Why did Google Buzz fail ?

Case Study
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Project name: Google Buzz Company: Google Project type: Information Technology Start date: February 9, 2010 End date: December 15, 2011
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Project Details:
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Google Buzz was a social networking, micro blogging and messaging tool that was developed by Google and integrated into their web-based email program, Gmail. Users could share links, photos, videos, status messages and comments organized in "conversations" and visible in the user's inbox. On October 14, 2011, Google announced that it would be discontinuing the service and that the existing content would be available in read-only mode. Buzz was discontinued on December 15, 2011.

Initially planned Project:

1. To help bridge the gap between work and leisure.

2. To enable users to choose to share publicly with the world or privately to a group of friends each time they post on Picasa, Flickr, YouTube, Blogger, Twitter and other major social networks. 3. To allow interaction from other Google products (e.g. Google Reader) such as the ability to "like" a post. 4. To compete with other Social media networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Key reasons of Buzz failure,

1. Disorganized and improperly designed Layout:
Internet users loves social networks that are simple, like Twitter, that allows only 140 characters long tweet, it has a simple homepage with just one official logo, same in case of the Facebook, it has simple attractive layout with simple login and registration form but in the case of Google Buzz there were some little flaws that caused the big harms like, they put the GPS co-ordinates of the user on their homepage which was absolutely of no interest.

2. Weak Privacy and Security settings:

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There was a huge privacy flaw in Buzz. When a user first logged in to Google Buzz, it automatically set them up with followers and people to follow this flaw was not that huge in fact the major concern was that it publicly disclosed the list of names of Gmail contacts that the user had most frequently emailed or chatted with. Users who failed to disable this feature could have sensitive information about themselves and their contacts revealed.

3. Illegal use of Gmail users information:

While tried to rival with Social network giants like Facebook and Twitter, Google violated several laws and performed various acts that were totally illegal, like sharing the contact information of Gmail users into their Buzz accounts without the users even realizing it.

4. Lack of Focus on Initial requirements:

It can be seen clearly that instead of focusing on providing security, reliability and privacy to their users, Googles main focus was to surpass other social network websites like Facebook, Twitter etc.

5. Another Social Network:

When Google Buzz was first started, Half a billion people was already used to use Facebook and Twitter, and a lot of people were getting sick and tired of social networks as a whole, at this time starting a project like Google Buzz was not even a good idea at first place.

Key person responsible for the Failure:

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After analyzing every aspect about the project failure it is clear that not any one person was responsible for this huge failure in particular in fact the reason for the failure is simple. With the presence of all those

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successful social network websites like Facebook & Twitter with billions of registered users already, starting this project was not a good idea at first place.

Effect on Company after Failure:

Financial Loss:
The outcome of this massive failure was so destructive that the company did not only lost the invested amount but there were other loss of revenue due to the outcome of the lawsuit filed by Electronic Privacy Information Center and a student at Harvard Law School due to users privacy violation. The estimated loss due to the outcome of the lawsuit was around $8.5million.

Loss of Brand value:

After violating the users privacy and security, Google has slightly lost its brand value and faith in users who are aware of their violations and illegal activities, which is restricting them to sign up for Google other projects, one of them is Google+.

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