Google Will Finally Shut Down Google Buzz

Google will finally shut down Google Buzz, its non-starter Gmail-based social network that paved the way for the more promising Google+.

“We learned a lot from products like Buzz, and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google+,” Google VP Product Bradley Horowitz wrote today in an announcement post on the Google Blog.

Old Buzz content will continue to be viewable on users’ Google profiles, Horowitz said, and users can export their data before Buzz becomes unavailable. When does that happen? “In a few weeks.”

Google is also shutting down a couple more social products — Jaiku and iGoogle social features — as well as Code Search and a program that gives academic researchers API access to Google search results. And as of today the Google Labs site will no longer be available.

The moves come as part of a continued housecleaning effort under CEO Larry Page, which has included shutting down other social products like Slide and Aardvark, as well as many experimental projects.

In the larger social picture, Google is continuing to commit resources and focus to Google+, which now has 40 million registered users. “We are absolutely in a feature race,” Horowitz told us earlier this week.

Update: Horowitz elaborated in a personal Google+ post,