launched in February 2010 as a way to share status updates, photos, videos, and links with friends through Gmail. The secret sauce was a "page rank" algorithm that determined which status updates should be featured prominently and which ones should be collapsed. Google Buzz also mined users' Gmail contacts and set users up to automatically follow the people they e-mailed most.
Unfortunately for Google, this turned out to be a . By default, users' follower lists were public, revealing their most to the world. Google Buzz also lacked a way to block people who didn't have public profiles at first.
Although Google and , the network's reputation was already damaged. The fiasco even brought complaints from the Federal Communications Commission, forcing a in which Google agreed to comprehensive, company-wide privacy measures.
Even if Google Buzz hadn't botched privacy, it still probably would've failed. The service did little to differentiate from Facebook or Twitter, and users quickly lost interest.
When in June, Google Buzz was assumed to be dead. Now it's official. Google+ is off to a much better start, with , so it's unlikely that Google will give up on its newest social network so easily.
Google killed several other projects in addition to Google Buzz as part of a "fall sweep," including the social features in iGoogle and , another Twitter-like service that Google acquired in 2007. Those services will shut down on January 15, and Google Buzz will be gone in a few weeks.
Follow Jared on , or for even more tech news and commentary.