New Google Inc. (GOOG) Casualties: RSS AdSense, Free Storage

Google Inc.Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has been going through its version of “spring cleaning” season over the last couple of years, with the goal of streamlining its company to provide better service for customers and users – as the company puts it, to improve its “more wood behind fewer arrows” policy and business model, so that Google Inc. (GOOG) is maximizing impact of the services it offers rather than trying to do too much.

Certainly the concept of being more focused and efficient can be music to the ears of investors in Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) stock, including billionaire fund manager Julian Robertson of Tiger Management.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) claimed in a blog post recently that is has made 60 cuts within in company over the last 12 months, but two of the most recent are in the spotlight in a recent article – due to the possible impact to the bottom line not only for Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), but also for users of certain Google products.

AdSense for Feeds, which had allowed web publishers to post advertisements on their RSS feeds, will be terminated immediately and will be completely shut down by December 3. While the Feedburner URLs won’t be affected, it is reported, the ability for Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) to make revenue will be impacted. On another front, users will be impacted when they use both Google Drive and Picasa. Part of the “spring cleaning” by Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) involves consolidating Drive and Picasa, but that also reduces users’ free storage. Users of both services had 5GB of free storage on each program, but now the consolidation limits users to just 5GB of total free storage and will have to pay for additional storage. Not only that, but once a user pays for the extra storage, the free storage counts toward the total storage paid for. In other words, if a user pays for 20GB of storage, instead of getting 20GB on top of the 5GB of free storage, a paying user gets only the 20GB of storage on Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) servers.

Do these changes affect your usage habits at Google Inc. (GOOG)? Would this affect your investment strategy regarding the company?