Google Helpouts To Shut Down April 20 As Interest Wanes

Google has announced that it will be shutting down Helpouts, a 1-year-old service that allows users to share their expertise with others through live video chats. The service will close to the public on April 20.

"The Helpouts community includes some engaged and loyal contributors, but unfortunately, it hasn't grown at the pace we had expected," Google said in a online post. "Sadly, we've made the tough decision to shut down the product."

Google Helpouts launched in late 2013. At the time, Google said Helpouts would be a hub that users could go to for live video sessions with experts on any topic, ranging from fitness gurus to writing tutors. For the topic experts, Helpouts gave them a medium for chatting with customers across the Web and allowed them to easily charge for their advice, while giving Google a percentage of their revenue.

But the service never took off, and that's why it's being closed down. Google is known for being quite stern when it comes to ending services with low user numbers. Other notable Google services that have been shut down include Google Wave, Google Reader, Google Videos and Orkut, Google's original social network.

Users will have until Nov. 1 to use Google Takeout to download all of their Google Helpouts data and history.