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Google Criticized Over Its Handling of the End of Google+ (vortex.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein shares his report on how Google is handling the end of its Google+ service. He's describing it as "a boot to the head: when you know that Google just doesn't care any more" about users "who have become 'inconvenient' to their new business models."
We already know about Google's incredible user trust failure in announcing dates for this process. First it was August. Then suddenly it was April. The G+ APIs (which vast numbers of web sites -- including mine -- made the mistake of deeply embedding into their sites), we're told will start "intermittently failing" (whatever that actually means) later this month.
It gets much worse though. While Google has tools for users to download their own G+ postings for preservation, they have as far as I know provided nothing to help loyal G+ users maintain their social contacts... As far as Google is concerned, when G+ dies, all of your linkages to your G+ friends are gone forever. You can in theory try to reach out to each one and try to get their email addresses, but private messages on G+ have always been hit or miss...
And with only a few months left until Google pulls the plug on G+, I sure as hell wouldn't still be soliciting for new G+ users! Yep -- believe it or not -- Google at this time is STILL soliciting for unsuspecting users to sign up for new G+ accounts, without any apparent warnings that you're signing up for a service that is already officially the walking dead! Perhaps this shows most vividly how Google today seems to just not give a damn about users who aren't in their target demographics of the moment. Or maybe it's just laziness.
I'd be more upset about this if I actually used Google+ -- but has Google been unfair to the users who do? "[T]he way in which they've handled the announcements and ongoing process of sunsetting a service much beloved by many Google users has been nothing short of atrocious," Weinstein writes, "and has not shown respect for Google's users overall."
It gets much worse though. While Google has tools for users to download their own G+ postings for preservation, they have as far as I know provided nothing to help loyal G+ users maintain their social contacts... As far as Google is concerned, when G+ dies, all of your linkages to your G+ friends are gone forever. You can in theory try to reach out to each one and try to get their email addresses, but private messages on G+ have always been hit or miss...
And with only a few months left until Google pulls the plug on G+, I sure as hell wouldn't still be soliciting for new G+ users! Yep -- believe it or not -- Google at this time is STILL soliciting for unsuspecting users to sign up for new G+ accounts, without any apparent warnings that you're signing up for a service that is already officially the walking dead! Perhaps this shows most vividly how Google today seems to just not give a damn about users who aren't in their target demographics of the moment. Or maybe it's just laziness.
I'd be more upset about this if I actually used Google+ -- but has Google been unfair to the users who do? "[T]he way in which they've handled the announcements and ongoing process of sunsetting a service much beloved by many Google users has been nothing short of atrocious," Weinstein writes, "and has not shown respect for Google's users overall."
You get what you pay for.
Google plus was a data harvesting scheme. Facebook had been telling advertisers that it knew so much about the users (age, name, likes). Google responded by releasing Google Plus, harassing everyone until they had signed up for an account, then once they had everyone's data, abandoning it.
Many of us would have liked to have seen an alternative to Facebook, but Google just didn't care enough to make that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"Don't get comfy"
I mostly recall Google plus as being kind of useless. I recall talking to some friends on there back when it was popular. I still check my facebook once in a while, but the lack of privacy on facebook turns me off from using it for a lot of things, plus the too many useless discussions of politics. I thought the circles idea was kind of cool, but I mostly recall useless content and no real desire to keep logging into it. I wouldn't trust google not to abandon stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point they lose their dominance in search too. Anyway, I recall mainly making a google plus account to promote my free software rpg, Wograld, but it certainly wasn't really useful for that (or anything else for that matter.)
Google has shuttered many services. If you relied on them in any serious way, without a contract, that was foolish.
whats google+ ?
Facebook has been doing a lot of oops, privacy problem and third parties could access user data. There's even news the FTC might fine them. Looking a bit deeper: Facebook uses AdChoices for advertising.
