After two years and very few actual users
If you’ve ever googled some celebrities, like The Rock, you might’ve seen a handful of videos in their Search card under “Top questions answered.” Those come from a service that you’re probably not that familiar with, called Google Cameos. It’s only for celebrities or other high-profile people and gives them a way to record videos answers to popular questions — and have them show up in their search results. But it’s made by Google, so of course it was going to get killed sooner or later. Now the time has come for Cameos to join the perpetually growing list of ex-Google serveries.
Starting on February 17th, celebrities and creators that have recorded Cameos on Google won’t be able to record new ones. Similarly, Cameos they’ve already recorded and published won’t be shown in search results after this date. They will be, for most practical purposes, gone forever. Google says that the service was an invite-only pilot that the company learned a lot from (isn’t two years a bit too much for a pilot?), but now it wants to shift its efforts into other content creation projects.
It’s not like it’s a huge loss, as realistically, very few notable celebrities have actually used it. As the rigorous Google searcher that I am, I’ve only ever managed to find Cameos videos made by The Rock, Kevin Hart, and Kylian Mbappé. And it’s also not a service for average Joes like you or me — it’s invitation-only, and has remained that way since the app first launched in 2019. It served a niche purpose for a niche market, and it struggled to find users for that reason.
If you’re a celebrity, and you’ve used Cameos, you can download your content using Google Takeout, so you don’t lose access to that handful of videos you’ve recorded — if you even care about them that much to do that. You have until March 17th to do so, at which point they’ll presumably get deleted for good.
Read Next
About The Author
