Following on from yesterday’s thoughts, I think that Google Buzz could be categorised as a failure.
Food for thought is that Google has lots of failures behind it. When you explore the full range of Google products, you find plenty of very minor ones as well as the huge hits like Search (and Mail, Reader, and a few other big shots). Are they really failures though or successes in that Google has managed to persuade lots of people to try them and can then cherry pick the best bits for other projects?
Some parts of the software industry work by the adage that it is better to release lots of things and improve what people are keen on than to spend years trying to craft one or two products to perfection. I lean towards that view and it looks like Google do too.