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Even Google is not immune to the recession, and it is conducting a cull of its mobile and web services in a bid to focus on the most important ones, and the ones that will lead its drive for dominance across the PC and mobile internet. The search giant will lay off about 100 employees, mainly on the recruitment side, and among the product casualties will be mobile social networking effort Dodgeball, once held up as Google's bid to redefine this important application area for cellphones and steal a march on Facebook.

Google acquired Dodgeball in May 2005 but its interest in the product waned two years later, and co-founders Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert resigned, saying Google was no longer supporting the software in the way they had expected at the point of acquisition. In a blog entry at the time, Crowley said: "The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us--especially as we couldn't convince them that Dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other start-ups got to innovate in the mobile/social space."

This may prove a wasted opportunity for Google, given that mobile/social apps are one of the few major growth areas for 2009, but it also shows that giants may thrive better by supporting existing brands than trying to reinvent the wheel - a lesson Nokia may also have to take on board as it pursues its own social mobility agenda.

Other products getting the axe in Google's streamlining effort include microblogging service Jaiku, acquired a year ago, though the service will remain online. It will not be supported separately but will be ported to Google App Engine and then the new open source Jaiku Engine will be released under the Apache license and maintained by volunteers.

Also on the way out - Google Notebook will stop accepting new users; Google Catalog search and Mashup Editor will shut down; and Google Video will no long accept user uploaded content, all pointing to a strategy in which the company will make fewer spot acquisitions of individual apps, but will focus on the underlying platforms for search and mobile apps.

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