After nine months of existence, Google is throwing in the towel on group messaging app Spaces. It's going read-only on March 3rd and will be completely offline on April 17th. So, that's one Google messaging app down, like a dozen still to go.

Spaces was launched last May after a confusing early leak. We couldn't figure out why Google would bother with such an app. The idea was that you'd create group chats around a certain topic, then add content via Chrome, YouTube, and Google search. Google pushed Spaces at I/O last year, but that's also when it announced Allo. Yeah, Google went on kind of a messaging app bender in 2016. Spaces seemed doomed from the start, and indeed it was.

The app will alert you of the shutdown when you open it. That links to a support page with all the details. You only have a few weeks to finish up all those outstanding conversations you're definitely having in Spaces before the app goes read-only. You won't be able to add anything new to the app after that happens on March 3rd. You can save your conversations in Spaces at any time before the full shutdown on April 17th.

The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch