I remember friends loving it, as it was built into gmail in a way that the people behind @facebook.com email addresses can now only dream of. It's roll out, as

I remember friends loving it, as it was built into gmail in a way that the people behind @facebook.com email addresses can now only dream of. It's roll out, as a opt out social network with poor default privacy, was probably the wrong way to go, and lead to lawsuits and a lot of problems. I mean, I think they were dogfooding, and knowing where your coworker is at the Google Plex or who they talk to most often is a lot less concerning then if it's just any email correspondent. Let that be a lesson on dogfooding. But it didn't fail, exactly. It got sunset, rolled up in what I would guess was a collective organized push to build a single social sign on. And arguably some of the lessons were applied to Google+, where circles can be seen as a way to deal with buzz's privacy protection drama. The truth is Google keeps trying to pull users away from their gmail and google docs with hangouts and google+ and google photos into a second tab, when what people really want is a SPA that handles it all inside Gmail. Facebook is trying to do something of the same with Messenger and mobile. But honestly, Google could probably, at any point, deal Slack and Hipchat a huge blow by sticking channels and channel management features in Google Apps for Business, maybe adding some optional google wave magic or contextual ad inclusion (you mention Twilio or Mandrill, it shows an ad for a similar company). So Buzz may rise again in some form, perhaps less influenced by blog posts and more by RT chat. But I'm not a part of Google, and I'm just talking. I don't know him, but I'm going to reach out to the former Google Buzz PM and ask if he'll respond here.