The End : Apple ends TV Rentals, Google Dissolves Slide and Facebook Kills Deals

Its looks like clean up time. Last week Apple ended their TV rentals all together, A statement from Fox  suggests that the studio was no longer interested in rentals, either:

After carefully considering the results of the rental trial, it became clear that content ownership is a more attractive long-term value proposition both for iTunes customers and for our business. To further enhance the value of ownership, we are working with Apple to make content available within their new cloud-based service.”

Ex- Apple CEO Steve Jobs and his team had worked hard throughout last year to push TV rentals to end users at aggressive pricing. almost 1/3 the buy it price. But looks like lack of support from TV networks means that Apple would no longer be able to push rentals out the door.

Google on the other hand decided to dissolve Slide, a company that was bought by Google just a year ago for 200 million. Slide CEO Max Levchin decided to leave Google for other opportunities. A google spokesperson commented:

Max has decided to leave Slide and Google to pursue other opportunities, and we wish him the best. Most of the team from Slide will remain at Google to work on other opportunities.”

Slide, a social apps company, had an extensive portfolio of not so popular apps including  SuperPoke Pets, Disco and photo-sharing app Photovine, which was released only last week. The apps will be discontinued within the next few months.

Also Facebook will discontinue its deals product, the company said today in a statement released to Reuters and other outlets.

The Facebook Deals product, which offered discounted coupons for local businesses, had launched only four months ago. Its shutdown follows Facebook’s discontinuation earlier this week of its location-based check-in feature for mobile users in favor of broader place-tagging tools. Here’s Facebook’s statement:

After testing Deals for four months, we’ve decided to end our Deals product in the coming weeks. We think there is a lot of power in a social approach to driving people into local businesses. We’ve learned a lot from our test and we’ll continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses.

Facebook deals tried to cash in on the public attraction to Groupon, LivingSocial, Google deals etc.

Looks like the new implementation and acquisitions are not working out for these tech giants. and its time for cleanup.