New Delhi: Nearly two years after its launch, Google will be shutting down its neighborhood community app Neighbourly. In mid-2018 this experimental appllication was launched to help people learn more about their neighborhood by asking other residents.

Google in a note informed its users that the app was unable to gain the attention as they had hoped. Hence, they will be closing down the app on May 12, 2020, and users will be able to download their Neighbourly content until October 12 this year.

The Internet giant further said that it will be focusing on other apps and services that are already serving a lot of people every day and suggests that Neighbourly users can sign up as Google Maps local guides to continue helping their local community.

Google launched the Neighbourly app in Mumbai, as a means to let users get relevant local information from the community itself. Soon it was extended to more Indian cities with news features installed. These new additions were also not enough to keep Neighbourly relevant going into 2020.

"We set out to build a helpful neighborhood app that would let neighbors help each other find answers to everyday questions about their neighborhoods. This was in line with Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it available to users everywhere, but the product hasn’t grown like we had hoped" a Google spokesperson said in a statement.

The app allowed its users to ask questions to their neighbors by text or by voice, share local expertise and keep up with updates from their neighborhood.

Google in its mail said that "In these difficult times, we believe that we can help more people by focusing on other Google apps that are already serving millions of people every day. We plan to take the lessons learned from Neighbourly and use them to improve our other products. If you want to keep sharing your local knowledge with your neighbors, we encourage you to become a Google Maps Local Guide," Google said in its email to users.

Currently, the Neighbourly app is available to use for the next few weeks, for anyone looking to get local community-sourced information during the ongoing nationwide lockdown. Users will be able to download their Neighbourly content and data till October 12, 2020, after which it will no longer be available.