Google is shuttering Google Compare, its US comparison-shopping site for auto insurance, credit cards and mortgages after one year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The quick reversal is a setback to the Alphabet unit's efforts to use its enormous reach to provide consumers with niche shopping services and financial-services tools, the Journal said.
The company said in an email to its partners on Monday that Google Compare's US and UK services would start winding down this month and terminate on March 23, according to the Journal.
Google said the service didn't meet its expectations and that the company will now focus on AdWords and future innovations, the paper reported citing the email.
Google could not immediately be reached for comment outside US business hours.
Chris Milk stepped onto a TED Conference stage and took the audience on an awe-inducing trip into the future of movies. While much of the early attention on virtual reality has focused on use of the immersive technology in video games, Milk and his US startup Vrse are using it to transform storytelling and filmgoing. "We have just started to scratch the surface of the true power of virtual reality," Milk said. "It's not a video game peripheral. It connects humans to other humans in a profound way... I think virtual reality has the potential to actually change the world." He had everyone in the Vancouver audience at TED , which ended Friday, hold Google Cardboard viewers to their eyes for what was billed as the world's collective virtual reality experience. Google Cardboard gear is literally that -- cardboard