Recently Google announced that the feature of Google Labs is being closed down now. Google Labs were the test bed for users where they could play with the ideas of the engineers and stress test those ideas. Those ideas which win the race will make their way into the products of Google. Google labs was started in the year 2002. Since then it gave life to many Google apps like Google maps, iGoogle, Google news, etc. Even some peculiar apps like Google Goggles gained life with Google labs. This announcement about the end of Google Labs was made in a blog post by SVP for research and systems infrastructure Bill Coughran.

He wrote that a part of prioritizing their product efforts they have decided to put an end to Google labs. He also said that Google has learnt a lot from the launch of prototypes in Labs. Google believes that they require great focus so that they make the most of the extraordinary activities which are in store with the future. It has been a permanent complaint of the company that they have created many fascinating projects but very few of them have become feasible commercial offerings. So, this decision to wind down Google Labs is not a surprise. Google is definitely the search giant but it has since long wanted to lead the band of software giants. This decision of Google shows that Google realizes that they need to put away these childish things and concentrate on serious software development and approach it like the software veteran that they aspire to be since long. Google was once only a fragmentary internet upstart. The workers used to spend 20% of their time working on ideas related to Google which randomly came to their mind. However, Google is no more the same made-in-a-garage upstart, now it has thousands of employees.