Google to shut down Google Hire, a job application tracking system for small to medium sized businesses it launched two years ago, in September 2020
Add another one to the Google Cemetery. — Google has disclosed that it will shut down Google Hire, the job application tracking system it launched just two years ago.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google is pulling out of SMB recruiting just three years after entering it: Hire was tested with outside companies in spring 2017 and then given its public launch as a G Suite-exclusive tool for US small and medium-sized businesses. The shutdown lands on top of an earlier retreat from the same market — Simply Hired, the job search engine Google reportedly acquired, was shut down back in June 2016.
The throughline is the so-called Google Cemetery: Hire becomes another entry in the list of products Google has abandoned, which matters because every kill weakens the pitch that businesses can build workflows on Google's non-core tools.
First-order effects
- Small and medium-sized businesses using Hire to manage job applications have until September 2020 to export their pipelines and move to another applicant tracking system.
- G Suite loses one of its differentiators against rival office suites, since Hire's exclusivity to G Suite customers was part of the original launch pitch.
Second-order effects
- Independent applicant-tracking vendors serving the SMB segment inherit a wave of displaced Hire customers looking for a replacement before the September 2020 cutoff.
- Google's own hiring operations are unaffected operationally, but the exit narrows Google's footprint in the recruiting-software market it had tried twice to enter via acquisition and internal build.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — a reported acquisition killed in 2016, a two-year-old product killed in 2020 — buyers face a structural discount on any Google product outside Search, ads, and productivity core: procurement teams increasingly price in abandonment risk when choosing non-core Google tools.
The trend: Google keeps culling non-core products years after launch, turning the Google Cemetery from a joke into a real risk factor for business customers weighing its tools.