Google to Shut Down Google Buzz

Google announced today its “fall sweep” of products today in a move to focus on more successful products and clean up its offering clutter.

One of those products headed out of the Google lineup is Google Buzz.

“In a few weeks we’ll shut down Google Buzz and the Buzz API, and focus instead on Google+. While people obviously won't be able to create new posts after that, they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile, and download it using Google Takeout,” said Bradley Horowitz, Vice President of Google Products in an official Google Blog Post.

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Created, seemingly, to compete with Twitter’s hold on the short status market, Google Buzz was unable to catch the eye of the Internet audience. Even more, Google Buzz lacked security features important in privacy matters. A class action lawsuit was settled in November of 2010 because of Google Buzz’s lack fo privacy controls. Google settled the suit with an $8.5 million donation, which mainly went to fund Internet privacy organizations.  The lawsuit settlement probably didn’t help Google in attracting people to the Google Buzz product.

Google’s new focus on Google+ is probably a good one. Designed to compete with other popular social media networks such as Facebook or Twitter, Google+ is slowly being adopted by the Internet masses. Something new Google+ brought to the table that has not been seen as of yet is how the profiles are making search more social. Allowing users to +1 a link that they prefer, searchers will be able to see which link result is more prevalent in their friend’s minds. This allows today’s growing Internet trend of brand sharing to bloom even further.