Google Nixing Buzz, Jaiku; Download Data Before They Vanish

One more Friday and one more piece of bad news from the headquarters of Google Inc. On Friday, the Internet giant announced that it was going to shut down its social messaging platform Google Buzz, in order to focus more on its latest venture - Google+, a networking paltform that aims to comepte with Facebook and Twitter.

Google, on its official blog, announced that it decided to shut down some products, and turn others into features of existing products.

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, Google added, on the post.

Apart from Buzz, Google is also getting rid of four more services on Jan 15, 2012.

The company's mobile social service, Jaiku will never be seen again after Jan. 15, as it failed to gain popularity even after four years of operation. Google acquired Jaiku in 2007, hoping to allow users to send status updates to their friends.

However, while Google did not reveal any information about how users could export data from Jaiku, it did say that it will allow users time to complete migration of data.

The other services that will be shutdown on Jan. 15 are Code Search, iGoogle's social features and the University Research Program for Google Search.

Earlier, on Sept. 2, Google announced that it would be discontinuing a further 10 products, including Subscribed Links, Desktop and Aardvark. On June 24, the company announced the closure of Google Health and Google PowerMeter. Interestingly, both September 2 and June 24 were Fridays!