The Death of Google Buzz Officially in Sight

Google is nuking its Twitter clone in a couple of weeks in favor of loving its new social website big-time.

Friday Google said in a blog that it plans to kill Google Buzz and the Buzz API in a couple of weeks. The news isn't surprising given that the Twitter clone really never caught on, and that Google's new social site is "all the buzz" for the immediate future.

"In a few weeks we’ll shut down Google Buzz and the Buzz API, and focus instead on Google+," the company said. "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."

The news arrives after Google recently said that it plans to shut down additional services like Notebook, Aardvark, Google Desktop, Google Pack and more. Friday Google added that Google Labs, Code Search and the Code Search API will be discontinued in January 2012 as well as Jaiku, a product Google acquired back in 2007 that let users send updates to friends, and the social features in iGoogle.

But the loss of Google Buzz is somewhat disappointing given that the service had potential. The problem Google likely faced was getting beyond the privacy fiasco that took place at launch. And unlike Google+, Buzz still isn't visually incorporated into the navigational bar spanning across Google's web services, thus it seemingly depends on Gmail users to keep tabs on the latest "buzz."

"Changing the world takes focus on the future, and honesty about the past," Google said. "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."

Thanks for the memories, Buzz, and so long to all the followers.