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Google Social Networks Technology

Google Buzz Buzzing Away 139

Posted by Soulskill from the bad-news-for-tens-of-users dept.
MrCrassic writes "It looks like the glory days of Google Buzz have finally come to an end. Google has formally announced the termination of this service to concentrate their efforts on Google+. From the article: '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.' Other products, such as Code Search, the Google Labs website and Jaiku, will also be on the chopping block.
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Google Buzz Buzzing Away More

Google Buzz Buzzing Away

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  • Google wave? (Score:3)

    by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Friday October 14, 2011 @02:12PM (#37717138)

    I really liked google wave. it made a good lab notebook. But wi

    • Google wave was really bad when you had a large amount of people posting it because It became laggy and unstable. Nice idea but did not work.

  • Seriously outraged about labs (Score:3)

    by i kan reed ( 749298 ) on Friday October 14, 2011 @02:13PM (#37717148) Homepage Journal

    Half the reason I ever use google, is for esoteric search tools like I can find on labs. Is there anyone who provides these kinds of metadata tools?

    • Yeah, I thought labs was one of the coolest things Google could share with us.

      • Yeah. What the hell is up with getting rid of labs?

        Doesn't Google know that they maintain the interest and loyalty of lots of smart thought leaders (who act as Google evangelists, otherwise known as a free sales force) and those people think google labs exemplifies both Google's capacity for way-ahead innovation, and Google's progressive development and customer engagement philosophy.

        This is a DUMB DUMB DUMB edge-losing move!

        ps. labs appears to be gone already.

  • And next up... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by madprof ( 4723 ) on Friday October 14, 2011 @02:16PM (#37717180)

    Google+ is next for the chop because the company just don't care about it enough, in my view. Not enough momentum to make it work, Facebook is just too big now and it is not going to succeed, I don't think.

    • I actually like Google+. I think it works pretty well. The problem is that there's no one there. Social media isn't much good if all your friends are on another site. It took years for grandma and aunt gertie to get on facebook, they aren't going to switch to a new site - and damned if I'm going to manage two of the infernal things.

      And, there's also the matter of Facebook defending against Google+ by stealing all the best ideas.

      • All G+ has to do is encourage teens and tweens; mission accomplished at that point.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by TechLA ( 2482532 )
          And that's exactly the crowd it won't encourage. So far it's pretty much just tech people there. And when I say there's nothing happening there, people just suggest following some famous tech guys. That's not what I or teens and casual people want to do, they want to follow and talk with their friends.

          And that's aside the fact that as a platform Google+ is seriously unfinished and misses great tons of features people expect and need, like events, pages for bands/happenings/random stuff, API access, games

          • And that's exactly the crowd it won't encourage. So far it's pretty much just tech people there. And when I say there's nothing happening there, people just suggest following some famous tech guys. That's not what I or teens and casual people want to do, they want to follow and talk with their friends.

            I said: "All G+ has to do is..."
            Not: "All G+ does is..."

            ;)

          • Must be your circles are boring, because mine are getting pretty active. It's a different group of people than I know on Facebook, but I'm getting much more interesting content from it. There are practically no dinner plates and nothing about how many sheets of TP that were used that day. People also seem more open to discussion when they don't think the world is seeing and judging what they're saying. Fewer trolls, more well thought out, more like a 6 person conversation than an Internet forum.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by TechLA ( 2482532 )
              Yeah, and you can't actually join any pages or groups to find those people. For example I follow my favorite games on Facebook, so I get updates about them and also see some discussions. Good example being Team Fortress 2 and Trackmania. Of course, there's no such in Google+, so it's basically dead to me (and many other people).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by alen ( 225700 )

      not they don't care but it seems google engineers love to build something to version .8 or so and then go on to the next cool thing. instead of spending years building a product through different versions and making it better.

      Google voice search vs Siri is a perfect example. release it, show how cool it is and go on to the next thing.

