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Google Criticized Over Its Handling of the End of Google+ (vortex.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the end-times dept.

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."

22 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. Welcome to the Cloud by Kaenneth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You get what you pay for.

    1. Re:Welcome to the Cloud by Z00L00K · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    2. Re:Welcome to the Cloud by Solandri · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      Agree with this.

      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.

      Disagree with this.

      In the early days, it was really hard to set up your own home page. You had to:

      • 1. Register a domain (this used to cost over $100/year).
      • 2. Pay for a dedicated server which was online 24/7 (shared servers not having been invented yet).
      • 3. Install and configure Apache on that server.
      • 4. Edit HTML files locally on your computer, previewing them to see what they'd look like as a web page.
      • 5. Then you could set up your own home page by uploading the .HTML files.

      Geocities made it easy. They took care of steps 1-3 for you, and combined 4-5 into one step. All you had to do was craft your HTML files on their server, and your Geocities homepage was immediately active.

      Where the train went off the rails was that people refused to pay even a token amount for this service. Within a short time, domain names dropped to less than $10/yr, and web services with shared hosting became available which either took care of steps 1-3 for you or handheld you through it. All you had to do was steps 4-5 to create your own web page (which became much easier to do with Dreamweaver or later even Word). But these web hosts charged about $4-$10 a month. Given a choice between giving up a couple days of coffee per month to pay for your own private website, or getting one from Geocities or Myspace for free (paid for by letting them collect your private info), people overwhelmingly picked free.

      Email went down a similar path, except it had additional pressure from spam. I ran my own email server for over a decade, using my own domain. Eventually I had to give it up because my spam filters were becoming increasingly ineffective, and my server was being blacklisted by other email servers more and more often because some spammer managed to weasel an account with my hosting service and fired off a couple million spam emails before the hosting service shut them down. The other email servers would blacklist the entire IP block for my hosting service, and I would have to petition every one of them individually saying I'm not the spammer. When the frequency of this happening rose to once or twice a month, and I wasn't even bothering anymore to try to petition some of the email servers I rarely sent mail to, I finally threw in the towel. I redirected all my domain's email through Gmail, and let them deal with the spam filters and clearing up blacklist blocks.

    3. Re: Welcome to the Cloud by Monster_user · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Running a mail server is a pain to maintain.

      If you're in an IP block that is getting blacklisted, it sounds like you were running a mail server on dynamic client side IPs, rather than on a static IP server block. The glut of spam means we can't just allow everybody, and a lack of reverse DNS with your domain name, that is pointing to a static IP, is gonna get you blacklisted.

      Your server might have existed before SPF, DEMARC, and other TXT strings to validate authenticity of a domain. A properly configured set of SPF and Demarc strings should prevent anybody else from spoofing your domain.

      I found Debouncer.com and MXToolbox.com to be helpful when setting up a mail server, or migrating to a new domain or IP.

  2. Data harvesting scheme by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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."
  3. I'm changing Google's slogan : by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Don't get comfy"

  4. Loyal G+ users? by gravewax · · Score: 3, Funny

    "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.

  5. Fun while it lasted by garryknight · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Fun while it lasted by Dog-Cow · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

  6. Google should be praised by eminencja · · Score: 5, Funny

    Google should be praised for its handling of social media. Should Facebook follow suit, I will praise them too.

  7. Surprised they don't find it worthwhile by iampiti · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Surprised they don't find it worthwhile by swillden · · Score: 5, Informative

      I would think that a project as mature a Google+ wouldn't cost too much to maintain, specially for company the size of Google.

      You'd be wrong. Running any decent social media system is a constant battle against spam and ToS-violating content. Unless you want your system to become an ad-ridden cesspool, it takes constant work to adapt systems, policies and processes to the changing strategies of the spammers, pornographers, trolls, etc.

      In addition, any system in Google requires constant attention to maintain, even when the system itself doesn't have to change at all. This is a consequence of Google's internal source management and architecture policies. With only a few exceptions, all of Google runs from HEAD (well, very close to HEAD), and has a single-version policy for libraries, tools (e.g. compilers, build system) and infrastructure components (e.g. storage and messaging). So there's a significant level of work required to adapt to the changing environment. This work is usually not performed by the project team, because that would impose constantly-fluctuating engineering resource demands on the team and make it difficult for them to plan their own forward progress. Instead, it's performed by the teams that build the infrastructure components and maintain the libraries. When they decide to make a change in, for example, the core C++ libraries, or upgrade a compiler, or update a third-party library, they have to update all of the project code that depends on their changes.

      This is feasible because Google uses a single source repository which all engineers have access to, and because Google has a centralized build system and test infrastructure. So an engineer who changes a library can issue a single command that will rebuild every Google system and run all of their automated tests, to see what breaks. There is also tooling that enables automating changes to code across hundreds of projects and facilitates the management of very large numbers of change lists (commits, or perhaps pull requests, in git terminology). Of course, those change lists have to be approved by project owners before they're merged, so there is some effort required of the project teams, to read and approve.

      For bigger, systemic changes, like, say, replacing one storage infrastructure component with another, the process is different. The replacement is built and deployed in a mostly-functional state and then the announcement is made that the to-be-replaced component is deprecated. Project teams then have to build their own migration plans and strategies. For complex and important components, the time between deprecation and turndown is measured in years, so the transition generally isn't urgent, but it does have to be made eventually. A common jokey lament among Google engineers is that for whatever you need to do there are always two options in Google: one that's deprecated and one that's incomplete. Sometimes this complaint is less of a joke and more of a problem, but it's so often true that everyone gets the joke.

      The upshot of this is that even a mature, stable system that isn't actively being changed requires significant ongoing code maintenance as the foundations on which it rests are continually rebuilt to accommodate the needs of other projects. Even if most of this work isn't done by the project team, it still has to be done, so there's pressure from the infrastructure teams to shut down under-performing projects to reduce their workload and increase their agility.

      The benefit of running from HEAD and enforcing the single-version policy is elimination of dependency hell, reduced fragmentation, reduced server memory use and greater agility. The downside is that mature, stable projects cannot simply be left to run without engineering staff, and even a skeleton crew is often insufficient. That, combined with the fact that such projects find it difficult to retain staff, who tend to move to other teams doing more exciting work (like building the umpteenth chat clie

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    2. Re:Surprised they don't find it worthwhile by iampiti · · Score: 3, Informative

      Thanks for the detailed explanation

  8. I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did and ... by bb_matt · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ... 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."

  9. I’m just hoping by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... 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
  10. Re:I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did and . by malkavian · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  11. Re:I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did and . by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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.'"
  12. Re:I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did and . by Chazmati · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  13. The source of my anger.... by mseeger · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:The source of my anger.... by mseeger · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Nope

      The "ghost town" discussion was based on false premises outside and within Google.

      The service never rivaled Facebook and nobody on G+ ever wanted the service to become Facebook.

      The users there came to G+ because they did not like Facebook. So we were just a few million people who were happy with what they had. So were no billions, but it was far from being a ghost town.

      My stream had about 400+ posts per day. I can't remember my last post that did not get any reaction.

  14. Not sure why anyone is surprised anymore by doubledown00 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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.

  15. Re:I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did and . by DCFusor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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!