Google shuts down Orkut after a 10-year run

NEW DELHI: Internet search titan Google has finally downed the shutters of its social networking website Orkut. However, users can save their profiles, scraps, testimonials and community posts via Google Takeout service till September 2016. 
Google in June had announced that it will shut down Orkut on September 30, marking the end of a 10-year run. Orkut was the first social network to hit it off on a large scale in India, even as other websites like Hi5 and MySpace failed to catch the fancy of India's internet users in mid-2000s. 
However, as Facebook made inroads in India, Orkut's popularity started waning, and Mark Zuckerberg's website overtook Orkut in terms of user base in the country in 2010. Google eventually launched new social networking initiatives like Buzz and Plus to recapture market share in the social networking space.