Google is dropping seven more products

Google has announced that it is shutting seven more products in an effort to simplify its range of services.

Among the seven services are Google Wave, Knol and Google Gears.

It is the third time that Google has announced a cull of several of its products at the same time after they had failed to take off.

According to experts, the strategy might put off users from signing up to new services.

Google make the announcement on its official blog.

Urs Holzle, Google’s vice president of operations said:

“We’re in the process of shutting a number of products which haven’t had the impact we’d hoped for, integrating others as features into our broader product efforts, and ending several which have shown us a different path forward.”

“Overall, our aim is to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience,” he added.

The seven latest products earmarked for the chop are as follows:

* Google Wave – an attempt to combine email and instant messaging for real-time collaboration

* Google Bookmarks List – a service which allowed users to share bookmarks with friends

* Google Friends Connect – allowed webmasters to add social features to their sites by embedding a snippet of code

* Google Gears – much-hyped effort to maintain web browser functionality when working offline

* Google Search Timeline – a graph of historical query results

* Knol – a Wikipedia-style project, which aimed to improve web content

* Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal – a project which aimed to find ways to improve solar power

Google had previously announced its plans to kill off some of the projects on the list.

It has now given details about when the switch-offs will occur. For example Wave will be retired in April, and Knol content will be taken offline in October.