Google Shutters Slide, Acquired Last Year for $182 Million

A twelvemonth agone, Google acquired an gumptious maker of apps that plugged into social networks like MySpace and Facebook known as Slide. Yesterday, it definite to pay heed an proscribed-of-business sign on the operation.

Max Levchin, Slide, Google — Max Levchin

The decision to bag Slide was announced to its employees at an all-stave meeting held in San Francisco yesterday, according to the Bulwark Street Journal's All Things Digital website. At that sitting it was also announced that Slide's leader Max Levchin is leaving the company. Levchin cofounded PayPal and is the current chairman of Yip, an online provider of reviews of local restaurants, nightspots, and much.

"Max has distinct to leave Slide and Google to pursue other opportunities, and we wish him the best," a Google spokesperson told Each Things Digital. "Most of the team from Swoop will remain at Google to work on new opportunities."

Although Slide's natural endowment may be offered spots at Google, it remains to be seen how many of them leave take over. Slide's head of product Jared Fliesler, All Things Integer reports, has already announced that he testament join early Slither colleague Keith Rabois at Square, a mobile-payments political program. And more defections may follow. "While Google says that about Skid squad members will stay at Google, I would not be surprised to see an exodus bad quickly," writes Mg Siegler for TechCrunch.

The Slide down shutdown is confirmed in a posting at the party's website, although with none mention of Google. "We wanted to give you all advance notice that in the coming months, a turn of Slide's products and applications will be out," the posting says. "This includes Slideway's products such as Slideshow and SuperPoke! Pets, as well as more recent products much as Photovine, Video Inbox and Pool Party."

Slide.com

One product that North Korean won't be discontinued is Prizes.com, because IT's being developed by Slide's Formosan team, according to TechCrunch's Siegler.

"We created products with the goal of providing a fun way for people to connect, intercommunicate and share," the Slide post continues. "While we are incredibly pleasant to our users and for all of the tremendous feedback over the years, many of these products are no more as active or seaport't caught connected as we originally hoped."

The company also says IT volition help its users move over their smug to other locations, such as to accounts put together with Google's Picasa photo-unselfish service of process.

TechCrunch's Siegler is declaring Slide a injured party in Google CEO Larry Pageboy's campaign to slash fat from the company. Since its purchase, Slide never to the full integrated into Google, he notes. "Slide had been running as a completely autonomous unit broken down into smaller teams inside Google," he writes. "For a while, that seemed alike a good scheme that may keep Google nimble. Now information technology just looks kind of silly." What's more, some of its projects appear to contend with Google+.

For an ambitious outfit like Slide, having a spike driven through its heart by Google must live a crushing letdown. "Every bit we view the future of ethnical amusement, Slide's vision is to build communities that fuel the creation and distribution of virtual goods — a market that is forecasted to hit at least $1.6 billion in the U.S. this year," says the mission statement. That vision volition now remain unrealized.

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