What if: Alphabet sunsets Google+ and then sometime after acquires Facebook? Alphabet, DoubleClick and Alphabet, Google... both advertisers although Google is all their tools listed, not just ads. If so, then they get a Social Media and already have some stake in advertising on Facebook. From there, who knows... if it happens that way, and Google's division of Alphabet doesn't necessarily need to acquire it (e.g., it doesn't have to be Facebook Googled, it could be Facebook, owned by Alphabet, powered by Google).
Luckily, I don't use Google+, so this isn't a big deal for me.
But, I do use Android heavily and I do NOT like the fact that Google is working on some crappy Fuschia project to replace the Linux kernel in Android. It will be a very sad day indeed if/when Google fucks up Android so royally that we are forced to jump ship to the walled garden overpriced junk from Apple.
Fuck You Google+
"they have as far as I know provided nothing to help loyal G+ users maintain their social contacts", These actually exist? surely they could hire a temp for an hour or 2 to re-enter the contacts for those half a dozen people into a new system.
Google+ was as unfortunately named as the WiiU. People must've thought it was a rewards program like Bing Rewards or something. My dad accidentally clicked on some 'make a G+ account' prompt, and suddenly he had a Google+ account. He never seemed to realize this though, and he kept using Facebook blissfully unaware of Google+. They shot themselves in the foot with the '+1' terminology, when every other social media site was using the 'Like', not just Facebook. Hell, calling it an 'upvote' would've been an improvement.
Google was notorious for killing their projects, so savvy netizens were wary this one would get the axe too (spoiler: it did). Those concerned over privacy considered Google+ a sidegrade over Facebook, at best.
They really should've just brought over some realtime functionality to Gmail, promoted that to all the people still using yahoo/AOL/hotmail accounts, and called it a day.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
This seems to be what happens to all the services Google decides to end.
I really liked it when it launched. It was Twitter with better access control and without the character limits, or Facebook without the... Facebook. But the people that wanted Twitter lived with the limitations of Twitter, and the people who wanted Facebook wallowed in the shit.
Such is the way with social media network saturation. If you can't build the network, the site dies.
Google has a history of shutting down services. This shouldnâ(TM)t be a surprise to someone who is capable of using APIs.
There are even Wikipedia categories about it:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Google_services
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Google_software
G+ lasted 7 years and I was one of the happy users. Yes, it was a data-gathering exercise, but we all made many âfriendsâ(TM) who were much closer than you ever find on Facebook. The discussions tended to be intelligent and covered every topic under the sun, yes, including what weâ(TM)re having for lunch, but far more likely to be about tech, science, politics, the environment; and the big one was , of course, photography.
I joined by invite in the second beta wave and ended up with over 19,000 followers (though I know this figure was inflated by Google. As for engagement, right up until a month or so ago, I found it difficult to keep up with my feed each day, with hundreds of posts on my stream on an average day. People who called it a ghost town simply werenâ(TM)t engaging effectively, and probably not generating content. Rather than just getting what you pay for, it was more a matter of getting out to the degree that you put in.
Itâ(TM)s annoying that theyâ(TM)re still soliciting for new users, as it does look like they just donâ(TM)t care. Theyâ(TM)re also still putting up âDo you know [these people]?â(TM) cards in the feed, as if they want us to grow our following in a dying swan gesture. And just yesterday I saw a card inviting me to give G+ a positive review on the Play Store. You know what? I donâ(TM)t really care to.
Nobody knows (except Google) how many active users there were but informed guesses ran from tens of millions up to about the same as Flickr. Many thousands of us have gone to a new Diaspora* pod called Pluspora, run by a couple of really nice Plussers; many thousands more have gone to MeWe, and many to other sites. Many are still looking.
Iâ(TM)ll always fondly remember my seven years on G+. But I wonâ(TM)t mourn it. Iâ(TM)ll be too busy elsewhere.
Garry Knight
Use and support FOSS web technologies and try to keep the web open and free.
Google should be praised for its handling of social media. Should Facebook follow suit, I will praise them too.
