Google Announces Closure Of Popular Trips App

Google is close down another of its app, after it emerged that the Google Trips app will close down in August.

Google Trips is a travel application that combines all of a user’s important information, such as flight details and hotel reservations, with tourist ideas – and there was even offline access too (handy for places where roaming is expensive).

The Android and iOS app essentially worked by scrapping data from a user’s Gmail account, and the app was used by both tourists and business travellers to make overseas trips that little bit more enjoyable.

Google Trips

The app itself features a customisable map helps the user plan exactly what they were going to do while they were in a country, and for many of the top cities around the world, users received curated suggestions (i.e. a city guide) as well – which was ideal for people looking for a place to eat or have a glass of the local tipple.

The news that Google has decided to pull the plug on it was first spotted by Android Police earlier this week, after it noticed code in the Android app that hinted at its impending shutdown.

Google sequentially admitted the closure in a support document.

“Important: Support for the Google Trips app will end on August 5, 2019,” Google stated. “Until then, you’ll still be able to access and email all of your trip reservations and notes as normal.”

Google instead wants users to visit google.com/travel via their web browsers to access similar features to the app, but that means there will be no offline access.

Google Plus

This is not the first Google app that has been shutdown this year.

The shutdown of Google’s failed Facebook alternative, Google+, began in February this year. A full shutdown took place on 2 April.

Google had announced in October 2018 that it was shutting down Google+ (for consumers) because of low user engagement.

The firm cited the platform’s low usage, but in reality Google had been in hot water over its decision not to reveal a data breach in Google+ that exposed the private data of up to 500,000 users, to hundreds of third-party app developers.

And then in December Google said it was accelerating the “sunsetting” (i.e forced retirement) of its Google+ social network after the discovery of a fresh bug.

Google+ had originally been scheduled to be shutdown for consumers in August 2019, so consumers had less than a year to download and save any data they want to retain.

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