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."

Comments

Welcome to the Cloud

[Kaenneth]

You get what you pay for.

Re:Welcome to the Cloud

[Z00L00K]

The basic problem with Facebook, Google+ etc. is that you actually don't know the real price - your privacy, and you don't have control over what information that you own anymore when you have dropped it to another site.

In the early days of the internet people experimented by setting up their own homepages, then came Geocities and now everything is essentially collected in either Facebook or LinkedIn.

Fun while it lasted

[garryknight]

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.

Re:Fun while it lasted

[Dog-Cow]

I don't think you should be apologizing for slashdot's inability to handle a 20+ year old standard.

Surprised they don't find it worthwhile

[iampiti]

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.

Re:Surprised they don't find it worthwhile

[Anonymous Coward]

It actually take quite a lot of engineers to just keep it running.
One of the reasons for this is that all the internal APIs and services are re-written and replaces at a breakneck speed.
At google, the only way to get a promotion is to launch a new service. This has the consequence that everything is rewritten and replaced, all the time.
Internal APIs and ervices are sunsetted and replaced with a new service.
Remember, no one gets a promo for fixing something that is broken or maintaining a piece of code. It is all focused on new launches.

This has the effect that YOUR service can never become mature or in a maintenance mode. The services YOU depend on change all the time so YOU need to re-write your service too to adapt to the new APIs that replace the service you depend on but is no longer available.
I.e. There is no such thing as a "stable service, now goes in to non-development phase and maintenance mode".
The day you stop actively developing your service is the day when it will start failing because your dependencies are ony by one going away.

This whole mentality is prevalent across all of google.

Anyway. Since all the dependencies for G+ are changing all the time. Just to keep it running, not talking about adding features, just keeping it running
is likely something in the order a few hundred software engineers. That is a lot of money and possibly Ruth does not want to spend money on dead-end project any more.

Re:I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did and .

[drinkypoo]

"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.

Not sure why anyone is surprised anymore

[doubledown00]

"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.

Re:I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did and .

[DCFusor]

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.