Google Is Killing Off the Pixel 2, Inbox, goo.gl URL Shortener, and Google+ This Week (pcworld.com)

In addition to shutting down Google+, Google URL Shortener, and Inbox by Gmail this week, the company has stopped selling its Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones through its online store, which means whatever remaining stock at other retailers will likely be extremely limited. It also means that the $799 Pixel 3 is now the cheapest phone Google sells. PCWorld summarizes the other three products coming to an end this week: Inbox by Gmail: When the Inbox by Gmail app launched in 2015, it was a revelation. A completely new way to view and organize your messages, Inbox boiled your emails down to a smart task manager, with bundles, pins, scheduling, and shortcuts that made managing your inbox a breeze. But over the years, Google's interest in Inbox faded, and it never really got the attention it deserved. Most of its unique features are now part of the Gmail app (though we're still waiting for bundles), and several third-party apps have adopted Inbox's style. Apparently that's good enough for Google, because as of this week you won't be able to use it anymore.

Google URL Shortener (goo.gl): Back in 2009, link shortening was still a novel idea, and Google was one of the first to bring the concept to the masses with the Google URL Shortener. It was a simple way to turn a lengthy web address into a short one that consisted of goo.gl and a short string of letter and numbers. With the rise of bit.ly and similar services, Google's own URL shortener became less important to people's work flow and now, nearly 10 years later, it's gone for good.

Google+: Google+ was once supposed to be the one-stop shop for social and support among Google users, but it never really caught on. And then it was revealed that some 50 million users may have had their name, email address, occupation, and age exposed to third-party developers, which accelerated its demise. Now it's going away for good, but we can't imagine that anyone will actually notice.

Comments

Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Should be like Samurai and kill it self.

Re: Google

[Anonymous Coward]

"Google is also killing off its product: YouTube"
(April Fools?)

Can't always get what you want.

[fahrbot-bot]

Google+ was once supposed to be the one-stop shop for social and support among Google users, but it never really caught on.

Well... Google wanted to be the one-stop shop anyway.

Re: Can't always get what you want.

[Anonymous Coward]

One stop shops main features are convenience and simplicity. I can't imagine why Google didn't succeed.

Re: Can't always get what you want.

[fahrbot-bot]

One stop shops main features are convenience and simplicity. I can't imagine why Google didn't succeed.

Never used Google+ but perhaps it wasn't convenient or simple.

All I know is that they changed (i.e.: screwed up) the use of "+" the search field.

Re: Can't always get what you want.

[Jason Levine]

I used Google+ a little bit when it launched. It had some good ideas like putting all of the people you wanted to share items with into "circles." You could have a Friends circle, a Family, circle, a Co-Workers circle, etc. People could be in multiple circles. Then, you could share with just a particular circle. Want to share that dirty joke? De-select the Co-Workers circle. Posting a highly technical article? Take off the family circle and select the Co-Workers circle. And so on.

Unfortunately, it just never caught on. For others because Facebook was too massive. For me, because I was using one app to post to multiple social media networks and Google+ didn't let third party apps post to their network. So to post the same thing across all my social media profiles, I'd need to copy/paste it into Google+. It was too much of a hassle so I gave up Google+.

Re: Can't always get what you want.

[Anonymous Coward]

All I know is that they changed (i.e.: screwed up) the use of "+" the search field.

It's worse than that.

What made Google better than Alta Vista was that Google was default "and", where Alta Vista was default "or". You could actually get pretty decent search results out of Alta Vista by putting a + in front of every word.

After Alta Vista was dead, on day Google changed their search engine to "or", requiring a + in front of every search word to get the same result as before. That made Google search comparable to Alta Vista in my especriende.

Then they changed it again, so instead of a + in front of every word, you had to put every word in double quotes.

And now that doesn't work either.

Any tips for making gmail look nicer?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm miffed that google is killing inbox. The layout of gmail just isn't nearly as pleasant, and I think I've tried all the themes. Aside from using inbox for as long as possible (which I'm doing), is there anything I can do to make gmail more pleasant?

Or is it time to find a stand-alone e-mail client and just use POP or IMAP?

Re: Any tips for making gmail look nicer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tried lots of apps. The service delivered by the algorithm they use for bundling messages simply is not available from other sources yet. I am sorry. Tried lots of apps. My plan is to use something free (but not the GMail iface) while I wait for one of the contenders incorporate proper bundling to its feature set.

Re:Any tips for making gmail look nicer?

[Anonymous Coward]

It has been time to use an IMAP mail client more than 20 years ago.

Let me ask you something, what is it like living with shit for brains?

Says the shit for brains A.C.

Re: Any tips for making gmail look nicer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, inbox has been amazing.

I can't stand the Gmail interface, and the grouping is worse.

This is a real step backwards.

Re: Any tips for making gmail look nicer?

[Anonymous Coward]

IMAP and the client of your choice should be beautiful and uncorrupted. Why not just do that?

Re: Any tips for making gmail look nicer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone uses webmail except some early Internet adopters.

I'd like trivial/easy to set up webmail, even if you run it by going to localhost:portnumber when you don't pay for domain name/hosting.
This could be installed on a NAS as well.

Mostly, I don't want to click a link in an email and switch to a different browser program, or even have it launch what the software or OS thinks is my default browser and scramble to quit it while the hard drive grinds.

URL shorteners SUCK

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

URL shorteners SUCK, they're a miserably bad idea and always have been.

Case in point: goo.gl.....what happens to the millions upon millions of links now obfuscated by non-functioning goo.gl? They get lost and millions of 404 errors will rule the day.

Link shorteners have ALWAYS been a shitty, stupid idea. They're a great way to trick people into visiting some shitty malware site, but more importantly they break a fundamental part of the web- the fucking URL itself.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

hmm they could take the old destination URL then redirect it into a google search.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[uncqual]

Google claims:

While most features of goo.gl will eventually sunset, all existing links will continue to redirect to the intended destination.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

And the domain goo.gl is soon to be up for grabs for the highest bidding malware author. So even if your intention of using URL shortening was not to trick people into visiting some shitty malware site, it will be now.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[bill_mcgonigle]

They're a great way to trick people into visiting some shitty malware site, but more importantly they break a fundamental part of the web- the fucking URL itself.

Yes, that's their primary use, malware. It's not so you can tell a human a URL they can remember. :rolleyes:

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

umm thats why you send them a link... or do you navigate the web by memorized url's

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

what happens to the millions upon millions of links now obfuscated by non-functioning goo.gl? They get lost and millions of 404 errors will rule the day.

Most probably wouldn't work anyway. Ever tried clicking the reference links on a Wikipedia article?

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's their primary use, malware. It's not so you can tell a human a URL they can remember. :rolleyes:

This has got to be a troll, right? Sometimes it's hard to tell.

Yeah... shortened URLs people can remember, like http://shortlink.com/fi8z92gf3

So short. Much memorable.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

It's not so you can tell a human a URL they can remember. :rolleyes:

Roll your eyes all you want, the fact is that you never tell someone to go to "http://goo.gl/x/dj4980fhd", do you?

Or maybe "Yah, just go to http://goo.gl/x/m2c_(Qw-sfcn3"

Sure you do. Give me a fucking break- even short URLs aren't memorable.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

While most features of goo.gl will eventually sunset, all existing links will continue to redirect to the intended destination

Remember this iin a couple of years when they sunset those links too. Seriously, do you trust google to keep anything up and running after they start decommissioning other parts of it? Do any parts of Hangouts still work?

Maybe Google Graveyard will help make my disbelief clear: https://killedbygoogle.com/

I wouldn't rely on those links staying viable for any extended period of time. Maybe they will, but I wouldn't bet a dollar on it.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

You always seemed pretty reasonable to me, Bill, but that statement really makes me shake my head. Seriously, WTF?

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Etcetera]

Link shorteners have ALWAYS been a shitty, stupid idea. They're a great way to trick people into visiting some shitty malware site, but more importantly they break a fundamental part of the web- the fucking URL itself.

That depends on what your intent is -- if you're using them to spread malware, then it's you who suck, not the code.

What you call "link shorteners" actually have three distinct uses:
1) Bona-fide link shortening -- If you have a 200 character link that's awkward to paste around (especially in small text display areas), this seriously does help
2) Analytics and tracking -- If you need to track outbound links or for some reason need to analytic who's getting to your destination, this helps.
3) A permanent URL for content that may move in the future.

But the OP is wrong. At least as far as #3 is concerned, the tech behind a link shortener is at least as old as pURLs.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Lanthanide]

Maybe not easy to remember, but a damn sight easier to read out to someone over the phone.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

> Case in point: goo.gl.....what happens to the millions upon millions of links now obfuscated by non-functioning goo.gl? They get lost and millions of 404 errors will rule the day.

