After announcing that Google+ has more than 40 million users, Google decided to shut down Google Buzz.


In a blog post, Google Vice President Bradley Horowitz, one of the Google+ leaders, said the company plans to close down Buzz “in a few weeks.” He noted that Buzz users will be able to view the posts created on Buzz in their Google Profile, and download them using Google Takeout.

“Changing the world takes focus on the future, and honesty about the past,” Horowitz wrote. “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.”


Google Buzz launched in February 2010 and got off to a rocky start, with users raising concerns over privacy issues. Initially, it was difficult to make the list of a user’s followers private. Those concerns led the Federal Trade Commission to press Google to agree to a “comprehensive privacy program” this past March. Privacy issues were only one problem Buzz had.


On Horowitz’s Google+ account, he went into more detail about the decision to kill Buzz. “We think the time has come for us to focus our energy on projects that will have the most impact to the most users,” Horowitz wrote. “With the majority of Buzz users now here on Google+, it became obvious that all of our attention should be focused on this community.”