UPDATED 10:15 EDT / APRIL 29 2013

NEWS

Meebo Bar Says “Bye Bye” as it Makes Way for Google+ Sign

On June 6, 2013, another of Google’s tools will be kicking the bucket, but not because no one uses it. Instead, the search giant has just decided to favor its Google+ Sign-in more.

Meebo, the service that started as a browser-based instant messaging program which supported multiple IM services such as Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, AIM, ICQ, MySpaceIM, Facebook Chat,Google Talk, CafeMom etc., is bidding its users farewell as of June 6.  The announcement was made on Meebo’s page, with users receiving e-mails regarding the service’s demise.

The Meebo Bar farewell letter read:

“Five years ago, we launched the Meebo Bar to bring community, engagement, and revenue to publisher sites.

As part of the Google team, this continues to be our focus, but we want to best serve mobile and desktop publishers moving forward.  Therefore, we have decided to focus our resources on initiatives like the recently launched Google+ Sign-In (which includes interactive posts andover-the-air app installs) and the Google+ plug-ins.

This means we will retire the Meebo Bar, effective June 6, 2013.

Thank you for being a Meebo Bar publisher.  We have truly appreciated the opportunity to serve you.

Sincerely,

Sandy, Seth, and the Meebo Team”

It was only last year that Google acquired Meebo for roughly $100 million in the hopes of expanding its social offering by fusing it with Google+.  Meebo gave way to several advertising and social products, such as the Meebo Bar plug-in that publishers can add to their websites to help visitors “discover, browse, and share content on their site,” while the acquisition gave way to more Google+ integration to the Meebo Bar.

Users of Meebo Bar can now opt out of the service before doomsday by heading onto their Content Management System, which can either be Blogger, WordPress, or TypePad, to remove the codes.  As for the silver lining in the grey cloud, you can save any custom widgets created using Meebo Bar by using the custom button tool within the Meebo Bar dashboard.

So why did Google decide to retire the Meebo Bar?  Well, it has something to do with Google+ Sign-in, the service announced last February that mimics how Facebook Connect works.  Google+ Sign-in allows developers to integrate Google+ into mobile and web apps just like Facebook Connect.  If you’re still confused, Facebook Connect allows you to use your Facebook account to sign up for various online services, or get freebies on mobile games like Candy Crush.  Google introduced the same service last February and now, the search giant wants to focus on this new endeavor, thus the retirement of the Meebo Bar.


A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU