Google announced on Friday that it is shutting down a number of properties in the coming months, the most notable of which is likely its failed social network, Google Buzz. Best known as that annoying thing under “Inbox” in Gmail, Google Buzz was a Twitter-like service that never gained traction. Buzz encouraged users to share status updates, photos and more that could then be viewed by friends in real time, however it offered no compelling features compared to already established services such as...

Contrary to popular belief, the mighty force that is the Google empire is not exactly recession proof. The company announced yesterday that it was laying off roughly 100 employees and making some pretty significant “alterations” to its product offerings. None of the major Google services (Gmail, Google Docs, etc) were affected, but a number of minor Google products have been relegated to a virtual death row sentence. Jaiku is being shifted to the Google App Engine, which essentially means that the...

By “Jaiku is the new Twitter”, we’re hardly suggesting it is a popular new microblogging site that may overtake the reigning king. No, that ship has sailed. We mean it never works anymore. Twitter seems to have been spending cash found during its recent funding round very well. It made a few key hires, sought a bit of outside help and now downtime is a thing of the past (for now at least). On the other hand you have Jaiku, the young scrapper with a promising future cut short by a Google acqu...