Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

About a week ago I decide to look through all my friends' profiles and decide whether Facebook was worth keeping. It made me realise how much of their posts never made it to the wall (or whatever it's called) - bear in mind I only have about 50 people on there with a third are posting nothing. I ended up permanently deleting the account as it's just not worth it.

Probably pretty soon, no? Ars had an article entitled: "Google’s product strategy: Make two of everything". The claim was that Google builds multiple versions of its products targeted to slightly different market segments and use cases to hedge their investment. I think this is the perfect example (i.e. the fact that Google didn't just upgrade Picasa Web and built Google Photos instead). Given that Google Photos is most likely to succeed, it's just a matter of time before they shut down Picasa Web.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/10/googles-product-stra...

I find circles very hard to understand compared to Facebook's "friendship model". If I add you as a friend and you accept, you can see my entire profile, and interact with it and I can the same with yours. Very straight forward.

If I add you to a circle, what happens? Are you now part of a known group? Are you just secretly tagged for my convenience? Can you see my profile in full because I added you? Can I see yours?

I use Gmail, Maps, search, and, to a limited extent, the original, "basic" applications within Google Apps (is that still what it's called?).

For the rest, Google has basically taught me not to make the investment.

(I don't have any Adword nor advertising needs, at the moment. Otherwise, I imagine I would be using them.)

I was thinking of switching from the default text messaging application to Hangouts, on my phone, for the sake of maintaining a history of texts that the default app will dump beyond a certain count, but after incidentally running across comments about how fucked over Hangouts apparently has become, I'm pretty much not going there.

Google seems to be doing fine, revenue-wise, but they are losing me as... well, I guess I'm one bit of the "merchandise" that forms the basis of their revenue.

I don't hate Google. And I like the initiative on security and, "true names" aside, privacy. But I'm not excited any more about their product development.

Even in the physical world, I understand the impending, huge market for autonomous cars, and I like the pressure that Fiber has been providing to the erstwhile moribund large-scale ISP marketplace. But I miss the "moonshots." Although maybe they gave e.g. solar power enough of a nudge -- if not a push -- when it needed it, domestically.

P.S. Personal pet peeve. In my work, particularly in large organizations, I saw the need for something like Wave. (Anyone who's ever wasted time and effort on the outside of an extended and essential email chain conversation might relate -- as one example. Or trying to effectively maintain same and keep all in the loop and revisions straight, when on the inside of one.) But the terribly overburdensome (in terms of client processing demands for average clients of that time) and partially cryptic UI were a big initial turnoff.

Back to Gmail and Apps and whatnot. What Googlers actually seem to use for their own work, and lives (Maps, Picasa now become whatever...), seems to be better maintained. "Initiatives" to "secure markets" (Plus, I'm looking at you)? Yeah, not cutting it.

Initially, I would have given Plus a chance. Except that, for much of what interested me on it, I didn't care to go about publicly using my "true name" (health, psychology, and technical topics where some of my opinions might put off a potential employer).

I loved it. Quit using it when forced in to G+ land.