Tech History Today

October 14, 2011 : Google announces shutdown of “Google Buzz”

Google, on this day in 2011, officially announced the shutdown of its social media tool “Google Buzz”, giving a hint towards the entry of Google+ and this marked the death of Google Buzz, a so-called Twitter rival.

Announced on Feb 9, 2010, Google Buzz was a social networking, microblogging 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.

The creation of Buzz was seen by industry analysts as an attempt by Google to compete with social networking websites like Facebook and microblogging services like Twitter.

On October 14, 2011, Google announced that Google Buzz would be shut down in a few weeks, in order to focus on Google+ instead.

October 14, 2011: Apple launches iPhone 4S

Apple’s successor to its iPhone 4 debuted on this day in 2011 as iPhone 4S.

The fifth generation of iPhone came with a launch price of $199 (US) for the 16GB model, $299 (US) for the 32GB model and $399 (US) for the new 64GB model. It hosted new improved features like an improved 8 MP camera, AI assistant ‘Siri’, a 3.5-inch 960×640 pixel multitouch Retina display, etc.

The media coverage of the phone was accompanied by the news of the death of former Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs.

Apple managed to get more than one million orders for the iPhone 4S within the first 24 hours of it being on sale, beating its own record of iPhone 4 getting 600,000 pre-orders in 24 hours after being released.