Let's be honest though, non-shortened links are susceptible to the same problem as well. Domain registrations lapse, websites get migrated to different content management systems...

Re: URL shorteners SUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of URL shorteners was to be able to easily post a link which is otherwise the size of a Russian novel, and often got broken by web forum software.

Re: URL shorteners SUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

And that wouldn't happen if websites had an URIs. This trend of including tons of bullshit that the user can't understand needs to stop.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

What you call "link shorteners" actually have three distinct uses: 1) Bona-fide link shortening -- If you have a 200 character link that's awkward to paste around (especially in small text display areas), this seriously does help 2) Analytics and tracking -- If you need to track outbound links or for some reason need to analytic who's getting to your destination, this helps. 3) A permanent URL for content that may move in the future.

4) Sending people to goatse even if they hovered over the link and checked the status bar before clicking on it.

(...back before UX designers took away the status bar so that web designers would have 16 more vertical pixels for a 120-pixel-tall CSS position:fixed masthead with a .PNG of the site's logo on it, and a 64-pixel-tall fixed footer for the GDPR warning.)

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Gavagai80]

The only way I've ever used goo.gl is
4) To SMS somebody an insanely long (keyword-stuffed) article URL you're looking at on your PC without having to type out the whole damn thing on a horrible little touchscreen.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Gavagai80]

And apparently I can't read because that was #1.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[uncqual]

Of course that is possible. But, I expect they won't do that for a long time as the cost of maintaining the static forwarding service will drop every year both as hardware gets more efficient and cheaper and as usage of the links decreases as the pages using them go away and as the targets go away. As well, static data has much less stringent backup, recovery, and real time replication requirements. Dropping the analytics associated with usage should save quite a lot of resources. Eventually the forwarding service will probably just run in a few small VMs in each region from static images. Very, very inexpensive to maintain.

Now, when usage of the links worldwide drops to a few hundred a day, google might drop the service -- but then google may go out of business before then for other reasons.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[antdude]

I also hate very LONG URLs. :(

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Waccoon]

Companies are in business to make money, so it's not a question of how much it costs, but how profitable it is to maintain. I can think of tons of technologies that are ultra-cheap to maintain, but are still dropped like hot potatoes when they no longer can be used for good PR.

Re: URL shorteners SUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words: electronic mail

Re: URL shorteners SUCK

[tepples]

I've seen mail servers delay mail by 20 minutes or more, particularly mail when confirming a registration on a website.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[uncqual]

True, but breaking links would also have a cost in reputation and make some people very angry. My guess is that they will decide the minimal cost of leaving the links on autopilot for many, many years is less than the reputational cost of cutting them off. But, I thought Trump wasn't going to win the U.S. Presidential election so my magic ball seems to be flawed sometimes.

Re: URL shorteners SUCK

[astrofurter]

For now...

How long until Big Brother Google kills that functionality too?

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

Xoogler here. Google will cheerfully kill off old products that expose security threats or are legal hazards if unmaintained - Google+ is a good example, it's a minefield if personal data is leaked due it not being invested in, and it's really complicated so it's an attack vector. goo.gl is extremely stupid, doesn't require authentication, doesn't care who is using it, etc. The only risk of goo.gl is people using goo.gl links for phishing and the like - but that's more a risk of keeping the service up, it doesn't matter as much for old links.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[rastos1]

Years ago I grabbed a google account when they were first time promoted to the public. Later I started using that account with "Google Talk" service configured as a Jabber chat with XMMP federation(?). Google Talk was reportedly killed ~6 years ago and (if I understand that correctly) replaced by Google Hangouts which is not based on XMMP. Yet, the 3rd-party IM programs (Pidgin, MirandaNG, kopete, ...) keep working with that account and I can use that to chat with people that use GMail in a browser. My IM program currently shows TCP connection on port 5222 to 108.177.127.125. The IP address does not resolve in DNS but it belongs to netblock of Google Inc.

So this is getting me confused ... what am I actually using? XMMP? Jabber? Google Talk? Google Hangounts? Magic?

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[thegarbz]

How many of the things in the grave yard broke other parts of the internet. Did you guess zero? The answer is zero. Google have a perfect track record here.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why a dumb phone still is better. Yes I like to type even this sort of crap on phone keypad with T9 disabled.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Waccoon]

Based on things like Facebook stomping on our privacy, UX people removing features like crazy to enhance our experiences, support cycles where 6-months is considered "long-term support", and... Trump, I get the impression that reputation doesn't mean much, anymore. It used to be that every company had to release some flaky, PC-laden apology for any minor PR issue, but now you can pretty much say "Fuck you" to the public and go on with business as usual.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

It has always been my policy to ban people for a week if they post a shortened URL, permanent on the second offense. There is no legitimate reason to use one.

