Google plans to sunset Optimize and Optimize 360, which let marketers conduct A/B testing to improve their website or app user experience, on September 30, 2023
Nicole Farley / Search Engine Land :
Context & Ripple Effects
Google Optimize arrived in 2017 as a free A/B testing tool with an enterprise Optimize 360 tier aimed at pulling testing into the reach of every site owner, not just enterprises with dedicated experimentation budgets. Six years later Google is sunsetting both tiers on September 30, 2023.
The shutdown fits a long Google habit: it previously killed its website optimization service PageSpeed in 2015 (shut down in August that year) and retired the Google Compare products in the US and UK in 2016 (shut down on March 23) — free or semi-free marketing tools withdrawn once they no longer serve a strategic purpose.
First-order effects
- Marketers running experiments through Optimize or paying for Optimize 360 must find and migrate to a replacement before September 30, 2023, or lose their testing programs outright.
Second-order effects
- Dedicated experimentation vendors such as Optimizely, VWO, and AB Tasty inherit a wave of displaced users, and pricing pressure shifts toward whoever offers the smoothest migration path from a free tool.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — PageSpeed, Compare, now Optimize — marketers will treat Google's free web tools as temporary infrastructure rather than durable platforms, favoring vendors whose core business depends on the product surviving.
The trend: Google continues culling standalone web-marketing tools that sit outside its ads-and-analytics core, repeatedly forcing marketers onto paid third-party alternatives.