Ruined? Ah, the dreams of the impotent. Once the 15 minutes of communist poutrage are over, everyone will go back to not caring what this kid has done.
The Google+ debacle and shuttering of other services or products all stem from the same problem: Google has fingers in 10 thousand pies, and it cares only about the ones that are currently delivering profit.
The company started off with a clear business area, Internet Search, but since that time Google/Alphabet has diversified so much that its business area now seems to be "Do anything that can return a profit." It also appears to have a (probably unstated) M.O. giving it an anti-competitive advantage in this business empire without frontiers: "Cross-subsidize all areas." (To what extent is this occurring, and how does Alphabet fit in?)
It's an acute example of business schizophrenia, and it's not doing society any good to have such a shambolic company wielding so much power in so many different areas. As many have suggested over the years, it should probably be split up into multiple companies operating in well-defined business niches. Cross-subsidy between them should also be disallowed in order to promote a healthy level playing field for business as a whole.
Lol, doubtful. He's gone super-viral just now for his smug punchable nazi face, and he was trying to be a BROADCASTER lol. Whoopsie. Maybe the nazis are looking for a play-by-play announcer for Trump's hanging?
Other than that this kid just permanently damaged his employability with that stunt. The best part is it only took me about 25 seconds to find him, he's that dumb.
I would think that a project as mature a Google+ wouldn't cost too much to mantain, specially for company the size of Google. So I'm surprised that the amount of data they're able to gather from Google+'s posts isn't worth the trouble to keep it alive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgRS7nPT-q8 Caught, bish.
... that some people just failed to see the obvious.
It was clear 12 months after launch the service was more or less DOA - it was a ghost town.
"You pays your money and you takes your choice."
... the end of Google+ doesn’t break our YouTube channel.
We set up a channel for our work, but quickly found that there were numerous artificial constraints on the channel unless we also created a Google+ account and linked them together. A couple years ago Google said they’d provide a way to unlink YouTube from Google’s+, but as far as I know they never followed through on that. So, with Google+ ending, it will be interesting to see what breaks.
#DeleteChrome
We do forgive youths their mistakes. If he genuinly learns and repents, he shouldn't be hounded.
I'm afraid the only products I can rely on Google for is Search, Maps, GMail, Google Docs and Chrome. Every other product they seem to have brought out they've ditched. Either they've merged it with something else, then ditched it or perhaps they've spun it out again?
Location sharing was latitude, then it went into G+, then it went into maps.
Which chat product do I use? Hangouts (due for decommissioning), Allo, Duo.
They've dumped reader, Google Desktop, Google Enterprise Search, Google talk...
For as much as I might not like Microsoft, at least their enterprise products have a chance of existing in a couple of years time and have an upgrade path, I can't honestly say the same for Google.
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
Seriously, even if G+ was a paid service, the treatment would still be the same. Google have very good form for dumping things like this, in an abrupt way.
They did give warning in advance.
It is a free service.
So dont complain too much. They are a business and this is 'the cloud'. Don't get all bent out of shape if someone else turns the computer of theirs you were using, off, even if you were paying them money. You're nothing more than a single statistic on the balance sheet, and individually a small one at that. Remember that.
"when G+ dies, all of your linkages to your G+ friends are gone forever. You can in theory try to reach out to each one and try to get their email addresses, but private messages on G+ have always been hit or miss"
1) Then these are not your friends, and 2) It's a good thing Google isn't invading their privacy to release all their data to you.
Did you expect different? Is the goal to gizz up some jazz and make an internet splash? Be like all self-respecting webbles and stay the course with Facebook. No underhanded crotch grabbing goes on there. And none ever will. Google. Facebook. I know which is the pick of champions.
Quoted from the Slate smear piece:
'Perhaps 18 inches in front of him, a white teenager in a âoeMake America Great Againâ hat makes eye contact and smirks. A much larger crowd of teenagersâ"mostly male, mostly white, many wearing MAGA hatsâ"hoots with delight at the wordless confrontation.'