Re: URL shorteners SUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost every single forum software allows you to make a clickable link by default.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Jason Levine]

I think their primary purpose was to make links more Twitter friendly. When you had 140 characters to work with, a long URL could take up your entire tweet. For example, the URL to this page is 133 characters long. That leaves me a mere 7 characters were I tweeting this under the old Twitter length restriction. If, however, I used a URL shortener, I could get this down to about 25 - freeing up over a hundred characters. Of course, since then Twitter has expanded the length of tweets which makes this less of a concern.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not really a problem though, lots of software companies have dropped products. Microsoft discontinued Truespace which was a great 3D design program I used. I'm still using it to this day and have it installed. Plenty of people still have and use Visual Basic.

Oh.... google huh? I guess those are cloud/live services where you don't actually have the software. Its almost like the PC revolution never happened. What about having a powerful computer at your desk that you can run software on? Instead of services in the cloud that popup and disappear. Easy come, easy go.

Re: URL shorteners SUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

As a web developer constantly fighting his marketing department over wanting to include seventy-five levels of bullshit in the URL for tracking purposes, I'm in full agreement. I won't let it happen on the site I'm coding. Unfortunately, I'm only in charge of one of our various sites. The others are a disaster area of fucked up URLs and Facebook/Twitter/etc. tags.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

This server is limping lets move it somewhere else. How long will that take? Oh about 30min, ok so at about 200/hr you could spend $100 and make no money or just shut the thing down. Done.

That's just it exactly. Not that google is stellar at finding anything not ads to make money at, but maintaining a defunct product definitely won't be a revenue source.

Re:URL shorteners SUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually Hangouts do work, I've uninstalled mine this week due to not having anyone only there anymore, but at least text/calling still worked

What Happened to Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember there was this period wherein Google released something life-changing every year or so.

The search engine. Google Maps stunned the world. Gmail. Docs and Calendar. And then... ...what?

I donâ(TM)t expect anything amazing or world changing any longer.

Similar with Apple now- a TV subscription? A credit card? Whatâ(TM)s next, physical world magazine plans and life insurance?

Something has gone wrong.

Re:What Happened to Google?

[bill_mcgonigle]

The search engine. Google Maps stunned the world. Gmail. Docs and Calendar. And then... ...what?

They went public, brought on Eric Schmitt, CFR member, to run the thing, and turned it into a surveillance powerhouse.

Project Dragonfly is still being worked on and neomarxist cliques make sure that conservative and libertarian employees don't work on new projects.

Sure, some engineers who weren't told about PRISM were pissed, but Google was apparently complicit above their paygrade, probably OTR like Dragonfly.

Re:What Happened to Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Reader was so influential that RSS pretty much died when they discontinued it.

Google Wave was life changing, but they killed it before it was even open to the public.

Google didn't stop releasing life changing software, they just decided it was more fun to change your life by flushing it down the toilet every couple of years.

URL Shortener

[darkain]

Google's URL shortener was built directly into Google Docs, Sheets, and Drive for several years. Now all of those links shared about the web and linked in blogs and other useful locations... will just be dead. Thanks! I'm really glad that with all of those billions of dollars, you couldn't hire 1... just 1 person... to keep that simple service up and running.

Re:URL Shortener

[ZorinLynx]

Google claims existing links are going to keep working; you just won't be able to make any new ones.

Of course, what people forget is that these short URLs usually rely on the TLD of a foreign country, in this case Greenland.

This potentially places all goo.gl links under the control of Greenland. Now, I don't expect them to do anything bad, but how many other link shorteners exist based on other countries' TLDs? How many of these countries will always be friendly? There's really no way to know.

Avoid using link shorteners.

Re:URL Shortener

[zlives]

the links will continue to work, what we need now is a subculture of link re-appropriations. redirect the redirecting links...

Re:URL Shortener

[Anonymous Coward]

as long as the registry that handles .gl domains continues to allow non-native registrants, google will have no problem renewing the domain in perpetuity.. whether they do that or not, and continue to have the domain point to a server that handles all the existing redirects, that remains to be seen. my guess is that they'll let the domain lapse in 3-5 years, and some 'less reputable' entity takes it over and starts fucking with redirects.

