RIP Google Buzz: Shutdown to Begin in ‘A Few Weeks’

Google Buzz is waving the white flag after 20 months of existence, the search engine company announced on Friday.

In a few weeks we'll shut down Google Buzz and the Buzz API, and focus instead on Google +, Google's vice presdent of product Bradley Horowitz said in a blog post appropriately titled, A Fall Sweep.

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, he added.

Since entering the social networking arena in February 2010, Google Buzz has underperformed compared to many its competitors like Twitter.

The demise of Google Buzz follows the footsteps of its cousin, Google Wave, the real-time editing feature that Google discontinued in August 2010. Wave is now under the Apache Software Foundation, after Google decided it would no longer be developed as a stand-alone service.

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+, Horowitz also said.

Google Buzz's departure does not surprise many. Buzz made many flop lists following its release more than one year ago.

It has a spectacular crash-and-burn event . . . it exposed the search engine giant as a mortal company with many flaws, social media Web site Mashable wrote in December.

Naturally, RIP Google Buzz has been trending on Twitter since the announcement.

It was just a matter of time, wrote one user.

The grave is already dug. Waiting for the corpse, wrote another.

News of Google Buzz's shutdown comes just one day after Google announced that more than 40 million people around the world are using Google+.