Google pulls the plug on its flagship job platform, Google Hire

Google found its way onto the forefront of recruiting solutions back in July of 2017 when it debuted its disruptive applicant tracking systems (ATS), Google Hire. Now, just a month past its 2nd birthday, the search giant has announced that Hire will be closing its doors for good.

Hire was born after Google's November 2015 acquisition of Bebop, a cloud-based ATS helmed by VMware Founder and industry veteran Diane Green, for a reported $380 million. Green went on to become CEO of Google's Cloud division, and Google moved forward with preparations to build and launch their own platform. She did, however, leave her position in early 2019.

The original goal of Hire, like most other ATS providers, was to streamline hiring for businesses and employers. It boasted an integrated workflow with all the necessities: applicant search functions, interview scheduling, and all of it plugged into the G Suite for easy communication between Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and so on. Marketing efforts were focused on small to medium-sized businesses with a price tag of US$200 to $400 monthly, dependent on the number of G Suite licenses needed, and expanded to include larger enterprises of up to 5,000 employees as recently as May 2019.

Platform updates have rolled out since then - added features for usability, additional support, more AI implementation - so why is the plug being pulled now?

Hire hasn't been all smooth sailing, or without its caveats: Google capped 2018 and started off its 2019 with yet another lawsuit regarding their hiring practices, this time with the threat of exposing their recruitment strategies to the potential benefit of its competition. The legal allegations came on the tail of several others involving potential discrimination in talent sourcing and selection in terms of age and ethnicity. Multi-million dollar settlements were reached, and the platform persisted.

No official reasoning has been given regarding the decision to close up shop, but Google did issue a statement on their Hire FAQ page:

We’ve made the difficult decision to sunset Hire by Google on September 1, 2020. While Hire has been successful, we’re focusing our resources on other products in the Google Cloud portfolio.

The platform will remain up and running with support until September 1st of 2020, and notably for free - billing cycles will terminate following the final upcoming payment for its users - but there will be no further updates.

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