Google's Buzz social network stands as one of the company's most high-profile missteps to date, but the search giant is taking the "last step" to put the failed service behind it. Past Buzz users received an email (discovered by Engadget) from Google yesterday saying that it's moving all Buzz data to Google Drive. A pair of archives will appear in all users' Drives: one private, which contains all Buzz data, and one public, which will show data that was previously made public, and is accessible to anyone with the link. Neither of the archives will count towards your Google Drive storage allowance. The shift will take place on July 17th, and any users worried about the transition can head to their Google Profile to delete any posts they don't want transfered.

Announced just two months after Google closed its unsuccessful collaborative messaging / editing platform Wave, Buzz was a social network that plugged into existing sharing tools. Users could share to services like Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, YouTube, Blogger, and FriendFeed, or choose to "like" an article on platforms like Google Reader, straight from Gmail or their mobile.

In the days following its release, Buzz was caught up in a privacy controversy as confused Gmail users (who had never signed up for Buzz) found their email contact lists were made public, while public Picasa galleries and Google Reader shares were suddenly highlighted to a wider audience than expected. Buzz even sparked a lawsuit that cost Google $8.5 million. Less than two years after its release, Buzz was unceremoniously killed off. A new social network — Google+ — had already taken its place six months earlier.