that its efforts would focus on that instead, Girouard said.

Current customers will be nudged towards Google Apps as the primary messaging and collaboration platform, but will have access to the service for the duration of the contract.

Several other products are to be shuttered or offloaded.

Google will open source its Sky Map Android app for astronomy enthusiasts, while Needlebase, a publishing platform that scrapes and organises data from websites, which Google acquired with its travel sector purchase, ITA Software, will be retired on June 1, 2012.   

The Picnik photo editor meanwhile will be retired on April 19, 2012, followed the next day by Google's Social Graph API.

Also on the chopping block will in March will be a client-hosted version of Urchin Software, an analytics tool behind Google Analytics. Google will retain the online version of the product. 

The latest cull came shortly after Google's shares fell almost nine percent after it missed revenue expectations and reported an eight percent fall in second quarter revenues from its "cost per click" advertising customers compared with last year.

Google said its overall $10.6 billion quarterly revenues would have been $240 million higher if it went back to last year's foreign exchange rates.

Google CEO Larry Page said its recently launched social network platform Google+ now had 90 million users.

"Over 60 percent of them engage daily and over 80 percent weekly," said Page according to a Seeking Alpha trascript. 

There are currently a total of 250 million Android devices, he added while Gmail now had 350 million active users.