Smirking and wordless confrontation. Yup. That's the latest "outrage" being pushed by Corporate Progressive trolls. WTF?
Considering how bad Facebook and Twitter are, and how many resources Google has, it's amazing they couldn't make Google+ fly. SMH
You're denying he is smirking with an extremely punchable face? I think we have to ask the panel on that one, line up nazi trash children.
Didn't you get the memo? In the internet age, the world never forgets youthful indiscretions, and you can be harassed out of a job for having the temerity to have danced at university!
Quantity is not quality.
FB is the home of memes. G+ was the home of quite a few interesting discussions.. To be honest, I much preferred G+, the problem being not enough of my friends used it, as they already had Facebook, which I can entirely understand.
I can't imagine a bunch of high schoolers taking a trip to DC to wear MAGA hats without adult supervision and then harassing people, Vietnam vets, is going to bode well on their school, Coventry Catholic "CovCath" in KY.
That's embarrassing AF to anyone who graduated there to be associated with that, the faculty, any part of it. They post their code of conduct online and everything. Now they're political and associated with a trolling asshole.
Kid better publicly apologize and try to take control of that narrative or he's tarred forever. I bet the school gives him walking papers though, pretty much the dumbest optics possible.
Education : Begin again.
"It was clear 12 months after launch the service was more or less DOA - it was a ghost town."
You know what I blame this on most? Their real names policy. The web already had a social network which required real names, called Facebook. It didn't require another. Google users were used to going by a psuedonym (Google hates anonymity so much it refused to even autocomplete that word...) and G+ didn't allow that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Quantity is not quality.
FB is the home of memes. G+ was the home of quite a few interesting discussions.. To be honest, I much preferred G+, the problem being not enough of my friends used it, as they already had Facebook, which I can entirely understand.
In other-words, it was a ghost town.
Didn't the founder of Nest talk about bricking the firmware of the home automation hub that people had hooked their doorbells, security systems and other home automation stuff into?
That and G+ are why I will never buy a Nest or any other cloud based home automation.
I want appliances that will work after the company goes away/loses interest. I have stuff on Linux that I built 10 years ago that still works through OS upgrades, new computers. I had to preserve VMs of Windows XP and Windows 7 to keep some other things going that just work in the latest Linux.
I don't think it's Google's hatred of anonymity so much as a poor seed for the autocomplete engine (you spelled/typed it wrong).
I take your point on the real names policy, but I think your comment about the web already having a social network was really hitting the nail on the head. I never understood what Google+ was, how it was different, what advantages it might have had over the market leader (Facebook) seems to me their marketing was ill-conceived or non-existent.
I'd have hoped for the policy my credit-card company has.
I have one name, and one main number, the latter an identity I use for lots of personal stuff. I also get single-purpose numbers (identities) for suppliers I don't necessarily trust.
I also have a work card, a distinct identity with separate billing, that I use for stuff for my employer.
And finally I have another work card, for a start-up I've been meaning to spend more time on for a dog's age (;-))
One me, many identities, just like gamer-tags and noms de plume. Normal, human stuff.
davecb@spamcop.net
It is a made up story lunatic. Get help for your TDS. Maybe take a break from your phone and laptop. Or just go to a professional to save the world from your neurosis and psychosis.
"I don't think it's Google's hatred of anonymity so much as a poor seed for the autocomplete engine (you spelled/typed it wrong)."
You're wrong. I typed it correctly, letter by letter, and it didn't show up until I had typed the whole thing. I don't really think it's Google's hatred of anonymity either, I actually just think it's their incompetence. Autocomplete and gesture typing both work a lot less well (which was autocorrected will even though I swiped it and the e and the I are on different sides of the layout) than they used to. Google is going backwards now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Did he do anything besides smirking? You want to ruin a kid's life for an inappropriate facial expression? How many stupid things did you do when you were a kid? For me, smirking wouldn't even make the top 100.
