Goodbye Google Buzz

Goodbye, Google Buzz.

The social messaging platform, which was meant to rival Twitter, is being tossed aside by Google in an effort to slim down.

“In a few weeks we’ll shut down Google Buzz and the Buzz API, and focus instead on Google+,” Bradley Horowitz, Google’s vice president of product, wrote on The Official Google Blog.

“While people obviously won’t be able to create new posts after that, they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile, and download it using Google Takeout,” he added.

If you’ll remember, Google Buzz launched not long ago in February of 2010.

Google killed several other projects in addition to Google Buzz as part of a “fall sweep,” including the social features in iGoogle and Jaiku, 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.