Google to shut down a handful of projects early 2012

Google has announced that they intend to shut down a slew of projects in January 2012. Don’t have a heart attack though, as there’s nothing too surprising in this “fall sweep” list. In fact, we already knew about some them, we just didn’t know when.

Hit the break for more details.

Google VP Bradley Horowitz spoke about Google’s plans earlier today on the official Google Blog. Here’s an excerpt from what he had to say:

Here’s the latest update on what’s happening:

• Code Search, which was designed to help people search for open source code all over the web, will be shut down along with the Code Search API on January 15, 2012.
• In a few weeks we’ll shut down Google Buzz and the Buzz API, and focus instead on Google+. 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 usingGoogle Takeout.
• Jaiku, a product we acquired in 2007 that let users send updates to friends, will shut down on January 15, 2012. We’ll be working to enable users to export their data from Jaiku.
• Several years ago, we gave people the ability to interact socially on iGoogle. With our new focus on Google+, we will remove iGoogle’s social features on January 15, 2012. iGoogle itself, and non-social iGoogle applications, will stay as they are.
• The University Research Program for Google Search, which provides API access to our search results for a small number of approved academic researchers, will close on January 15, 2012.

In addition, later today the Google Labs site will shut down, and as previously announced, Boutiques.com and the former Like.com websites will be replaced by Google Product Search.

For more information and a truly refreshing read from Mr. Horowitz, head on over the original blog post.