Re: URL Shortener

[anlag]

Perhaps it doesnâ(TM)t matter but that link to the TLDâ(TM)s country always made me reluctant to use bit.ly. Libya never felt like a great basket to put any eggs at all, and keep in mind when that URL shortener came around Khadaffi was still in power. Greenland should be safe by comparison, at least until the seal rise up.

Re:URL Shortener

[houghi]

I live in Belgium. I should start a company named "YouTu". It will be an English-French dating website directed at Brexit people (You) and French speaking people "Tu" can meet (or meat).

And then I will claim my domain name.

Ands I would say ALL link shorteners exist based on other countries TLD. It just depends where you live.

Google breaks the web, yet again

[goombah99]

Broken links break the web.

Google should have been forced to use the link shortener exclusively for all it's own internal web sites. Then it would have been safer.

the new threat is the google AMP and other accelated pages. This is already breaking compaibility with browsers other than Chrome.

Google is the new nicorsoft of embrace and extend.... and kill

Re:Google breaks the web, yet again

[RonVNX]

Google was also late to the game, not early. The Google fanboyism around here gets ridiculous sometimes.

Re: Google breaks the web, yet again

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Google has broken and extinguished more than MS at this point.

I think Google is now being run by some very young millenials who have the attention span and patience of a gnat. MS is more of an old school corporation.

Google is going to destroy itself now that it's services should be considered unreliable in the long term.

Re:Google breaks the web, yet again

[rtb61]

Hey, not only is Google often late to the game, it often fails, M$ and Google has so much in common, one in the same, just with different marketing, much like the Corporate Democrats and the Corporate Republicans, doing exactly the same thing, selling out their users or voters as is the case, whilst pretending to serve them. You could imagine Google and M$ both coming out with the book, 'How To Serve Humans', only we find out when it is too late, it is a cook book, well a book on how to invade and analyse people's subconscious minds so that they can be manipulated into bad choice for them but very profitable choice for others.

Google is a disease, a privacy invasive infection.

Re: Google breaks the web, yet again

[Anonymous Coward]

That's "agile" business models for you. In an economic model that's about chasing the money as it moves, trendy tech trumps stable tech.

Tired of that crap? Don't support those businesses by boycotting where possible.

Re:Google breaks the web, yet again

[thomn8r]

Google also shot themselves in the dick by playing the artificial scarcity card; you had to get an invitation to use certain services, so a lot of people just said "fuck it" and skipped the whole mess.

There's a website

[Anonymous Coward]

https://killedbygoogle.com/

Unique features are unique

[jrumney]

Most of its unique features are now part of the Gmail app

None of its unique features are part of the Gmail app, that is what makes them unique. There are rumours that some of the unique features like pinning, reminders and bundling are coming to Gmail real soon now, maybe in May when Google has a PR event planned. But if they acknowledge that those are good features to have in Gmail, then why are they shutting down inbox before they have implemented them there? Maybe they are relying on the short attention span of the average modern internets user so they can announce them as groundbreaking new features that we have never seen before.

Google is not your friend.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look.

It's time to stop giving all your data to Google.

They are a massive, international ad and spyware company. They are not your friend. They do not collect all this data "for your benefit", they collect it for theirs.

Just stop spewing every tiny detail of your behaviour into their stalkerware.

Killing off?

[viperidaenz]

By "killing off the Pixel 2" they mean continuing to support it, just not sell it any more, as they've been selling the Pixel 3 for a while now.

Re:Killing off?

[Anonymous Coward]

No longer sell/produce. All the other products mentioned have been announced to be discontinued long time ago.

Announcing 404 day on April 13

[kiviQr]

thanks to goo.gl

$800

[Anonymous Coward]

Motorola has been producing Pixel quality smartphones at over half the cost. WHY are Google photos so expensive??????

Re:$800

[Anonymous Coward]

$800 wtf? I will stick to my $200 iPhone SE.
Privacy matters.

Re:$800

[Kyr Arvin]

$800 wtf? I will stick to my $200 iPhone SE.
Privacy matters.

Do either of those phones come with a contract?
Usually, phones with contracts are much cheaper because the cost of the phone is moved to the contract itself.

Re:$800

[Anonymous Coward]

Because this is how you compete with $800 phones from other manufacturers.
Also, maybe Google doesn't give that much a shit about selling phones. By having their own, they get to have and keep some power in shaping expectations for features and UI. e.g. Google AI crap which will then be pushed on the phones from other brands.

