Cut Time! Google Slashes Google Listen and Other Projects

As many of you may know, Google Labs is the breeding ground for the Google Projects that the employees take on in their free time. Some of these projects you may recognize, like Gmail, and some you may not, like Wave.

This week Google is giving the axe to three projects, Google Listen, Google Video for Business, and Google Apps for Teams.

You may remember Google Listen- The podcast streaming and downloading app that you either loved or passed by. For some reason I always download all of the Google Apps to give them a try, and this one was just a flash in the pan. I was happy about it for a bit, and used it a lot, but it started to grow a bit one sided. There wasn’t much of a cohesive feel throughout the app.

Luckily for us, with the advent of the Google Play store, we still have a place to consume our podcast material, and it is in one consolidated area with the rest of our apps and such. Sounds good to me!

As for the other apps, Google Video for Business, and Google Apps for Teams, well, I don’t know what to say to the displaced users of these apps. I didn’t even know these apps existed, so I doubt it was too much of a loss.

What apps would you like to see out of Google in the future? Personally, I would like to see some type of aggregate chat client like gtalk that embraces other platforms.