I started posting on G+ on July 3rd 2011. That is 2757 days ago.
In that time I posted 2747 posts (not counting private posts) which received 17494 +1, 10357 comments and 2469 reshares.
They kill all that. So my anger has multiple angles:
1) I pay for G+ as part of my GSuite. So I expect it to work roughly in the way I am used to. But Google kicks off 90+% of the users and says something like "Yeah, we promised you a car but not a motor." So I feel cheated by Google. How can I trust them to not discard the IMAP access to GMail or remove files from my GDrive because of some obscure policy decision?
2) The shutdown is handled in an unprofessional way. It starts by giving us bogus reasons. If the API is the problem, fix it or disable it and the problem is solved. But the shutdown is not even close to a logical conclusion. They have other reasons but decide to give us just PR bullsh*t. All the information about the shutdown is handed out as if letters were in short supply. You can still create a G+ account and you have no idea that you are heading for a cliff. There are dozens of questions surrounding the shutdown. People have tried very hard to get them answered but Google even refuses to acknowledge them. I have seen services run by a single person who outperformed Google by 2 orders of magnitude concerning the communication.
3) The shutdown is done in an unseemly haste. This can be considered to be a part of 2) but it is an insult of it's own. My own leaving is faster than I like, but I want to be on the safe side with my backups before Google messes with things.
4) Google refuses all communication with users. Either you have someone like the ex-boyfriend of the sister of your best buddy that has cousin who works at Google or you will get no information. The ONLY way left to communicate with Google for me is to put all my services elsewhere. Lauren Weinstein has diagnosed similar problems with his request for an ombudsman already some time ago.
I do not hate Google. My anger is born of disappointment, very deep disappointment.
"a boot to the head: when you know that Google just doesn't care any more" about users "who have become 'inconvenient' to their new business models." ----- Protip: Google doesn't care about its users. Ever. Treat every Google product you use as if it may disappear into the ether tomorrow. It's too bad because they do some cool stuff. But like the drunken ADD squirrel upon boredom they move on to the next thing and neglect the product.
This has been Google's patter for over a decade now. I'm genuinely surprised someone is still surprised by this.
I don't get it. Yeah, the little boy has a punchable face (backpfeifengesicht, for those of you looking for the proper word), but according to the article you linked he didn't even say anything to the native American guy, so where does the harassment come in? Just looking at someone is not harassment.
Here's a shorter summary: We all hate it when people move our cheese. Somebody moved Lauren's cheese. The end.
Giving people what they don't want is kind of what Google exists for. They consider the failure to want it to be yours, not theirs.
It wasn't really a ghost town at all if you knew how to use it. Sure, it was reported as such by reporters (who had um, agendas...) but I didn't find it so at all. What it was was a little selective, and the "you might like to meet" recommendations at the beginning quickly went away. Since it didn't just connect you to every moron on earth - reporters just trying it for the first time, and other idiots, didn't get any messages or contacts, so they thought it was dead. The rest of us laughed at you.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
You're wrong. I typed it correctly, letter by letter
Perhaps you meant "pseudonym" instead? A psuedonym is what you might use for your favourite blue shoes...
No worries. The rest of us were laughing at you and your ghost town.
I do not hate Google. My anger is born of disappointment, very deep disappointment.
It sounds like you're, for some bizarre reason, willing to throw your love behind Google yet again, even though, after spending many years giving them countless hours of your work ("content") for free, they dump it out with the yesterday's trash. You sound like an abused spouse, "... but I still love him". You might want to consider why you're doing this. Or, barring that, perhaps see a psychologist to help you. I'm not a psychologist, but I doubt that it's healthy to be perpetually abused by a person and go back again and again and again. And in this case, it's not even a person that's doing the abusing. It's a giant, faceless international conglomerate.
I don't respond to AC's.
If you're using somebody else's "stuff". Whether that be "cloud" storage, web hosting, entertainment provision, some "social media" site or anything else it's all in somebody else's control.
