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Thursday, July 19, 2007

Google Stops "Related Links" Service

In April last year, the Google Labs launched a service called Related Links. If you used this widget, a box like the following was inserted into your page, containing (ideally) context-relevant links (though the webmaster, or Google, didn’t get paid in any way):

Google now quietly killed off this program, as Ionut noted in the forum. Pages which included the gadget will now simply show a Google search box that will forward to Google.com if the user enters something.

I asked Google for a comment and they replied with this:

As of April 30, 2007, we ceased providing the related links service. Related Links was one of many Google Labs products that we had developed experimentally as part of our commitment to ongoing innovation.

Through our evaluation of the Labs product, we identified the most compelling functionalities of Related Links and integrated them into new and improved products, like the AJAX Search API and AdSense Link Units. Current customers can now use these alternative products, which offer even more flexibility and are even more powerful at helping publishers make useful information accessible to their users.

Other services Google canceled or halted in the past include Google Answers, Google X and the Google SOAP API.

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