Source: ETtech
The mobile app allowed users to ask questions to their neighbours by text or by voice, share local expertise and keep up with updates from their neighbourhood
Google is shutting down its neighbourhood community app Neighbourly, nearly two years after its launch.
In a note to its users, the Internet giant said that the app hasn’t gained traction as they had hoped, due to which they will be closing down the app on May 12, 2020 and users will be able to download their Neighbourly content until October 12 this year.
The shutdown of the service, which was initially rolled out in Mumbai and later extended to cities like Bengaluru, New Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad among others, comes at a time when India is under a 21-day nationwide lockdown to contain the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We set out to build a helpful neighbourhood app that would let neighbours help each other find answers to everyday questions about their neighbourhoods. This was in line with Google’s mission to organise the world’s information and make it available to users everywhere, but the product hasn’t grown like we had hoped” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.
The mobile app, which was part of Google’s Next Billion Users initiative, allowed users to ask questions to their neighbours by text or by voice, share local expertise and keep up with updates from their neighbourhood.
“In these difficult times, we believe that we can help more people by focusing on other Google apps that are already serving millions of people everyday. We plan to take the lessons learned from Neighbourly and use them to improve our other products. If you want to keep sharing your local knowledge with your neighbours, we encourage you to become a Google Maps Local Guide,” Google said in its email to users.
This development comes on heels of Google announcing that they are winding down Google Station, a programme that had rolled out free public WiFi across more than 400 railway stations in India and thousands of other locations around the country. The search giant had also shut down its food delivery and home services app Areo late last year.
