This article was published on May 25, 2013

More than a year after its shutdown, Google to move all Buzz posts to its Drive service on July 17


More than a year after its shutdown, Google to move all Buzz posts to its Drive service on July 17

Google is taking the “last step” in its shutdown of its Google Buzz product. Starting July 17, the company announced in an email that all posts will be saved to Google Drive.

Back in February 2010, Google launched Buzz, perhaps a precursor to Google+, and was a service that the company hoped would bring you the news and keep the chatter to a minimum.

More than a year later, Google Buzz was shuttered and company Vice President of Product Bradley Horowitz said at the time that the lessons that Google learned from the products short existence would be used in other services like Google+.

Google says that it will transition all user data from Buzz over to Google Drive starting in the next two months — none of which will count against a user’s storage limit. The first set of files are private and contain a snapshot of the public and private Buzz posts that a user authored.

The 💜 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

The second set of files will be a user’s public posts on Buzz and be viewable to anyone with access to the link. Google says that these posts could appear in search results and in their Google Profile, if it’s linked to the Buzz posts.

Comments made on Buzz posts in the past will be saved to the author’s files and not yours. Authors are the only ones that can change the sharing settings of those files — Google emphasizes that should the author make their posts public and you have a comment on there, you have no control over its appearance. The company’s response to any reaction: delete your Buzz content now if you don’t want that to happen.

Google says all Buzz files will be treated “the same as any other Drive file”, meaning that they can be downloaded, updated, or deleted.

If you’re interested in finding out what you’ve shared or commented on, you can do so by going to your Google profile page.

Photo credit: FRANK RUMPENHORST/AFP/Getty Images

Get the TNW newsletter

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.

Also tagged with