When will they kill of GoLang?

[aberglas]

Like they killed of GWT etc.

Sure they use it internally. A bit.

Is it wise to develop in GoLang? Would it really survive without Google?

Yes I do

[SuperKendall]

the fact is that you never tell someone to go to "http://goo.gl/x/dj4980fhd", do you?

Yes, I do in fact do that.

Or rather, I use the URL shorteners that let me define a shortened URL like tinyurl.com/LinkToShare which expands into something I could not easily tell someone and would take ages to copy. It's great for presentation materials to be put online where I can take some longish Dropbox URL and shorten it into something easily read, remembered, or captured on a cameraphone.

The permanence of such a link is not really much of a concern either...

I guess I am not "anyone"

[flajann]

"Google+: Google+ was once supposed to be the one-stop shop for social and support among Google users, but it never really caught on. And then it was revealed that some 50 million users may have had their name, email address, occupation, and age exposed to third-party developers, which accelerated its demise. Now it's going away for good, but we can't imagine that anyone will actually notice."

I guess I am not "anyone" then. I was using a G+ group to support AI research, which I now have migrated to MeWe.

And so, this "nobody" will continue. There were many of us using G+, but just because our numbers never made it to the insane levels of FaceBook -- who basically treats all their members like 5-year-olds -- does not mean we were nobodies. I was a member of many high-quality groups, like Blender and many others, that are all going to go "poof". And the 200GB archive I downloaded from G+ is another sign of just how active I've been there for many, many years.

So PCWorld can shove it where the sun never shines. Besides, they are one of the worst computer magazines ever. Never ever liked them.

Re:I guess I am not "anyone"

[StarryEyed]

Actually, from what I could tell, google+ was finally gaining marketshare as many thousands of users fled facebook.

Only to have the bridges behind and ahead burned so all the data they had shared would sink into the swamp and be buried.

So...

[LordHighExecutioner]

GoogleDeadProjects += 4;

Re:So...

[fenrif]

But seriously, get in on the ground floor of our new Stadia streaming gaming platform where we have control of all your games. You can trust us.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

I get your complaint, but isn't a streaming subscription temporary by nature? Netflix could disappear tomorrow and I'd still have watched the shows and movies that it offered during my subscription period. I guess I'd lose my "watchlist". Basically it would suck to miss out on the two TV series and one movie that I currently have "in progress"...but I could probably find them somewhere else?

Now I prefer collecting over subscribing, in fact I prefer physical media over digital, but I'm not sure Stadia is really that big of a risk unless the controllers are north of $100 each. If the service is cancelled in three years, I subscribe to a different one, and meanwhile I should theoretically have sucked a few hundred hours of entertainment out of it.

The worst part would be inability to access any great exclusive games they come up with...which again is already a problem before Google gets involved since so many games these days are a "service" that can change dramatically or disappear on you.

Request

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone please send me a goo.gl link in an email to my Inbox by GMail app so I can upgrade to the Pixel 2? If not via Inbox, then post it to Google+. I'm driving right now, so I will read it using Google Glass.

Thank you.

So invest heavily in Stadia, by all means!

[Anonymous Coward]

Suckers.

Good for the community to decommission duds

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has been just decommissioning dud products it no longer wants to pay to operate.
Same as any other large company.

It's just another company entering middle age; little innovation, little revenue added by new products vs exiting products, lots of lard, .....

Plot top line revenue vs revenue from products introduced in the last 5 years.

Similar story about Apple as their top line revenue is almost 100% from existing products of which the original model was ntroduced 10 years ago.

A dartboard question throw here: Are the one percenters learning from General Electric's fall that maybe headwinds are growing against large organizations?.

The trouble with Google...

[Whatchamacallit]

The trouble with Google is people do not realize that these services they provide are not the product. YOU THE USER are the product. Google is a marketing company and always has been. It is how it funds itself. By selling advertisements and collecting massive amounts of data and metadata about it's product which is YOU!

goodbye google

[Anonymous Coward]

Havent used any new google service since they shutdown the rss agregator thing. Once i get my librem 5 i will only have gmail left.

Sent from my last android.

Google+ and Youtube

[Anonymous Coward]

Google deleted my Youtube account because I refused to join Google+.

Back in the day, when Google+ didn't get the number of users to compete with Facebook, Google decided to force people to join Google+ by making it a requirement for most Google services, including Youtube.

Will I get my Youtube account back, now that this is no longer a requirement?