Google to shut down shopping app

San Francisco: Google has announced to shut down its mobile shopping app for both iOS and Android devices by June this year.

The mobile shopping app will, however, be available on the desktop (web) version. It means that the shopping.google.com website will remain active.

The company confirmed the decision to 9to5Google on Sunday.

"Within the next few weeks, we'll no longer be supporting the Shopping app. All of the functionality the app offered users is available on the Shopping tab," the company said in a statement.

"We'll continue building features within the Shopping tab and other Google surfaces, including the Google app, that make it easy for people to discover and shop for the products they love," it added.

The mobile shopping app allowed users to choose from among thousands of online stores and make purchases using their Google accounts.

The move comes as Google has been expanding shopping functionality in Search, Image Search, and YouTube, while increasingly leveraging augmented reality, the report mentioned.

Xda Developers discovered that the term "sunset" had been added to several strings of code in the Shopping app, suggesting the apps were being discontinued.