Google To Shut Down Google Buzz, Others

Google, the search giant will shut down Google Buzz, a micro-blogging service that was tipped to take on twitter.com and other products by early next year. The company had also shut down some products (including Google Pack, Fast Flip and Aardvark among others) earlier this year.

Let's have a look at what is being changed:

In a few weeks, Google Buzz and the Buzz API will be shut down and focus will shift instead on Google+, the social networking interface pitched against facebook.com. People won't be able to create new posts after that but they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile, and download it using Google Takeout.

Code Search: It 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 by Google in 2007 that lets users send updates to friends will shut down on January 15, 2012. Google is still working on enabling users to export their data from Jaiku.

iGoogle: A personalised Google page that let users add news, photos, weather and other stuff from across the web to their page will lose its ability to allow people to interact socially. Since the new focus is on Google+, iGoogle's social features will be removed on January 15, 2012. Although iGoogle itself and the non-social iGoogle applications will stay as they are.

The University Research Program for Google Search which provides API access to its search results for a small number of approved academic researchers will also close on January 15, 2012.

Additionally, Google has shut down the Google Labs site and as earlier announced by Google, Boutiques.com and the former Like.com websites are being replaced by Google Product Search.

"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," wrote Bradley Horowitz, Vice President- Product at Google in a blog post.