Google Shuts Down Buzz, Other 'Failed' Services

Google Buzz, Google's failed first attempt at creating a social network, will finally be shut down in a few weeks along with a number of products, the search giant announced over the weekend.

But vice president for products Bradley Horowitz hinted some of the products to be shut down may be integrated into ongoing projects like Google+.

"Changing the world takes focus on the future, and honesty about the past. We learned a lot from products like Buzz, and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google+. Our users expect great things from us; today’s announcements let us focus even more on giving them something truly awesome," Horowitz said in a blog post.

In the case of Google Buzz, he said it and its API will be shut down and people will no longer be able to create new posts after that.

However, he said people will still be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile, and download it using Google Takeout.

Also to be shut down are the social features on iGoogle, a personalized page for users with Google accounts.

"With our new focus on Google+, we will remove iGoogle's social features on January 15, 2012. iGoogle itself, and non-social iGoogle applications, will stay as they are," Horowitz said.

Other products to be shut down include :

• Code Search, which was designed to help people search for open source code all over the web. It will be shut down along with the Code Search API on January 15, 2012.
• Jaiku, a product acquired in 2007 that let users send updates to friends. It will shut down on January 15, 2012. Google is working to let users export their data from Jaiku.
• The University Research Program for Google Search, which provides API access to Google search results for a small number of approved academic researchers. It will close on January 15, 2012.

The Google Labs site will also shut down, and as previously announced, while Boutiques.com and the former Like.com websites will be replaced by Google Product Search, Horowitz said.

"We aspire to build great products that really change people’s lives, products they use two or three times a day. To succeed you need real focus and thought—thought about what you work on and, just as important, what you don’t work on. It’s why we recently decided to shut down some products, and turn others into features of existing products," he said.

Source from : GMANews