Google has revealed that it plans to "wind down" Google Labs, the section of the search giant that houses prototype services.

The reason behinds its closure is to do with Google focusing more on the products it already has in the market, rather than releasing new ideas that may never see the light of day.

In the last month Google has closed a number of its Labs offerings, including Google Health and Powermeter and Google has confirmed that more Labs products will be taken offline, or incorporated into its core service offering.

This is all part of CEO Larry Page's "more wood behind fewer arrows" mentality, which he outlined last week.

Greater focus

In a blog post, Bill Coughran, SVP for Research and Systems Infrastructure at Google, said: "While we've learned a huge amount by launching very early prototypes in Labs, we believe that greater focus is crucial if we're to make the most of the extraordinary opportunities ahead.

"In many cases, this will mean ending Labs experiments – in others we'll incorporate Labs products and technologies into different product areas.

"And many of the Labs products that are Android apps today will continue to be available on Android Market. We'll update you on our progress via the Google Labs website.

"We'll continue to push speed and innovation – the driving forces behind Google Labs – across all our products, as the early launch of the Google+ field trial last month showed."

Many of the products found in Google Labs have come from the company's famed 20 per cent time – where Google employees are allowed to work on their own product ideas.

According to Google, however, this time will still continue. Speaking to TechCrunch, a Google rep said that: "We'll continue to devote a subset of our time to newer and experiment projects."

So, expect to see some pretty crazy additions to Gmail soon.

Pottermore and Google have joined forces to sell the Harry Potter ebooks via the Google eBooks platform.

Still a US-only service, Google eBooks will allow Potter fans to buy the ebooks from Google and store them in their Google Books libraries.

Through the magic of cloud computing, they can then access the books on other ereader platforms.

Buying tomes through Google eBooks is a US only privilege at the moment, but should be coming to the UK at some point and bringing the Harry Potter franchise with it - unfortunately there's no scheduled release date just yet.

Google casts its spell

It's been a long time coming, but fans of the boy wizard will finally be able to access his story in ebook form exclusively from the Pottermore website, set to launch in October.

As well as selling the ebooks direct,the Pottermore website will be using Google Checkout to peddle its magical wares to all customers.

The intriguing site will also be using YouTube to host all Harry Potter related video content on Pottermore.com.

The site will also include interactive, illustrated content as well as new material from J.K. Rowling, allowing the stories to live on.