Buzz
I considered copying and pasting the previous slide, but I couldn’t write this article without telling you about the short life of Google Buzz. And I mean short. Google Buzz was announced on February 9, 2010, and was subsequently shut down on December 15, 2011. It lived long enough to be hit with a class-action lawsuit from users who thought the launch of Buzz was a violation of Gmail users’ privacy.
Among various concerns, the potential public display of “follower/following” lists “appeared to divulge a Gmail user’s most frequent email contacts without sufficient consent.” Google also got a slap on the wrist from the FCC, which charged the company with Deceptive Privacy Practices for not letting users fully opt-out of the social app, which was integrated into Gmail at launch.
Google quickly made changes to Buzz to address some of these concerns, but the social app meant to contend against Facebook and Twitter was already doomed. Buzz had lost any goodwill associated with being a Google product and was eventually replaced by Google+ before hitting its two-year anniversary.
