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Google Is Discontinuing Google+ Hangouts On Air On September 12 (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Google today quietly announced that Google+ Hangouts On Air will no longer be available on September 12. Four weeks from now, Google users will be asked to use YouTube Live instead. Google first debuted the livestreaming feature for its Hangouts group video chat on Google+ back in September 2011, though it was only available to select performers and celebrities. Google started making Hangouts On Air available to all its users in May 2012, and completed the rollout a month later. But then in May 2013, Google debuted YouTube Live, which also gradually became available to more and more users.
And one step closer to the end of that piece of shit called Google+
when you can just make something new that does exactly the same thing and annoy your users by forcing them to switch.
Everything Google/YouTube/Alphabet are USA Government Spy Apparatuses anyway.
What would we ever do without Google+ ? IRC is great.
Google+ is (was?) a better designed and engineered alternative to Facebook, but it was marketed poorly. They positioned themselves as some kind of social network for cool tech people, forgetting that all the real cool tech people were already active with each other in their own online communities, You *had* to be on LinkedIn, because Business, and you *had* to be on Facebook, because Family, even if you weren't active in either, so you really, really needed a good reason to join another social network with strangers. And all that cringeworthy astroturfing and bought-and-paid-for testimonials by the those who were supposed to be our Nerd Leaders, such as Wil Wheaton, Felicia Day, and Guy Kawasaki just made the whole thing a laughing stock.
of well designed vaporware. I have loads of friends/family that already have google accounts, but I cannot get them to use the google platform for more than mail/chat so they must be contacted via all the other bloaty crap. It gets to the point that you're afraid to try their newest shenanigan cuz you'll be left out in the cold.
I feel like using Google products is becoming a bad idea, simply because you can expect it to be retired as soon as it becomes useful when they decide to make an identical product under the banner of choice of the moment, or simply kill it with no replacement product at all. This used to be disappointing, but Google does this so often it doesn't affect me any very much more because I won't even try most of their recent offerings knowing they won't keep it around. According to this article, I started avoiding Google's new offerings late 2011 or earlier.
Finally Google is dismantling Google + crap for good. Really doesn't bother me, I could never find anyone else who actually used Hangout's or Google +.
Just another Google failure of their lack of social understanding of average users not geeks. Other than a decent browser and ads what else has Google been real successful at?
Man, this is going to piss off a whole lot of podcasters and streamers I know about.... though the ones most dedicated to that abandoned the platform long ago due to complete abandonment and a whole lot of weird glitches, bugs and problems.
But yeah... another proof that people just can't rely on Google to keep up their platforms or even develop them properly. They just keep releasing crap, abandoning development, and then shutting them down. Really doesn't inspire much confidence on the company.
"And nothing of value was lost."
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The real name policy was a complete turnoff.
Oh, that and the fact that G+ conflated my "mission-critical" GMail, Voice, Wallet (mainly for Express), and other stuff with my personal life, where I could get banned for saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.
Yeah, about the same kind of incentive mismatch as Apple Ping (where I had to worry if Apple's closeness with the music/movie industry meant I couldn't discuss torrents/etc).
You have everything to lose (your Google identity) with G+, and little to gain - why should I bother?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
When mainstream companies throw up innovations. They have so much going on, and the new things numbers will be so poor compared to their mainstream apps, that it's hard to justify continuing them. Startups are a lot more invested and there indicates you can watch for to give you a heads up.
Personally, I just tend to stay away from probably 90% of anything google. I have gmail, ok. I watch youtube. ok. I do use their search engine as well at times.
The thing I hate is that they retire their services as fast as they start them up. Generally because they're not doing as well as they hoped. Meaning people DO use them. But not ENOUGH people use them. So kill the service for everyone.
So I ended up thinking to myself "Why bother using their services at all then if there are others around that are probably going to be more permanent, and I'll be forced to use those other services within 3 years anyway."
And with all the projects/services I've seen Google kill off since then, I'm glad I took this stance since it simplified my life from having to go find replacements every 6 months to a year. (I already have a replacement for my gmail. The gmail is now mostly used for mailing lists.)
So seeing google+ being slowly closed down like this is no surprise to me at all.
So, is Hangouts on air different from the Hangouts app on Android? Or will the functionality of the Hangouts app shut down on Sep 12?
No, the Hangouts App contains Hangouts on air support.
Just the Hangouts on air portion.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
What exactly is that? I remember when Google switched their messenger service to Hangouts, and to this day, I've resisted using it on the desktop. Just use it on my phone to force open a dialog window w/ a contact, and then continue the conversation on the computer. Is there a separate Hangouts on Google+ than there is for one's normal Google account?
Hangouts on air is when you can host a Google hangouts session between a few select people and essentially provide the general public the option to view the stream (but not join). It's popular with podcasts, game streamers having discussions etc.
It's a feature built into Google Hangouts, but isn't Google Hangouts as a whole.
Sorta, I guess? You can access Hangouts separately on hangouts.google.com, which I don't believe requires a Google+ profile (I could be wrong).
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.