      • Yep... Google seems to be infested with what I call "80% Engineers" - they like to work the first 80% of the project, through all the project planning and setting the roadmap, and getting the initial version out the door. Then when it comes to the grind of full implementation, and dealing with the bugs and users, they bail to follow the latest shiny.

        • Where I come from, the difference between the 80%-ers and the 100%-ers is like comparing amateurs to professionals.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      What I think hurt Google+ is not being able to have a Google+ account with Google Apps. If I had a presence on Google+ I could potentially have attracted a couple hundred other people to join Google+. Many of those people would have brought many more users too, and it would of snowballed. As many have said Google Apps users are first subscribers, trend setters so to speak, but we were all shut out. We could of, we would of pushed Google's agenda, happily for free.

      We could of created another non-Google A

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Do you think Steve Jobs created the Apple Corp of today? No, me created the culture, but Apple fanboys created the Apple of today, and even defined it in the past as well. Who do you think are Google fanboys? What service do you think Google fanboys use? Google Apps!!! How can you get your fanboys to work for you, if you don't even let them use the product you are pushing?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by madprof ( 4723 )

        Google+ is coming to Google Apps. That is absolutely going to happen. I have this from a friend working at Google. There are very large Apps customers who they want to keep pleased.

        • Yea, and a friend of mine who does development at google on one of the services/reasons that its not part of apps told me the same thing about buzz, 2 years ago.

          I wouldn't hold your breath waiting.

    • Facebook brings out the worst in people. Somehow, people of all ages from all walks of life suddenly become spoiled, whiny, over-dramatic teenagers when on Facebook. It will fade on its own, just like AOL (which was also supposedly too big to decline) did. Google+ is still building momentum; don't expect it to become huge overnight. These things take years.

    • It already has 40 million users, even if it doesn't grow more (which is improbable) I doubt Google will cut it.

      • Re:And next up... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by David Gerard ( 12369 ) <slashdot AT davidgerard DOT co DOT uk> on Friday October 14, 2011 @03:01PM (#37717682) Homepage

        Ah. no. It has 40 million signups. They have not given a figure for active users. For comparison, when Facebook says 800M, that's 800M users who use the thing at least slightly. When Twitter says 100M, that's 100M users who use the thing. When Google says 40M, that means 40M accounts created and rotting.

        • No, it's users, why do you think that is different than how Facebook reports their users?

        • Uhm, you could not be more wrong.

          Its universally accepted that no where near 800M people use facebook, and its more likely to be somewhere well below 400M actual people have signed up, significantly lower still for people who actually use the site. Their population explosion happened as games started giving bonuses for friends playing and crap.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dzfoo ( 772245 )

            I disagree. He could be a few orders of magnitude more wrong. He could have said that 40 million users in Google+ is more than 800 million in Facebook. That's some substantial wrong right there.

            There's plenty other ways he could have been even more wronger.

                        -dZ.

        • Of those 800M how many do you think are real? Between the fake accounts created to stalk other people, cats and dogs, fake accounts used for games that reward you if you invite other friends, and so on...
          Honest question, I would love to see the real numbers, since most people I know have at least 2 accounts or more.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gnalle ( 125916 )

        Google+ is dieing. Google trends confirms it.
        http://www.google.com/trends?q=google%2B%2C+google+plus&date=mtd [google.com]

    • There was a very good blog post by a google employee featured *here* just yesterday wherein the geek rants about badly google neefs to be a platform. Look for it, good reading.

    • At least Google+ leads to some kickbacks from game companies instead of only costing them money.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Snufu ( 1049644 )

      These are just prototypes in Google's master plan to synergize Wave, Buzz, and Plus into the ultimate social networking platform:
      Google Wuzzlepus.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bberens ( 965711 )
      Google+ needs APIs so that third party developers can make tons of time wasters so people can spend hours on end playing farmville+ or whatever. The only thing that can save Google+ is to make it horrible.
      • Hopefully when they do that they include a mechanism to allow people to keep all the horrible out. I really like the idea of circles, and I could see the same thing applied to apps (this app can send me any notification, this app can only send me invites, this app can't talk to me at all).

