Wait, what is Google Helpouts? If that is your reaction to the service that Google will effectually shut down by April this year, then you’ve probably stumbled on to the reason why it’s going away in the first place. The video tutorial service did not catch on as quickly as they expected, despite having several “engaged and loyal contributors” and despite sporting the Google brand.
Launched in 2013 as a way for people to be able to access experts when it comes to learning about things outside their realm of experience, Helpouts was a sort of challenge for users to come out with their own how-tos and video tutorials. The tech giant also wanted people to maximize the capabilities of Hangouts like the video chat, in order to get video tech support on such things like cooking, guitar lessons, medical advice, etc. Unfortunately, this did not really catch on, aside from the fact that it was against stiff competition with its own YouTube and the millions of tutorial lessons available, and even Amazon’s Mayday, which has a steady user base of its own.
The whole system will be shut down by Google by April 20 of this year. But if you’ve contributed content for this or if you want to save your work here, you can use Google Takeouts to download your data until November 1 of this year. The data will be saved under your name as text.
In fact, while you’re on Takeouts saving your Helpouts, why not save some other things as well? We’re not saying that services such as Mail, Calender, Drive, Hangouts, etc will be shutting down anytime soon (God forbid!) but it’s always a good idea to back up stuff, especially the really important ones. Just head on over to Takeouts to find ot how. Too bad there’s no video tutorial from Helpouts to guide you through the process.
VIA: SlashGear
