In 2008, Google announced they were ending Lively, closed SearchMash without comment and started folding Page Creator into Google Sites.

It looks like Dodgeball.com is the next to go. The mobile social networking service will be closing in the near future. Twitter wannabe Jaiku is being all but killed. They're moving the microblogging service to Google App Engine and discontinuing active development. It could live on as an open source project if there's enough public interest in developing it.

Mashup Editor is also being moved to Google App Engine, but this move doesn't sound as ominous. It will kill any existing mashups that were created in the private beta, but that doesn't sound like it will affect a lot of users.

This isn't the first time Google has discontinued a service or ended an experiment, but the trend has been accelerating lately as Google focuses on cutting fluff in the uncertain economy. I put together a little gallery of a few of our dearly departed Google services, and I'm sure I'll have more to add as the year progresses.

• Google Graveyard - Gallery of Dead and Discontinued Google Projects

Google made two back-to-back posts in the Official Google Blog explaining some recent cutbacks at the company. Google recently closed their Phoenix, Arizona office and scaled back significantly on external contractors.

Google went on to explain that they were further scaling back by 100 positions and eliminating offices in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden. They were careful to say that Google was still hiring, the positions they were cutting were in recruiting, and they were attempting to relocate the engineers from closing offices.

Our strong desire is to keep as many of these 70 engineering employees at Google as possible. However, we do recognize the upheaval and heartache that these changes may have on Google families, and that we may not be able to keep 100% of these exceptional employees.

Google doesn't have a lot of practice with layoffs or spending cuts, and the recent moves have caused quite a stir. Google will announce their fourth quarter results next Thursday. I'm sure the conference call afterward will be very interesting.

Another bonus software application for Mac users was released on Monday. The Google Quick Search Box is sort of like a Google version of Spotlight that provides both results from your computer and the Web. The open source software is intended to mirror the Google Mobile App for iPhone.

So far it's also faster on my machine, and I like it better than the Mac version of Google Desktop. You can download the software or the source code for Google Quick Search Box from Google Code.

• Google Desktop for Windows Review
• Google for Your New Year's Resolutions

Favicons are those little pictures that appear on the upper corner of your browser tabs or address bar. The one for About.com looks like a red ball. The Google favicon was the same for years, but they decided to change it over the summer to a blue lower case "g," but invited people to submit better ideas.

After getting many submissions, they decided to change the favicon to this: . It's certainly colorful, but my eyes are just not getting used to it. I don't see the "g" right away. I think I like André Resende's original submission better, but I'm sure I'll get used to this one soon. What do you think?