        Actually for all I know Facebook might have this kind of an interface, I've just never been able to find it.
    • Yep. Lately, Google reminds me of Network Television: wherein you invest your time and interest in a "new show" only to see it cancelled before the first season has elapsed.
      Like that Google Employee plea/rant [slashdot.org] the other day emphasized: Google needs to stop doing things half-assedly.

      So will Google+ be around in a year or two if it doesn't dominate it's market? If Google's behaviour with it's other partially successful forays are any indication - then no it wont be. So why should anyone bother investing t

  • I'm glad they're finally amputating the foot they shot themselves in.

    I locked it down with the "go private and ban everyone" after their contact list goofup exposed craptons of information.

    No way to find a list of people I'd banned made it impossible to reopen with my trusted friends.

  • I liked the way it integrated with GMail in a non-intrusive way. Just was another "folder" for me to click on at my leisure and post something quick if I wanted. I hope G+ takes up that spot in my "folders"

    Have a good weekend everyone :)

    D

    • I hope they give us the option of integrating/migrating our Google Buzz posts into Google Plus. That would make me happier bout Buzz going bye-bye.

      • Well, Buzz already kinda integrates in G+ - it has its own separate tab in G+ interface where you see Buzz posts as if they were a G+ stream.

        And they said that all existing posts will be kept - you just won't be allowed to post new ones or comment on them.

  • That is until they get bored with google+ and can it too.

  • glory days of Google Buzz

    What glory days are we speaking of here? Oh, it was intended ironically, my bad.

  • I'm not surprised, because it is eminently clear that Google wants to concentrate their social features on Plus (in effect, to compete with Facebook by cloning Facebook), but I am still disappointed.
    I genuinely like Buzz; it aggregates activity from a whole range of services that I don't care to deal with (personal blogs, google reader, twitter, tumblr, etc.) for easy reading, instead of being another one of those services (Hi Plus!). It was even better because it used an open standard mechanism [microformats.org] for id

  • Codesearch (Score:5, Informative)

    by Morth ( 322218 ) on Friday October 14, 2011 @02:30PM (#37717336)

    They also announced that they're shutting down codesearch. That's much bigger news as far as I'm concerned. Sad to see a great tool disappear.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MrEricSir ( 398214 )

      Which begs the question: will there be a replacement for it? Are there other code search services out there?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jopsen ( 885607 )

        Which begs the question: will there be a replacement for it? Are there other code search services out there?

        koders.com, I think... I'm not even sure Google Code Search was the first, so I'm sure there's others out there...

    • Google code search was very useful. When you needed it, nothing could beat it. Too bad.

  • Code Search (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zlogic ( 892404 ) on Friday October 14, 2011 @02:34PM (#37717380)

    Code Search is the part I'll miss the most. Great for searching code samples (such as using threads in Perl etc) with some context (instead of a one-line snippet) and without junk like Experts-Exchange or unanswered forum posts. I also like the ability to search code inside a library along with third-party projects using this library, great for bugfixing.
    Google is turning into Bing now. Answering common questions with helper scripts (flight info), and forwarding the user to Wikipedia if there is no predefined script. Except that Bing is doing this because their *real* search engine is a joke.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Animats ( 122034 )

      Losing Code Search is a loss. Somebody else, like SourceForge, needs to take that on.

      This also raises the question of whether Google Code is a safe place to store open source projects.

    • Code Search is also the only way I know of to figure out how to use libraries with barely-documented interfaces. Killing Code Search will also effectively kill many useful but hastily developed small tools that people might find useful.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dkf ( 304284 )

      Code Search is the part I'll miss the most.

