Google Buzz bites the dust -- was it Google's worst product?

By Preston Gralla

Google today announced that it's shutting down its ill-fated Google Buzz social networking service that was little used, but created an uproar over its privacy policy. Google Buzz may well have been the worst product that Google ever created.

Google Vice President for Product, Bradley Horowitz, announced in a blog today that Buzz will be shut down "in a few weeks." Buzz integrated with Gmail, and was a social networking service that let people issue updates, share photos, videos, and links, and participate in discussions. It was similar to Facebook, but not nearly as useful or as feature-rich. It didn't have good links to Facebook or Twitter and seemed to exist in its own small universe. There seemed to be no reason for it to exist.

Buzz faced a much bigger problem than that, though. It accomplished the seemingly impossible, and raised far more privacy issues than Facebook. Gmail users were signed up for Buzz by default, and then ended up sharing sensitive information with others without realizing they were doing so.

The Federal Trade Commission eventually stepped in and forced Google to change its policies. But Buzz never recovered from its problematic launch, and slowly faded from view. Now that Google+ has been a success, Google is finally shutting down the service.

I can't think of another Google product as badly done as Buzz. It didn't match up well against the competition, seemed to serve no burning need, had a disastrous launch, and was a big privacy-invader.

So it's good that Google is about to pull the plug -- not that many people will actually notice.