Google shuts down Translator Toolkit this week after a decade

Ben Schoon | Dec 2 2019 - 7:05 am PT

Google Translate is one of the company’s most popular products, but you may not have ever heard of Translator Toolkit. Unfortunately for those who have been using it, Google Translator Toolkit will be shut down later this week.

On Wednesday, December 4, Google Translator Toolkit will shut down for good. The service first debuted in 2009 as an option for web-based translation editors. Google says that the product was built as an option for those users at a time when there were few options available. Now, Google cites other available options as part of the reason for the shutdown.

Translator Toolkit hasn’t been updated in quite some time, and the interface reflects the lack of attention the service has been given. Google first announced this shutdown in September of this year, sending emails to users who were actively using the service. This won’t have the same wide-reaching effect as the coming shutdown of Google Cloud Print.

Obviously, this doesn’t affect the wildly popular Google Translate.

Before the Translator Toolkit shutdown, Google recommends that users download their data using Google Takeout. On a support page, Google explains exactly how that can be done.

Google Translator Toolkit launched over a decade ago to help our users, translators, and the world create and share translations. When we first launched, there were few web-based options for translation editors, but now there are many great tools available, including Google Translate, which will continue to be available and is unaffected by this. As a result, we’ve seen declining usage for Translator Toolkit over the past few years. So now, after many years and billions of words translated, we’re saying goodbye to Translator Toolkit. A warm thank you to our users around the world.

Add another to the Google Graveyard…