      Me too. I've found it invaluable for finding what projects were using one of my APIs! You might think you know these sorts of things, but you don't. Really. Searching big code-bases is the only way to really find that sort of thing out. The only reason I've not been using it recently is because Google have tried very hard to hide it.

      Dear Google.

      You know how you have the company ethos being "Don't be evil"? Well, closing down Code Search shows that to be utterly a sham. You're just another evil money-grubbin

  • Code Search... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    That was really useful; infinately more usable than many API documentation efforts. That was until they made it some javascript dependant thing. I tend not to have scripting enabled on machines where I'd doing things like compiling (performance) or checking into repositories (security). They killed code search a long time ago as far as I'm concerned.

    I'm just left wondering how long before Google web search goes the same way...

  • Am I the only one who thought it'd died a while ago?

    • On the contrary, I thought Buzz had BECOME the "wall" in Google+. I guess I was wrong. They were virtually the same thing. Now, I guess I need to find a way to have my Twitter posts automatically post to Google+ instead of Buzz.

      • Now, I guess I need to find a way to have my Twitter posts automatically post to Google+ instead of Buzz.

        I think I read somewhere there is a Chrome plug-in that does this, I've not used it, however, so don't know how well it works or whether it will do exactly what you want it to do.

        • If it's tied to one computer, it's not what I want to do. I just want, no matter where I am, for my posts to one social network to be there for friends on all of them. But also no matter which device I use.

          • If it's tied to one computer, it's not what I want to do. I just want, no matter where I am, for my posts to one social network to be there for friends on all of them. But also no matter which device I use.

            I have seen someone else set up some sort of RSS feed for one of their social networks, which is set to automatically post to another one. I think they post on Google+ and it automatically posts the same thing to Facebook; they don't use twitter as far as I know, so I don't know if it will work there. If I see it pop up again I will see if there is a link to what is being used and post it here.

  • Google is loosing all credibility. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Going_Digital ( 1485615 ) on Friday October 14, 2011 @02:53PM (#37717578)
    Apart from their core search Google are beginning to loose face, far to many projects started and thrown out. Who is going to invest time and effort using a google service when there is a good chance that it is going to be pulled? Unlike software installed on a computer you are forced to migrate when google decides to shut things down. It's not as though you can just carry on using the service until it no longer meets your needs. Not just a google problem but a wider problem for the whole software as a service concept.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bberens ( 965711 )
      Not for nothing, but Youtube and Gmail are pretty successful. Google isn't doing too shabby to have 3 huge products, two of which are industry leaders.. not sure where Gmail stands on market share.. Docs is gaining market share in small business (hear all the people complaining that + isn't available for the docs pro customers?), and as they improve the apis and scripting capabilities of docs I'm sure it will continue to grow.. currently they've picked the low hanging fruit. But yes, Google keeps sucking

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dzfoo ( 772245 )

        The point of acquiring YouTube was to turn it into the center for video access on the Internet, and monetize it by channeling all video content through it.

        It ended up being a center for LOLCATZ and personal videos, a platform that movie studios and TV networks will not touch with a 10-foot pole. It is still not making much money for them so I really do not see it as a "successful" product.

        Gmail, on the other hand, provides endless amount of seed data for their mining processes, so that one is substantially

    • Would you like your money back? I would suggest that if you really, really like all that functionality, go pay Google to have it stick around. If you don't... well, you can always roll the same thing yourself.

      Sheesh, yung uns. So used to getting stuff for free they forgot we used to pay for these same services.

      • Ha, it's your generation that pays for stuff that has ads in it too (cable TV)! Though it's the newer generation that pays for satellite radio instead of listening to ad-supported free radio...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Blymie ( 231220 )

        No, it isn't free. Google has a for-profit motive in you using these services. Google makes money off of information you sign away, when you sign up to these services.

        I suppose you think that a piece of fruit was free, if I demanded you give me a fish for it? No cash exchanged != free.

