Why should Google not have a Buzz tab?

Edit: Also, you can show or hide the tab. So if you don't use Buzz and you don't want that tab shown on your profile, just hide it. However, this way Google can let their users that still use Buzz display it on their profile.

Buzz symbolizes everything wrong with Google's social strategy. They need to move on.

Linking to dead properties and adding a few fields isn't going to fix social.

What does it mean for a product to "symbolize" something? Is it the product you are objecting to or the branding?

(There are also pockets of really high quality activity on buzz. See Terence Tao's very active feed for instance: https://profiles.google.com/u/0/114134834346472219368/buzz )

It's a product with very little traction and an inferior experience to what's already in the market(twitter, fb).

Unfortunately pockets of traction for a product as old as Buzz means very little. Social for big guys like fb and google is about scale, not niches.

it depends on what you mean by "experience." I think buzz is easily superior to twitter, but I use twitter because the community I engage with is there.

does the existence of picasa's online albums somehow harm google because only some people use them?

Here’s my discussion on the Buzz user experience, from a year ago. http://alanhogan.com/buzz-is-already-dead

(tl;dr: Too distracting, not very skimmable, awkward social aspects including too many non-friends showing up.)

Buzz is actually way more useful to me than facebook and twitter. The functionality is the same, obviously, but the fact that I can switch tabs while in gmail to check posts is pretty useful. Sadly I only know 2 people that use it, and mostly, it's automatic posts from twitter.

I can see how it can be more convenient. But how is it more useful if only 2 people use it?

Right. That should have been "would be".