Google Trims 5 Products; Meebo to Shut Down July 11

Every week, Mountain View makes news with technology developments, discoveries and sometimes controversies.

In the weekly “Bits and Bytes” column we’ll relay the past week’s news highlights from our backyard giants, start-ups and small businesses alike.

Since its product purge began last fall, Google has trimmed over 30 products and services. Now it’s eliminating five more, such as the Google Mini search appliance, which it will stop selling at the end of July. It’s also planning on axing Google Video, instead archiving old content on Youtube, and iGoogle, its personalized search page that was launched in 2007. Lastly, Google Talk Chatback and its Symbian Search App are also going to the chopping block.

There’s a possible link between breast size and risk of breast cancer, according to a study published this week by personal genomics company 23andMe. Published in the journal BMC Medical Genetics, it analyzes data from 16,000 women and found seven variations in genetic DNA linked to breast size. Part of that connection is also due to the fact that there’s a heightened risk of breast cancer and obesity.

LinkedIn hosted a global hackathon this week, and men weren’t invited. DevelopHer 2012 attracted over 100 female developers from June 30 to July 1 at the events’ locations in New Delhi and Mountain View. Several new apps came out of the event -- with one (Shmoozr, an HTML5 web app) designed by two women visiting the Bay Area only for a week.

LinkedIn as a service is still dominated by men, according to a Mashable report this week. Men comprise 63 percent of the service, and over two-thirds of Google+. Twitter and Facebook are ruled in usage by women, who also post more frequently to the latter than their male counterparts.

A week after being acquired by Google, online chatting platform Meebo announced that it’s shutting down on July 11. Customers will still have the option of downloading their chat logs and shared history. The Meebo Bar will still live on, however, with “continued improvements and new features,” the company wrote on its website.

Intuit is pushing to add $1.7 billion in sales in the next three years. It’s hoping to woo up to five million more customers through simplifying questionnaires on its tax preparation software. “We used to ask for things that were almost like asking for a pre-nup during the first date at a bar,” said CEO Brad Smith in a Bloomberg interview about the previously complicated nature of the software.