Google killed these 4 products soon after acquiring them
Punchd logotype | Image by TechCrunch
Punchd
Founded in 2010 by Grantland Chew and Reed Morse, Punchd was a digital loyalty card app and service targeted towards small businesses.
Customers could use the service to store multiple cards and track their reward points from the different businesses.
Punchd was acquired by Google in 2011 and just a year later in 2012 Google annonced that they were shutting down the service.
Until june 2013 customers could still use their loyalty cards and redeem their reward points.
The team behind Punchd explained that they would go on to working on other products at Google.
Our team's goal at Google has been to improve and simplify the experience for small business owners. In addition to improving Punchd, we've been working hard to integrate Punchd features and ideas into other Google products. In 2013 we decided to shut down Punchd and dedicate our team's time and energy into the integrations with other products.
Sparrow logotype | Image by Wikipedia
Sparrow
Launched on February 9 2011, Sparrow was an innovative email client for Mac and iOS. It soon became one of the top paid apps in due to features such as a user-friendly interface, support for Dropbox and Box.net when uploading files and Gmail labels.
Sparrow was acquired by Google in 2012 with promises that the app would remain available and fully supported. However it's now clear that Google acquired the email client for both talent and technology.
The team started working on projects at Google resulting in Inbox and features in Gmail. Just a year after the acqusition, in 2013, the app vanished from the App Store.
Jaiku logotype | Image by Wikipedia
Jaiku
Founded by Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen in February 2006, launched in July the same year, Jaiku was a micro-blogging service from Finland comparable to Twitter(founded a month after Jaiku).
The service made it possible for the users to post short messages called "Jaikus". The posts could be made private and only visible to your friends or public for everyone to see.
Google acquired Jaiku in 2007 giving the service a bumby road follwoing the acqusition. Service interruptions, lack of new features and a temporary requriment for a invite from Google in order to join the service was just some of the problems users encountered.
This led to many users switching to Twitter and Jaiku lost the momentum. In 2011 Google+ was launched and just a year later, in 2012, Jaiku was shut down.
Bump! logotype | Image by Wikipedia
Bump!
Launched in 2009 Bump! was a an app that made it possible for users to share data between their smartphones.
As the name suggests users could bump their phone together in order to transfer things like photos and contact cards.
Google acquired Bump! in 2013 and in 2014 the co-founder David Lieb annonced that they were removing the app from the Apple App Store and Google Play.
No reason was given by Google as to why the app was shut down. However no promises of supporting the app was made during the acquisiton.
Discover more discontinued products from Google such as the Google+, YouTube Gaming and Project Loon.