Software giant Microsoft has killed Soapbox, its video-sharing rival to Google's YouTube.

Microsoft had previously told the world that it would scale back Soapbox which actually meant it would pull the plug on the outfit. A Microsoft spokesman said Redmond was notifying both our customers and  partners that on July 29th, people will no longer be able to upload videos to Soapbox and on August 31st, the service will no longer be available.

While Microsoft will continue to support MSN Video, which has 88 million unique users each month, Soapbox was responsible for less than 5 percent of MSN Video's streams and not really worth the electricity. The spokesman said that Microsoft would add functionality into MSN Video to easily enable bloggers and citizen journalists to upload content to share with MSN users.

Microsoft launched soapbox in 2006, but it never caught on as widely as YouTube.