Less than one year after launch, Google Spaces is shutting down.
Google announced today that its Spaces service will shut down on April 17, 2017. What’s more, it’ll become read-only on March 3, so you’ve only got one more week to create new spaces, posts, and comments.
Before the shutdown date, you’ll be able to read, save, print, and delete your content on Spaces. After April 17, though, all Spaces and their content will be deleted.
Google doesn’t really say why Spaces is being shut down, only that “it was a tough decision, and it’s tough to say goodbye.” The company adds that it will use what it’s learned from Spaces to “improve other Google products and services.”
Google Spaces launched in mid-May 2016 as a way for small groups to share articles, videos, and images. You could create a new Space for any topic and invite anyone that you wanted. What made the service interesting was that it had Google Search, YouTube, and Chrome built-in, so you could do a lot of your searching and consumption from within the app. The group chat market is competitive, though, and it looks like Spaces might not have gained as much traction as Google would’ve liked.
Did you ever try Google Spaces?