Google seems to have abandoned its catalogue indexing service. As the unofficial Google Weblog points out, the index hasn't been updated since last December.

The service created a vast index of shopping catalogues and made them searchable through its portal.

Although creating an index of catalogues fits Google's mission statement of wanting to "index the world's information", it was the odd duck in the company's portfolio of services. Google indexes mostly digital data that is easy and cheap to obtain.

More importantly, the fact that Google is abandoning the project means it cleans up its long sheet of beta projects. That allows the company to focus its development efforts on more important tasks.