Google to shut down its weird Prizes.org product for lack of user adoption

Google will be winding down Prizes.org, a contest-driven, crowd-sourcing type ‘marketplace for creative ideas’, over the next 6 months.

Prizes.org is actually a legacy product Google obtained through the purchase of Slide. I never quite understood why the company had decided to terminate all of Slide’s products post-acquisition, bar Prizes.org.

Basically, Prizes.org let people create ‘cash prize’ competitions for creative work like logos, slogans, brand names, copywriting and whatnot.

To me, it always felt out of place within Google’s suite of products.

Anyway, it will gone in about 6 months. In a blog post, Google writes:

Over the next six months, we will be retiring the Prizes.org product. By January 31, 2013, Prizes.org across platforms–on the web, Android or iOS–will no longer be supported.

We’re so grateful to all of you for your participation and engagement since we launched last year, but the product isn’t experiencing the kind of adoption we had hoped for.

In two weeks, Prizes.org will disable account and prize creations, and at the end of July 2012, there will be a ‘Prizes Entry Exporter’ that will enable contestants to – you guessed it – export prize entries.

January 31, 2013 will be the last day for users to cash out any remaining credits via PayPal. Users can also choose to delete their accounts now, via ‘Settings’.

We are grateful for your support. By Jan 31, 2013, Prizes will no longer be supported. For more info, visit blog.prizes.org. Thank you.

— Prizes (@Prizes) June 29, 2012