Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: How Do You Feel About the End Of Google+ ? (slashdot.org)
"On April 2nd, your Google+ account and any Google+ pages you created will be shut down and we will begin deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts," Google has been warning since January.
Long-time Slashdot reader shanen writes "it's been grating on me for a while," asking "But is there any real harm here? Do you feel damaged?" On the one hand, my trust in the Google has certainly been damaged by profit-driven directional changes. On such grounds you could argue that the people who most trusted the Google may feel most victimized....
What is the value of IP? Do you feel you expressed or even created any interesting ideas through your use of Google+ as a discussion channel? If so, maybe you feel damaged because it's going away? (Yes, the Archive team wants to preserve it, but IP has to grow to be alive, and the archives aren't easy to search, to boot...)
I'm pretty sure that I started using Google+ a long time ago, back when my own sentiments towards the Google were much more positive. My negative framing of the question could be projection, so maybe your response may explain why it's really a good thing when the Google kills certain ideas?
The original submission also includes the bitter observation that "Innovation is supposed to be important to the Google. Isn't the Google giving us mixed signals here?" But how do Slashdot's readers feel?
Leave your own thoughts in the comments. How do you feel about the end of Google+ ?
Long-time Slashdot reader shanen writes "it's been grating on me for a while," asking "But is there any real harm here? Do you feel damaged?" On the one hand, my trust in the Google has certainly been damaged by profit-driven directional changes. On such grounds you could argue that the people who most trusted the Google may feel most victimized....
What is the value of IP? Do you feel you expressed or even created any interesting ideas through your use of Google+ as a discussion channel? If so, maybe you feel damaged because it's going away? (Yes, the Archive team wants to preserve it, but IP has to grow to be alive, and the archives aren't easy to search, to boot...)
I'm pretty sure that I started using Google+ a long time ago, back when my own sentiments towards the Google were much more positive. My negative framing of the question could be projection, so maybe your response may explain why it's really a good thing when the Google kills certain ideas?
The original submission also includes the bitter observation that "Innovation is supposed to be important to the Google. Isn't the Google giving us mixed signals here?" But how do Slashdot's readers feel?
Leave your own thoughts in the comments. How do you feel about the end of Google+ ?
Who the hell cares?!
The end of Google+ is alright and all, but what we REALLY need is the end of Facebook. When that day comes there will be much rejoicing.
I don't care about Google+, but I'm still broken up about the end of iGoogle. That was the best start page I've ever used. It had these widgets for Gmail and RSS and other good stuff so everything was in once place. Smooth integration with Google Calendar. I've been through every iGoogle copy, like start.me, and Chrome's Awesome New Tab extension and a bunch of others, and they're never good, or good for very long.
I've never really forgiven Google for killing off iGoogle. It was a tool I used all the time and now it's gone. Those bastards.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I still can't put my figure though on why it never went anywhere with anyone I knew,
i wrote about this at the time. facebook is known for being non-mission-critical. if facebook doesn't like your use of its service, and terminates your account, so what, big deal.
however as *actually happened* with several people, the forced requirement of an incredibly dangerous "real name" policy, if people joined up to google+ and refused to accept the dangerous requirement, ACCESS TO TEN YEARS OF EMAIL AND DOCS WAS TERMINATED WITHOUT WARNING. and there was absolutely no recovery mechanism.
i have over 50,000 messages dating back 12 years, on which i critically rely for business and for coordinating software libre projects. termination of access to all of that would be catastrophic.
i also wrote about why "real name" policies are incredibly dangerous. they break the rule that everyone knows: everyone KNOWS that you DO NOT TRUST an online identity. period.
any Corporation that sets itself up as the "God Of Identity" is just... so wrong on so many levels, it's just not funny. youtube data breach only a few months ago. equifax data breach. ashley madison data breach. cambridge analytica. dozens more that can be found on https://haveibeenpwned.com/Pwn...
*how many more* of these are we going to have to have before people start to wake up?
Do you remember how the press endless banged on about how Google+ was small and that it was 'beaten' by Facebook? People are still doing it here. Well, I used it a lot. It was awesome. However Google killed it off before this actual shutdown.
Before G+ was a thing, it was Buzz. Buzz was a locally centred discussion platform and it ended up being an interesting way to establish a social graph. I met some really interesting people in my city and we had many deep conversations. Buzz moved to G+, and everything continued there. Then one day they decided that photos were where it was at and destroyed the platform as a discussion board. Design changes just meant that images were kept and text was shortened to two lines in a feed. It quickly became just another image based platform of narcissists. I don't know how it did numbers wise after that, but it totally killed the platform for most of the people who were there from the start. My archive of G+ shows that I crafted a load of posts that took a lot of time. I was using it in place of a blog, and I benefited from people actually reading and interacting with my posts. Not any more.
It seems to me that it was this theme which shaped the way Google approached all of their products and G+ itself is just the latest. They hated the negative press. If they were seen to be second to someone doing billions, then better not to do it at all. That shift right is what made me, and anecdotally a lot of my friends, change out our view of Google. I don't suppose there was ever a time Google cared what we thought, it's just that now it was clear.
Fuck you Google.
have over 50,000 messages dating back 12 years, on which i critically rely for business
^^^ !!! Don't use free services who provide no service-level agreement and no contact information or tech support for mission critical operations!