MOUNTAINVIEW, Calif. — Google announced that it will be shutting down its social network Buzz to focus on Google+.
Bradley Horowitz, Google vice president and one of the Google+ leaders, wrote in a blog post that in addition to shutting down Buzz, the company plans to also drop its Code Search API as of Jan. 15, 2012.
“We aspire to build great products that really change people’s lives, products they use two or three times a day,” he wrote. “To succeed you need real focus and thought — thought about what you work on and, just as important, what you don’t work on.”
While users won’t be able to create new posts, they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile and download it using Google Takeout.
Another product Google plans to eliminate is Jaiku, a product it acquired in 2007 that lets users send updates to friends.
“Several years ago, we gave people the ability to interact socially on iGoogle,” Horowitz wrote.
“With our new focus on Google+, we will remove iGoogle's social features on Jan. 15. iGoogle itself, and non-social iGoogle applications, will stay as they are.”