        Outside of the whole free/not free argument, is the concept of longevity. Linux distros are "more free" than Google services, but I certainly wouldn't use one that would disappear without security updates on a regular basi

  • Risks of the Cloud (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DanielRavenNest ( 107550 ) on Friday October 14, 2011 @03:24PM (#37717932)

    Today's announcement that Google is shutting down several services highlights one of the risks of the "Cloud". Your service provider can decide to shut down, and you have no control over it. My approach, rather, is to keep the primary copy of my data locally. I use the Cloud for backup, and when I want to share data with other people, or myself when I am mobile. Depending on the Cloud for something critical is very risky unless you have a written contract with your provider to keep the service going.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Your data is not being lost. You can export it, see the OP. Google is pretty insistent that you should be able to liberate your own data from it's services.

      However, it is true that there is no guarantee of serving it up for ever. But maintaining your own webserver has its downsides as well - maintaining software, paying bills, dealing with a co-lo that goes out of business, name service providers who re-sell your name.

      • When I got into trouble with Google while trying to sign up for Google +, I lost all the blog and all the mail. Poof. Just like that. No appeal, no explanation, not even an email to write to for the company to ignore.

        I could have gotten the account, and the data, back, but I would have had to acquiesce to Google's notion of privacy as my fee for the service. I didn't.

        I didn't care about the mail -- it was most blog mail and some other junk. And I was careful about the blog. I tried to remember to export i

  • Dark Side of Cloud Apps (Score:5, Insightful)

    by monkeythug ( 875071 ) on Friday October 14, 2011 @03:33PM (#37718014) Homepage

    Google, champion of the browser-based app, is inadvertently showing us the dark side of the 'cloud' concept.

    When a installed app is discontinued by the provider you still get to use the last version for as long as you want.

    When a cloud app gets discontinued, it's just gone.

    • sorry but I disagree... I kinda liked Buzz, as many friends of mine shared things there... that made my daily job less boring (when my boss wasn't looking!)

  • Instead of dropping one, merge them. Blogger and Blogspot for example.

  • No developer will get on your ship if you just keep shutting down services. I wont develop for a service that may soon shut down in future.

    get your shit straight.

  • The Problem with Google (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Angrywhiteshoes ( 2440876 ) on Friday October 14, 2011 @04:01PM (#37718318)
    Is that their indefinitely long beta runs and half-assed tools have kinda driven me away from them. The best tools they have are things that they have acquired after already doing well. The only original things I've ever seen them do well are gmail and search engine. Almost everything else seems really janky and thrown together to try to steal some of a market that they're trying to jump into several years too late. I understand the attempt to integrate it into a single sign-on, but I'm just tired of a ton of crappy tools that can't really be used well.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by devent ( 1627873 )

      Google becoming the new Microsoft?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Google actually provides tons of software and services that are popularly used but I guess no one really thinks about them because they've become so basic to our technical ecosystem. Chrome and Android are pretty awesome. They have forced their competitors to take their games up a notch. Without Android, we'd probably still be on a fragmented infrastructure with iOS, BlackberryOS, Windows Phone, Symbian, etc. At least Android caused some consolidation of OS and killed off shitty operating systems like Black

  • Goodbye (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    and good riddance.

  • buzz? Must've missed that one
  • I'm just throwing this out there: I don't know anything about either API's; but, why not keep the Buzz interface and allow all existing Buzz enabled clients/sites to keep "Buzzing" and just pipe the posts to G+?

    I was confused why the two weren't consolidated on day one. But I guess that was Google not being too confident about either service... too bad.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • IMHO the problem is that Google doesn't listen enough to user feedback. For me and, according to the feedback voting system, for a lot of other users too, the main problem with Wave was that it's separate from the existing user accounts of GMail. Many people didn't like having to sign up and log in to yet another application. Also, you have to drag all your buddies over to the new system, half or more don't so they're not reachable there. So when you have something important to share, you just grab GMail, b

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