When Google decided to launch Google+ in late June, the writing seems to be on the wall for Google Buzz.
Launched in February 2010, it was an earlier attempt to launch a social networking service to compete with Facebook and Twitter. However, Google Buzz never really caught on and there were questions about the service's privacy standards in its early days. Google announced earlier this week that Google+ has 40 million users, and it seems now is the time to shut down Google Buzz.
In a post on Google's official blog, the company announced that it was shutting down several services, including Google Buzz. The site states, "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."
In addition to Google Buzz, the company announced that it will be closing Code Search on January 15, 2012. The feature let users search for open source code on the Internet. That same day will see the shut down of Jaiku. Acquired back in 2007, it let users send updates to friends. Google says that it will allow users to export their data from Jaiku. Also, all the social networking features on iGoogle will be shut down on January 15.
Finally, the University Research Program for Google Search, which allowed a select number of academic researchers access to Google's search results API, will be closed on that date. Google says, "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+."
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