Google was building new features for Print Ads as recently as October, when it added an image gallery where users could find free photos to incorporate in their ads. But over the past several months, the bulk of the announcements on Google's "Let's Take it Offline" blog have been about new features in Google's TV and audio advertising services, with little mention of Print Ads.

Shutting down Print Ads appears to be part of the house cleaning that Google admitted to last week, when it announced it would close several other services including Google Video, Jaiku, Mashup Editor, Dodgeball, Catalog Search and Google Notebook.

"In the last few months we've been taking a long, hard look at all the things we are doing to ensure we are investing our resources in the projects that will have the biggest impact for our users and partners," Spinnell wrote in Tuesday's post. "By moving resources away from projects that aren't having the impact we want, we can refocus our efforts on those that will delight millions of users."

Despite Google's successes in recent years, the services closures show that it too is not immune to the economic meltdown. It also recently laid off 100 recruiters and consolidated some engineering offices.