Google Drive will be one feature short by August 31, 2016. The feature in question was or rather still is – but the one that is surely headed for the grave – the Drive’s web hosting feature for basic websites, which still is free of cost.
Well its already celebrating its third birthday, even though a lot of people didn’t even know of its existence. And come August next year, it will be taken off the Drive. Google made the announcement today that it is deprecating the lesser known feature starting today.
But those wishing to pay their homage and make final use of this free utility can continue to do so till next year. The reason cited by Google for this decision is that its web hosting feature has fallen behind other public web hosting services (Happy realisation Google!).
Shutting down the feature will allow the company to channelize time and money towards other popular features on Drive. The move could also be due to sibling rivalry as Google Sites offers the same feature, and eliminating a product over a feature, well you know who wins. The Sites on the other hand has also gathered some dust since its upgrade has been pending for ages.
Till the next year, users can continue to make use of the web hosting feature, though for only basic sites the users can get their websites up and running by a simple JavaScript resources and CSS files. For those unaware, Drive also offers an API for developers, who will be among the users bidding adieu to this feature when the googledrive.com/host[doc id] will no longer be responding.
Dan McGrath, Product Manager, Google Drive making the announcement stated
For those who use this feature to serve non-user content to web and mobile applications, Google Cloud Platform offers a better performing solution.
