Google Hire is the next Google tool to be shut down

Google says it will shut down Google Hire, its G Suite tool built for recruiters at small and midsized companies, on September 1st, 2020, despite launching only two years ago. Google did not give a specific reason as to why it’s shutting down the tool beyond saying that it’s “focusing our resources on other products in the Google Cloud portfolio.”

Hire is the latest of several Google products that have shut down recently, joining social network Google+, chat app Allo, and email app Inbox in the Google graveyard. It’s good that Google is trying to hone its product offerings, but it’s getting hard to trust that new Google services will stick around for more than a couple of years.

In 2017, when Google launched Hire, it also launched Google for Jobs, which filters third-party job listings based on search criteria you set, signaling big ambitions to make tools that would help users find jobs. Two years later, those ambitions may be stalled as Google for Jobs faces antitrust complaints in the EU and Hire is shutting down.

Google says that it will no longer be adding new features to Hire, but existing users can keep using the tool until their contract runs out or on September 1st, 2020, whichever comes first. In a small gesture of goodwill, Google says it will stop charging users for the service after their next bill.