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Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

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Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#141

Post by sergiotapia »

_uhtu wrote: post #6

Google+ had terrible marketing and release, but it had some decent ideas that I wish other networks had carried over. The idea of "circles", where you had a circle for "acquaintances" "friends", "family" would be great on, say, Facebook, as it would allow me to filter down my feed to just the people I really care about but still have a connection to more distance acquaintances. Currently on Facebook the news feed is…

There's no amount of marketing and assurances that would make me believe circles would keep my private life private.

It's the reason why I never used Google Plus. And it's the reason why when I had a facebook account I never friended coworkers or professional contacts.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#142

Post by jrrrr »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #82
pc86 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question, is anybody going to be outraged by sunsetting G+?

I'm not outraged, but I do use it and I will need to figure out a replacement for the conversations I currently have there. But I only have those conversations with a small number of people, so I can't argue against Google's usage conclusions.

Ditto.

I use and enjoy G+ more than Facebook, and I have no interest in Twitter. I probably just won't have those conversations anymore =\

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#143

Post by jklinger410 »

stedaniels wrote: post #73
IshKebab wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erm, Facebook did implement something like this. Shortly after Google+ came out. You can still assign friends to different groups.

Alas, the concept was never fleshed out and is all but buried and featureless.

It's not heavily promoted but it is there. You can view feeds of your Facebook friend lists, just like Google+. Bookmark those feeds and you are good to go.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#144

Post by aabraham »

whoisjuan wrote: post #95

Funny how they low-key slip through, the fact that they had an open security vulnerability for 3 years. Like "Hey, we are shutting down Google+ ... Btw, your data may have or may have not been exposed..."

I think that's the bigger issue here. For 3 years there was a vulnerability. And when they did find out about it, they chose not to disclose the information. Why? B/c there wasn't that many people using it. And so because of that, let's shut down G+, rather than be scrutinized about how they chose not to let it be know, that users information were available through this vulnerability.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#145

Post by mixedbit »

'We believe it occurred after launch as a result of the API’s interaction with a subsequent Google+ code change.'

It is very hard to believe that they can't track when exactly the bug was introduced. All code changes are tracked in the source control.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#146

Post by [deleted] »

pjmorris wrote: post #87
8ytecoder wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very cynical view of things. I'm not a product manager - but I can't imagine one sitting in a room thinking about all the evil ways to make the feed harder for people to find relevant posts. I can, however, perfectly imagine a PM who is "extremely numbers driven" to look a bad version of the algorithm that increases the time users spend shifting through shit and assume that the algorithm is a huge success b…

Seems to me like PM's would think in the most positive terms about the same issue, e.g. what is the maximum amount of ad space that we can use before users lose interest? No one would directly attempt to be evil, it'd just turn out that way. “The truly terrible thing is that everybody has their reasons.” ― Jean Renoir

[deleted]

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#147

Post by puzzle »

Touche wrote: post #110
mindcrime wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone always says "this always failed because it didn't do X," where X is anything they like. I didn't say "it failed because it didn't do X". They said "... failed to gain developer adoption ....". To that specific point, I contend there is a clear and direct causal link between the decisions they made, and that lack of adoption. Of course I can't prove that in the strictest sense, but it's not hard to see that a…

You're missing (or ignoring) a lot of historical context in your analysis. Google spent many years trying to compete with Facebook assuming that open standards were the thing that would win. ActivityStreams and PubSubHubHub are just two examples of federated standards that they built to compete, and that failed. Google+ came out, if you'll remember, at the time that Page became CEO again and pivoted the company's dir…

Before those two, more than a decade ago, Google also had OpenSocial, with MySpace and others. It was an interesting period of time, if you were there. The project was one of the "failures" that soured Google on having open standards at all costs.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#148

Post by Apocryphon »

mindcrime wrote: post #80
jonknee wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> never depend on anything from Google They're shutting it down precisely because no one was depending on it. How would anyone depend on a social network without any users?

They're shutting it down precisely because no one was depending on it. How would anyone depend on a social network without any users? It did have users. I have no idea the exact number, and clearly it wasn't as many as Facebook, but it wasn't the ghost town people always made it out to be. Some of the Communities were actually quite active.

Where are these Communities, exactly?

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#149

Post by ilovecaching »

What's really striking about this to me is that Google didn't disclose the security vulnerability. Google is trying to cover it up by moving the ball from 'there was a breach' to 'we're shutting down G+'. This is why I'm super hesitant to be a Google fanboy. Facebook may have my social media info, but Google has my emails, all of my mobile data, access to a bunch of my assets through Google Domains, GCE etc. Scary stuff.

Re: Shutting Down Google+ for Consumers

#150

Post by brownbat »

UncleMeat wrote: post #121
mindcrime wrote: post #20

LOL, one more example of why one should never depend on anything from Google. developer adoption Gee, I wonder why? Maybe because they never released a usable write API and were basically just a little less developer-hostile than Twitter? G+ had a lot of potential, had Google chosen to truly embrace Open Standards, federation, and usable API's. As it is, they shot themselves in the foot by creating JAWG (Just Another…

Is this a joke? G+ has been a laughingstock in terms of actual usage numbers for years. Nobody is using it. The fact that it was still supported is amazing. Is Google supposed to support failing products until the end of time?

> Nobody is using it.

For a definition of nobody that includes hundreds of millions of active users. Ie, more people than you will ever meet in your lifetime, possibly more than all the people those people will meet in their lifetimes.

No doubt this is a failure for Google.

For comparison, Bing turns over only a twentieth of Google's 60B per year.

Point and laugh if you like, but I'd be happy with considerably less than three billion a year.

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