Google to finally shut down Google Buzz, along with Google Labs

Today, in a blog post, Google announced it will be shutting down Google Buzz in a few week’s time. Google says it will be shutting down Buzz and the Buzz API to focus on Google+, where users will be able to see their existing Buzz content and download it using Google Takeout.

We aspire to build great products that really change people’s lives, products they use two or three times a day. 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.

-Bradley Horowitz, Vice President, Product at Google.

In addition to Buzz, Google Labs site will shut down, and as previously announced, Boutiques.com and the former Like.com websites will be replaced by Google Product Search.

Other changes happening include:The University Research Program for Google Search, which provides API access to Google’s search results for a small number of approved academic researchers, will close on January 15, 2012. Code Search, which was designed to help people search for open source code all over the web, will be shut down along with the Code Search API on January 15, 2012. Jaiku, a product Google acquired in 2007 that lets users send updates to friends, will be shut down on January 15, 2012. Lastly, Google will remove iGoogle’s social features on January 15, 2012 to further concentrate on Google+.

“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+. Our users expect great things from us; today’s announcements let us focus even more on giving them something truly awesome,” writes Bradley Horowitz, Vice President, Product at Google.