It's just like that little favourite bar/cafe/hang out you all go to that gets bought out. And then the changes start.. .and then it soon turns to shit. Following which it closes and you have to take some time to find another good place to go.
It's always been this way and it always will be. If someone else is in control then you're at their mercy.
Keep your friends close and stay in touch. Not with social media but in person, by phone, by letter, by visiting. If you rely on anyone else to to do this for you you're going to be very disappointed every time.
And if you rely on a corporation as a go between you're a moron.
I'm shocked!
I will remember that, and avoid their services in the future, thanks.
If I cared what you thought, I'd be in trouble. But being a free man and self-justifying, creating value and not giving you power over me by needing or wanting your approval, then I don't care if you laugh, knock yourself out. The ghosts in my town had IQ and learning. I don't waste breath laughing at those who don't. Or pity when their ignorance is their own doing.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
It's spell "pseudo", not "psuedo".
Quantity is not quality. FB is the home of memes. G+ was the home of quite a few interesting discussions.. To be honest, I much preferred G+, the problem being not enough of my friends used it, as they already had Facebook, which I can entirely understand.
In other-words, it was a ghost town.
Sure, in the same sense that New York City is a ghost town, because only a tiny percentage of the global population lives there. G+ was very engaging and active for users who used it to explore interests and make new friends. It wasn't very effective for those looking to connect with their existing real-life friends.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
You know what I blame this on most? Their real names policy. The web already had a social network which required real names, called Facebook. It didn't require another.
At the time the motivation for the policy was prevention of trolling and hate speech. Remember that Google already had one social media site when it launched G+ -- YouTube. And YouTube comments were an utter cesspool (and are only a little better today). The theory was that if people had to post under their real names, they would behave more like they do in the real world, which almost never includes spewing bile at random strangers. I don't think this theory is correct, but it did appear to work for quite a while.
Google users were used to going by a psuedonym (Google hates anonymity so much it refused to even autocomplete that word...)
Google doesn't hate anonymity or pseudonymity (and that word didn't automplete because you spelled it wrong -- it's pseudonym, not psuedonym).
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
It's sure getting a hell of a lot of advertising on this comments page, now that it's shut down, all the G+ users are coming out of the woodwork with "There were less idiots on Google Plus!" ... if I would have heard this argument louder and earlier, I might have joined.
now that it's shut down, all the G+ users are coming out of the woodwork with "There were less idiots on Google Plus!" ... if I would have heard this argument louder and earlier, I might have joined.
If you would have paid attention earlier, you might have heard this argument. There's been conversations about it here before in which the same view was espoused.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I saw the MEGA video of so called abuse, he was just standing there with a smirk, big deal
what next, oh we must behave like the left wing nut fuckers or be classified as nazis, hey idiots, the nazi party doesnt exist, nazis dont exist, you stupid fool.
you should be worried about china, not nazis.
That wasn't an auto-complete, that was a spell check.. it's pseudo, not psuedo.
I call this sort of people "professionals", air quotes included.
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
I use only free standard resolution picture storage and it should count toward my google storage quota.
However, when i post one of those free pictures to Google+, it suddenly does count toward my storage.
I liked having a history of family related pictures on google+ so i actually went ahead and paid for their 100GB/year plan.
Guess now that it's going away i won't have to renew. Thanks google!
[Posting as AC because I've moderated] G+ doesn't really enforce real names -- I have been using a made-up name in my G+ account (opened via Gmail again using said made-up name) with no problems. For that matter, I have been doing the same on Facebook (different made-up name) for years, and they haven't caught me yet, probably because I log-in sparingly, once a month or so. Also, although G+ has taken down nude pics in the past, I currently have pics sporting female nipples, even a full frontal, and they are still up; maybe G+ has adopted a policy akin to Pinterest's -- nudity OK if it's not porn and not suggestive.
Fools
Jesus will rapture you for being a moron
If enough had heard it and joined it would quickly stop being true!
Standing in the way is harassment.