Slashdot Mirror
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"
What if: Alphabet sunsets Google+ and then sometime after acquires Facebook?
Right now Facebook's market cap (basically how much it would cost to buy all the stock) is $480billion. That's going to be an expensive purchase, but maybe worth it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"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.
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
Google should be praised for its handling of social media. Should Facebook follow suit, I will praise them too.
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.
... 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
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
Considering how bad Facebook and Twitter are, and how many resources Google has, it's amazing they couldn't make Google+ fly. SMH
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.
"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.'"
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
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.
If they screw it up, expect a major company to fork Android and develop a new app store. If it's a smartphone vendor like Samsung, it will probably fail. But if it's a tech company that people are likely to create an account with, it might work.
That or Microsoft revives Windows Phone. They don't want there to be only one smartphone OS with major marketshare, because it will become more costly for them in the long run to be dependent.
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!
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.
Why is this a problem? Just like all the other times, Google is just going to abandon the project before it really gets going.