Google Kills Google Buzz

The end of Google Buzz is near. Bradley Horowitz, the Vice President of Google, announced that Buzz, along with a few other Google products, will be closed down in the next few weeks.

Horowitz writes:

“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.”

There was a lot of hype surrounding Google Buzz when it was launched 18 months ago but interest quickly dwindled. Google also received a lot of criticism for its weak privacy settings. SF Gate reports that Buzz would automatically add everyone in your Gmail without asking permission.

But Buzz wasn’t a complete loss for Google.

Horowitz writes:

“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.”

The company’s latest social network offering, Google Plus, has fared much better than buzz. Earlier this week Google announced that Google Plus had more than40 million users and that G+ data would soon find its way into search.

Larry Page said:

“Think about it this way. Last quarter, we’ve shipped the plus, and now we’re going to ship the Google part.”

Will you miss Google Buzz?