GOOGLE has closed 10 of its online services.

The internet giant says the move is to help focus on 'higher impact' products.

Services being closed by Google include:

Aardvark, a social network-powered question-and-answer search tool

Fast Flip, an experiment in displaying news content online

Notebook, a note-taking and URL-clipping service

Desktop, which the company says has been superseded by cloud computing

Google Pack, the company’s bundle of downloadable software

Sidewiki, a collaborative approach to annotating websites

Google Maps API for Flash

Google Web Security

Image Labeler

Subscribed Links

In a post on Google’s blog, Alan Eustace, senior vice president, said: “Over the next few months we’ll be shutting down a number of products and merging others into existing products as features.

“This will make things much simpler for our users, improving the overall Google experience. It will also mean we can devote more resources to high impact products—the ones that improve the lives of billions of people.

“We’ll continue to take risks on interesting new technologies with a lot of potential. But by targeting our resources more effectively, we can focus on building world-changing products with a truly beautiful user experience.”