Although I haven’t written about it here, earlier this year I had the opportunity to travel to Palo Alto, California to participate in an unconference called BioBarCamp.

One of the presentations I had the privilege of attending was about Google Research Datasets service. It had been presented at SciFoo 2007, so it was already a year into development, at least.

All of those attending BioBarcamp were given access as beta testers and we did our best to offer feedback, at and after the event.

The service was looked upon with great expectation on behalf of the life sciences community. Having the ability to collaborate, manage and maintain massive datasets via Google would make for a great service/tool.

However, as times are getting tougher even Google seems to be slowing down and focusing on their key products.

So, without having launched the Google Research Datasets service, beta testers have been informed via email that the service will be shutting down by the end of January 2009.

“As you know, Google is a company that promotes experimentation with innovative new products and services. At the same time, we have to carefully balance that with ensuring that our resources are used in the most effective possible way to bring maximum value to our users.

It has been a difficult decision, but we have decided not to continue work on Google Research Datasets, but to instead focus our efforts on other activities such as Google Scholar, our Research Programs, and publishing papers about research here at Google.

The Google Research Datasets service will remain active until the end of January 2009 during which time any datasets may be downloaded. For those datasets that are impractical to download, we will also happily provide interested users with a copy via hard drive shipment.”

I was actually hoping to see this project move forward even though I can understand that it isn’t for the mainstream public.

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